Only accurate for extremely inclusive definitions of comedy. I prefer to think of it as his complete failure at attempting the longest filibuster. (“Let’s see…first, it wasn’t close to the record, and second, it wasn’t in a legislative body…”)

From today: french was not her strong point by any means. the word ’limes’ was like fire to powder,seeing. tired with her short journey, beth any circ’mstances." of life. holding up an oddly shaped linen bag, with to new york?

A spam message I received this afternoon, with responses: You Do not like your machine size. Well, you know us programmers, always looking for a bigger machine. Women laugh at you. Oh, great. I thought they were laughing with me. You have unique chance to solve this problem. Yay! Try our male aggregate enla’rgement and Chicks will adore you surely enough. Well, I am male, and I have been enlarging ever since college…good food, good times. But as far as adoration, well, I already thought that ladies love me, girls adore me, I mean even the ones who never saw me…. So I’m not sure how that would be better. ...

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting article about the difficulties faced when negotiating rights fees for essays an editor wants to include in a volume about New Criticism. It makes an interesting point: Doesn’t the rights holder, often a publisher, have an obligation to promote the work and make it available for scholarship? Here’s an idea that I’m sure has been said before: Copyright law should require the rights owner make the information available to the public in some fashion. If not available for more than, say, ten years, the copyright term would be severely shortened. In the case of printed material, it would mean that the rights holder would need to make the information available for some fee to the public either in a digital or printed form. That wouldn’t take care of the problem faced in putting together the New Criticism book, since the rights holder could still charge an exorbitant fee for the material, but it would give the publisher an incentive to not charge as much, because any use of the material in a book would count as being publicly available. ...

…turns out to be just as boring as regular baseball. The list from the Mitchell Report, as reported by Deadspin, provoked an immediate reaction from me: I thought steroids were supposed to make you better at sports? It’s like someone took a vertical cross-section of baseball players from the Steroids Era based on talent. That being said, the Balco list looks more interesting. Apparently you had a much better chance of success with Balco products. ;) ...

An important read. Actually, it’s surprisingly hard to get anything under torture, true or false. For example, between 1500 and 1750, French prosecutors tried to torture confessions out of 785 individuals. Torture was legal back then, and the records document such practices as the bone-crushing use of splints, pumping stomachs with water until they swelled and pouring boiling oil on the feet. But the number of prisoners who said anything was low, from 3 percent in Paris to 14 percent in Toulouse (an exceptional high). Most of the time, the torturers were unable to get any statement whatsoever. ...

moar funny pictures

What a huge surprise, given his extraordinary empathy and deep…oh, wait…he’s the one who wrote this article: American Beauty? I get it now. I’m thinking insulting both British and American women when he lives in both countries probably won’t work for him. Unless he watched The Pick-up Artist and decided to be really ambitious. I really hope this was supposed to be A Modest Proposal, particularly given the selection of pictures of Charlotte Church and Paris Hilton to illustrate. ...

Jamaal Tinsley – point guard for the Indiana Pacers and apparently a bad person to party with – and his entourage were shot at after leaving a club around 3:30 AM, possibly with a .223 assault rifle. ESPN paraphrases Pacers’ coach Jim O’Brien with “Tinsley made an error in judgment by being out so late.” Wow, so the real problem is that after around 3 AM, the streets of downtown Indianapolis are crawling with gunmen looking for cars to shoot? He would have been fine if he went home earlier? Dang, now I’m really glad we didn’t move there. :) ...

I went out to my car a bit ago and there was a squirrel sitting on one of the tires. It was eating a seed. I shooed it away before I thought to take a picture of it. I felt a connection with it. Squirrelly (by definition) and loves seeds. I can understand that. I got a dollar bill in change this morning. On the back of the bill someone wrote the words “I LOVE YOU.” “How sweet,” I thought. Then I turned the dollar over. On the front was the word “ASSHOLE.” I don’t think I’m going to use that bill for legal commerce with another person. I shall probably use it in a machine and pass it on to someone else anonymously. If you run across this dollar, it’s probably best to read it front to back. ...