Unqualified Offerings

Debate Blogging because I want to fit in. Actual dialog from early in the evening:
Me: How can you take these imbeciles seriously?
Mrs. Offering: It’s hard.
A confession: I don’t watch much TV, except for sports. I never watch TV news. I skip most States of the Union and missed all but a minute or two of [...]

Worthwhile Canadian Initiative – Artist Sylvia Nickerson’s “Flower Knives” from the New Quarterly. Link via Nobilist.

Pong Fu – Pretty amusing. Link is a video.

Thick as a Brick – Matt Hogan tips me to an interesting article on cement and concrete shortages. Hey come on! This stuff matters:
It’s a serious and costly problem for construction firms, which depend on cement to build everything from home foundations to highways to swimming pools. Because contracts are typically signed months in advance, [...]

At Least the NAME Doesn’t Stink – According to a survey by the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey conducted over the last year, only 9% of American Indians find the name of the Washington Redskins “offensive,” reports AP. I’m not surprised. I recall a survey from a couple of years ago showed the [...]

This Time It’s Personal – Gene Healy on NPR’s strange concept of “gun safety.”

Yogablogging! – Well, why the hell not? Alan Little has quite a lot of it. I’ve been thinking about yoga as an adjunct to running lately, and figure I could take it safely, being a man. (Women who get to be my age and start yoga for the first time seem inevitably to divorce within [...]

Let’s Not Get Too Excited – Mrs. Offering forwards me Thomas Oliphant’s column in the Boston Globe suggesting that Libertarian Presidential candidate Michael Badnarik (whose name he can’t spell) may end up costing George Bush the state of Nevada and its five electoral votes. As a libertarian who plans to vote Libertarian for the third [...]

The Long Twilight Struggle Continues between the CIA and the White House. I wonder if Porter Goss will unilaterally disarm. Bureaucratic capture being what it is, I wouldn’t count on it. What’s interesting is that Novak says the analysts who warned ahead of time that Iraq would likely turn out . . . like it’s [...]

Such a Shame How These Things Work Out – Jeff Taylor notes the unfortunate pattern in Pakistan:
Wanted al Qaeda insider Amjad Farooqi is dead, killed in a shoot-out with Pakistani security forces just as President General Pervez Musharraf visits the United States. Great timing, that. Trouble is Farooqi was rumored to be in custody months [...]