Palinisms

Mrs. Rushton would not have been happy with her run-on sentences....

Not to mention the senseless crap they actually attempt to spew.

'The Devil They Know'

This is an addendum to my earlier post about Berlusconi.

It attempts to answer the question, 'why do Italians vote for Berlusconi?'

Wasting on the Seas

Slate magazine has a poignant and sobering article on the wasteful nature of cruises. On average, a person on a cruise creates more than 2.5 times the normal waste in CO2 emissions. That's without counting the waste caused by the amenities and the all-you-can-eat buffets catering to insatiable gluttons.

Bike Info (For Royce... though he never reads my blog)

Some European bike styles presented with their advantages, perks, and shortcomings.

Dead Before You Know It

For real! Well, maybe not you, but all people of note. Slate magazine reports some details on the well-known fact that newspapers and news agencies write obituaries well in advance.

Pussy Politicians

Recently, much has been said in the form of complaints about the length of the healthcare reform bill. Aspersions have come almost exclusively from the right, but, as this Slate magazine article shows, the length is nothing to fear or look at with suspicion. Bills requiring guidelines for expenditures as massive as those for healthcare or the stimulus plan do require precise wording, so as to avoid the ambiguities and holes that many claim are present in bills of this length.

If you ask me, politicians are just pussies.

The Case for Bicycles

This article in Slate magazine highlights the need for bicycle parking places across America. According to the author, the lack of bicycle racks alongside car parking is the primary obstacle for their use in the United States. I somewhat agree, but I cannot ignore how deeply entrenched car-driving is in the American psyche and culture. The massive size of the country, its long expansion west, the early development of the automotive industry, and the entire infrastructure built to support it all favor car-driving to the detriment of bicycles.