TJ I can understand, but Reagan? Really?

Right-wing bloggers take a vote and rank their twenty greatest figures in American History. It'd be interesting to conglomerate a list of our own. Send me your top, um, let's say 5-10 via e-mail (ssecrest48 AT hotmail Dot com) and I'll put it together and post it next Monday.

Thirty-four years ago today:





Isn't it about time we went back?

Ugh.

"That invisible hand of Adam Smith's seems to be offering an extended middle finger to an awful lot of people." - - George Carlin

Here's a fascinating intersection of science and art: astronomers have figured out when Van Gogh witnessed a particular astronomical event which he later painted.

More here, including a photo of the actual painting.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow.

(It's a dolphin.)

Collaboratory's been sucking wind a little bit lately, wouldn't you say? Cody is interested in joining us, and i'm interested in having him, but I don't want to invite him to something that's languishing. What do we do?

Comment counting should be back now.

Last words of fictional characters.

Gene Wolfe wrote an essay on his love of Lord of the Rings for this book, and his essay was rejected.

If Wolfe, one of SF and fantasy's greatest living writers, didn't make the cut, it kind of makes me want to get that book and find out what did....

Here's one of those ultra-cool "VR" tours, of an Egyptian Pharaoh's tomb. Ultra-cool, even at 56K. (Yeah, I'm still on dial-up. And I'm quite happy with it, because I do very little downloading of big video files and I don't do filetrading of any sort. So there.)

My own theory is that some people prefer the dessert to the main.

Instead of confronting pressing national problems, our president lands airplanes while Rome burns.

Senator Jim Jeffords (Ind., Vermont) recently gave a speech that neatly summarizes why so many of us are, shall we say, less than satisfied with President Bush. And he's not even a Democrat.

(link via Ruminate This.)

I have a recurrent feeling these days, that I'm living in the wrong trouser-leg of time.

And, going even farther, SF author Charles Stross commented the other day on why he's less than satisfied with the 21st century.

(crossposted on Byzantium's Shores.)

Suppose, when he went to Gettysburg to dedicate the cemetery there, Abraham Lincoln had been able to employ the wonderful abilities of....


....(wait for it)....



PowerPoint.

No, but if you hum a few bars, I can fake it.

Literally.

A scientist studies what may be the mummy of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt.

(Note to self: Check previous posts before posting....oh well, at least I got a picture!)

What if Superman were a Red?

What if he had landed in the Ukraine instead of Kansas? An interesting take and very creative endeavor. (Review: may contain spoilers).

A consequence of the computer age: cursive is apparently dying.

Every so often I'll attempt to scrawl a bit in cursive, and it always takes me several minutes just to recall how to make every letter. I believe I was in my early college years the last time I actually used cursive for anything longer than my signature. Even though I do a lot of longhand writing, none of it is cursive. (I print in italics.)

Should we still teach cursive, or has it become irrelevant?

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture (via plep on MeFi). Of course, ol' languagehat has already been there.

Your assignment: pick a favorite site? (and we aint talkin web here, baby.)

What is the Matrix?

This aint near penance enough for my utter lack of posting over here, but why not break the trend now?

Clinton says term limits should be for consecutive terms, not a lifetime.

Now that's an interesting idea (relative to him). I think he's right that it won't happen for him, but would you vote for him?