Comments | jeff_duntemann: Odd Lots

jeff_duntemann

Odd Lots

Nov 26, 2008 13:03

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal and New York Times (and many other outlets) reported that the Houghton-Mifflin trade division will be "temporarily" suspending acquisitions of new books. (The textbook division, which provides most of the company's revenues, is not ( Read more... )

humor, odd lots, politics, toys, publishing

Comments 6

whl November 26 2008, 20:10:48 UTC

Here at the house in Mississippi, my experience with CFLs is the opposite. Regular incandescent bulbs blow quickly, due to a wiring mistake that no one has been able to find as yet. CFLs, on the other hand, run for months and months.

And I'm very cautious about plugging anything new in, since the time we smoked a surge suppressor upstairs by plugging something in a previously unused outlet downstairs.

(The comment has been removed)

tceisele November 26 2008, 21:35:07 UTC

Huh. I didn't think I was unusually well-informed about American history and politics, but I only missed one (and that was because I screwed up, not because I didn't know the right answer). But, again, hardly any of them were things I'd learned in school, most were kind of absorbed piecewise over the years.

billroper November 26 2008, 22:07:43 UTC

That's an entertaining little quiz. And I managed to match you, but not without carefully reading a couple of the questions. :)

chris_gerrib November 26 2008, 22:33:00 UTC

Yeah, my CFLs in Chicago run like champs. I did have one in an exterior plastic fixture that overheated rather quickly, but replacing the fixture with a glass and aluminum job cleared that up.

alanajoli November 27 2008, 06:01:24 UTC

One of the interesting things I've read about Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower is that he'd planned to sort of debunk the Thanksgiving mythos, only to find that a lot of it was reasonably accurate. Go figure.

jeff_duntemann November 27 2008, 15:57:43 UTC

My readings agree: It happened pretty much as we understand it. What a lot of people don't understand is that conflicts between English colonists and the Indians in New England did not happen immediately; in fact, there was a lot of cordial give-and-take between the two groups. The Iroquois were a libertarian culture compared to Indian cultures south and west, and according to Charles Mann, author of 1491, the Iroquois influenced the early New Englanders (who were religious absolutists fleeing the comparatively tolerant Church of England because it wasn't hard-assed enough) in the direction of individual liberty ( ... )