ninme

I spent a good amount of time this morning while waiting for my server to start loading ninme (it wasn’t long enough) perusing the past week of TMZ that I missed while I was away. I ran across this George Clooney story, and thought “Oh lord.”

Claudia Rosett - IF GEORGE CLOONEY REALLY WANTS TO BE [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

(My server’s been an ass for weeks now, but today especially. Small Orange supposedly has “admins looking into it” but who knows how successful they’ll be, considering their past record. Anyway, I’m going to finally save this entry before the bloody thing goes out again.)

Macleans - It’s all very odd, ‘that’s for sure’ Why should Richard [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Question: Scots ask US to lift haggis ban

Categories: Food

BBC - France’s oldest WW1 veteran dies

Mr de Cazenave’s death means the last French WWI veteran is now Lazare Ponticelli, also aged 110.

Btw, there’s a Wiki page listing the surviving veterans, by country, of WWI. I love Wiki. Including deaths of WWI veterans by year: 1999 (488) • 2000 (324) • 2001 (255) [...]

Categories: War and Peace

The Sunday Times - Oh come, come, headmaster - private schools are pretend charities, by Simon Jenkins

Last week Dame Suzi Leather, chairwoman of the Charity Commission, reminded Britain’s 190,000 charities that they were supposed to deliver genuine public benefit, not merely “do good things”.

That’s a rather bizarre definition of charity, isn’t it?

Categories: People and Current Events

The Sunday Times - Nervous street walking

Jacqui Smith has a fear. The home secretary, in an interview with The Sunday Times, admits that she would not feel safe walking around Hackney, east London, at midnight. Not that she thinks this is unusual. “I just don’t think that’s a thing that people do,” she [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

This is from Tuesday:

Get depressed. Go to a movie LA Notebook: America’s pretty gloomy now. But new movies are not lifting the mood, by Chris Ayres

Because films take so long to make, all 2007 releases were conceived years ago, in happier, less economically fraught times. “So,” I said to my wife, as I settled [...]

Categories: Entertainment

Saturday. Pledge. Open.

Categories: Wildcard

Friday. Pledge weekday. Open thread.

Categories: Wildcard

Happy Thursday. Happy pledge weekday. Happy open thread.

Categories: Wildcard

I should be in Calgary. Happy Wednesday, pledge weekday, and open thread.

Categories: Wildcard

I’m at the airport. Peter’s even lent me his precious iPhone. So, every one have a happy Tuesday, fruitful pledge weekday, and stimulating open thread.

Categories: Wildcard

So, my 22-year-old cousin Eric, president of the University of Calgary Ski Club, who I was just sitting next to at dinner every night over Christmas, died yesterday after suffering pretty extensive brain damage after suffering some kind of cardiac event after skiing in Lake Louise about ten days ago. So I’m catching a flight [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Sunday Telegraph - Bishop right to tackle no-go area in our minds, by Ed Husain (author of The Islamist and a former activist of the extremist Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir)

Our political class, media and civil society are domintated by good-hearted, middle-class people who do not wish to admit that a well-intentioned idea - [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

I’m with the 9-year-old.

(Actually, of all the dresses in that movie (and, ohmigosh Nancy-the-fiancée’s 18th century dress with the paniers… drool), the worst one was Giselle’s lilac dress for the ball. I mean, that’s the most beautiful modern dress they could find on 5th Avenue? It wasn’t even a formal gown. It would have looked [...]

Categories: Entertainment