Bookworm Room

Tweet Squidoo has $80,000 to give away.  It wants people to vote on which charity (from a long list) should get some of that money.  For every vote cast for a specific charity, that charity receives $2.00, up until all of those $80,000 are gone.  My vote is for Soldier’s Angels.  You should check it [...]

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Tweet Since the moment Palin burst onto the scene, the media has engaged in the most sustained attack I’ve ever seen on a single political candidate.  Outright lies, partial lies, rumors, half-truths, full truths — it doesn’t matter.  There’s just a giant information dump onto the public radar, with the hope that most people will [...]

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Tweet Ronald Hayden wandered over to my blog in connection with my post about the transgendered bathrooms in England, and stayed to make some good points.  I therefore decided to wander over to his blog, Better Angels, and discovered that the good points were not accidental. Better Angels is a good blog, written by a [...]

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Tweet It’s been a surprising day.  I went up a belt at martial arts, so I’m now an advanced beginner, working towards becoming a beginning intermediate.  I also got a very interesting job offer.  I periodically get job offers from my clients, but I don’t often consider them interesting.  This one, however, I do, and [...]

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Tweet There is still no listing for An American Carol in my neck of the woods.  And this isn’t just because today is Tuesday and it’s not opening until Friday.  As you can see from the movie listings from my community, all the other “opening Friday” movies, but for Drona and Kidnap (both Hindi movies), [...]

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Tweet A reminder of human cruelty, of resilience, of hope and of faith.  It is a wonderful story as we go from New Year to Yom Kippur.

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Tweet I like to read British publications, as well as the Spiegel, and whatever other English language versions of European papers strike my fancy.  It’s useful to see what’s going on in other parts of the world and, more than that, to see how the local press views its own events. One thing I’ve noticed [...]

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Tweet Four of the funniest minutes you’ll see on the internet:

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Tweet First, I have to give you the money quote from the article.  Then, as you try to figure it out, I’ll fill you in on the story: “You don’t necessarily have to have had gender reassignment surgery, but you could just define yourself as a man, feel very masculine in yourself, feel that in [...]

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Tweet I think Bill Clinton is mad at his fellow Democrats right now:

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Tweet It’s not high art, but it’s not meant to be: To me, this movie will be a success if the 16-26 year old demographic goes to laugh (and maybe to be de-programmed, just a little bit).

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Tweet One of the most horrific things about both the Nazis and the Communists was the way in which they indoctrinated children.  Children were encouraged to place the State — and especially the state’s leader, whether Hitler or Stalin — above the family, and to give their loyalty to the former, not the latter.  Unhappy [...]

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Tweet As the post title says, real (read:  paying) work is making its demands on my time.  I’ll catch up with the news in a little while.  Just grateful that the market seems to be holding stable (and what does that tell us about the bailout panic?).

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Tweet In 1992, I watched the three way Vice-Presidential debate, pitting Al Gore, Dan Quayle and last-minute Perot pick Admiral James B. Stockdale.  I saw 90 minutes during which Admiral Stockdale opened with two philosophical questions (“Who am I?  Why am I here?”) that made him look befuddled, not thoughtful, and then I watched him [...]

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Tweet I don’t think Glenn Reynolds will mind my reprinting this in its entirety, since it deserves to be read as widely as possible.  Send it along to your friends — and, maybe, to your local newsroom: A READER AT A MAJOR NEWSROOM EMAILS: “Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in [...]

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Tweet Time flies, and with the economic and political hysteria flying around with it, I lost track of Watcher’s Council results.  As it was, I found the voting incredibly difficult, because each post I read struck as being at least as good as, if not better than, the one that came before.  No wonder, then, [...]

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Tweet I hadn’t missed the fact that Paul Newman died of cancer this weekend.  I always admired him, not for his screen presence, but for his off-screen decency:  a fifty year marriage to the same woman and a twenty year commitment to children’s charities.  As for his on-screen presence, I too admired his unusual good [...]

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Tweet It’s only three minutes but it packs quite a punch: Hat tip:  The Strata-Sphere

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Tweet Wishing my friends, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, all the best for the upcoming New Year.

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Tweet One of the things special needs children remind us is that their parents are also special people, who either have innately or who develop extraordinary reserves of love, patience and humanity: Also, here’s a video of Paul Smith, that typewriter artist I told you about earlier (and, BTW, the broken links referenced in that [...]

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Tweet Gosh alone knows why, but I’ve never linked here to Haveil Havalim, a weekly blog carnival of posts from all over by, about and of interest to Jews.  It’s a fantastic read, and it reflects badly on me that I’ve never let y’all know about it.  So, in the “better late than never” category, [...]

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Tweet As of now, it looks as if An American Carol will not be opening soon in a theater near me.  That may change, of course, but it looks disheartening for making plans for next weekend.

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Tweet “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”  — Harry Truman. If you can’t stand the heat, get goons to frighten your opponents — and in Missouri, this means rounding up Democratic government prosecutors and officials to threaten people with prosecution for political speech.

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Tweet Do you get the feeling that a lot of Democrats, having watched the first debate, are saying that their man is qualified to be in the White House merely because he managed not too drool all over himself and say anything too stupid?  That is, they’re acknowledging that, substantively, McCain was much better, but [...]

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Tweet I’ve said before that I am not a racist — I’m a classist or values-ist.  Always have been.  I don’t care about your external color or sexuality or whatever; I do care about the beliefs you bring to the table. What this means is that I’m pretty hostile to identity politics.  I never felt [...]

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