Last night Stephane and I went out to the movies. We saw "A Serious Man", and we both really liked it. The end was a source of frustration, though. Leave it to the Coen Brothers ( Read more... )

[The following comments are from Rick Harnish, of the High Speed Rail Coalition ( Read more... )

Yesterday on one of the talk programs on NPR, there was a representative of a woman's political group talking about the election. She said that if Hillary Clinton does not win the Democratic nomination, her group will put its support behind John McCain, rather than Barack Obama, because of the sexism that Senator Clinton has been hit with ( Read more... )

Why does putting wet laundry in the dryer for 10 minutes before hanging it on the line to dry prevent it from getting stiff? Is it just because the fibers dry partially while moving around?

This article in the New York Times lays out a few ways in which non-drivers, or those who do not drive a lot, subsidize those who do drive, and those who drive a lot. It focuses mainly on the way we pay for insurance, namely that you pay the same amount for insurance whether you drive 2,000 miles a year or 20,000 miles a year, even though the risk ( Read more... )

Someone posted today on attachedparents about how horrible somebody else was because they would occasionally let their baby cry alone for a few minutes. There was no mention of context. I am against letting babies cry by themselves as a general rule, but there are occasionally times when it's safer for the baby if the mother or father sets them down in a safe ( Read more... )

I think NPR news announcers should use finger quotes. As in, "Mourtada el Sader has called on followers to take up arms against, finger quotes, 'the unjustified occupying forces', end finger quotes."

This is a video of an ASL interpretation of the Marilyn Manson song, "This is the New S**t". It's neat to see how the feel of the song is passed on in the sign language. This isn't the kind of thing I normally post, but I think it's really interesting from a linguistic point of view.

Warning: This video contains all kinds of foul language, so if ( Read more... )

This web site gives practical tips for reducing our individual carbon emissions to 1 ton per person per year. I think the hardest change for most people would be transportation, although some heavy-duty carnivores would have a time time reducing their meat intake to a quarter pound of meat a week. But it gives an outline of all the things you can ( Read more... )

This article talks about the apparently increasingly realistic possibility that we might start tearing up buildings to have more farmland. There is a nice discussion of Victory Gardens making a comeback, and a variety of urban spaces being used to grow food for local residents or homeowners.