I blame the rain songs on the radio this morning. I've decided that they, and not the weather, are also primarily responsible for my foot pain.
• Happy 49th birthday to Kevin Drum, originator of Friday Cat Blogging (™ him)! We are now the same age for the next month and a half, until I surpass him on 2 December. Naturally, Kevin celebrates with an FCB post.
• Tony Bourdain takes over Ruhlman's blog again with a post about Ruhlman's haircut, The Next Iron Chef America, and Kitchen Nightmares. He "admire"s that TNICA got rid of the only two female chefs first, which sounded incredibly sexist to me, but explains that this proves beyond doubt that the judging is independent and based on merit alone. Yuh-huh. He likes Gordon Ramsey's new show, which I did too on the one episode we happened to watch because it dealt with a restaurant not too far away from us. Except I found it overly staged (two cameras?) and unevenly paced, focusing far more on Ramsey than on the success story the restaurant supposedly became due to his machinations. I'm told this is about par for the course with Ramsey. Also on the food blogs, Melissa Hall takes a look at boudin, which of course made me think of Steve.
• I see where Mark Evanier agrees with me, or appears to, about journalists pressing politicians to define their terms. I want to hug Richard Wolffe (even though) for asking President Bush the "simple question" to define "torture." Now we need to corner these folks to define other deliberately vague terms like "family values" and "culture of life" and "freedom" and "supporting the troops" and, heck, even "war on terror."
• Speaking of which, what's the diff between the kind of terrorism practiced by the odious Osama bin Laden and that practiced by the odious Michelle Malkin? August Pollak compares and contrasts. And the Rude Pundit reminds us what we might have had if enough American citizens had only been a little more on the ball.
• The slebs are coming out of the woodwork at HuffPo. Richard Belzer applauds our propensity for self-fright during this Hallowe'en season, Mike Farrell's more worried than ever about our plans for Iran, and Paul Simon's disgusted with the way the administration is playing politics with children's health, and is doing something about it.
• Tammy Pierce echoes my sentiments when she asks, "Why is anybody surprised?" at the paucity of decent roles for women in movies. Maybe it's like Cheryl Lynn says, you can't blame a leopard for its spots. Although Val D'Orazio still prefers that we publicly call the T&A superhero subgenre what it is.
• Cory Doctorow apologizes to Ursula LeGuin for going beyond what he considered fair use but what she believes was wholesale swiping. See, if one paragraph constitutes an entire story and you didn't ask permission to reprint the whole thing, that's not fair use. But as Cory has, for a long time, seemed to be one of those fans-turned-pros who repeatedly touts how everything should be freely available and consumers should never need permission from creators for anything, I have my suspicions as to whether this incident has changed his mind.
• Okay, I'm officially creeped out. Dragonspies?, asks Eli. It's like something out of a Bond villain's cache.
Lastly, this has been another edition of What Krugman Says About What Digby Says. I can goes home now?
• Happy 49th birthday to Kevin Drum, originator of Friday Cat Blogging (™ him)! We are now the same age for the next month and a half, until I surpass him on 2 December. Naturally, Kevin celebrates with an FCB post.
• Tony Bourdain takes over Ruhlman's blog again with a post about Ruhlman's haircut, The Next Iron Chef America, and Kitchen Nightmares. He "admire"s that TNICA got rid of the only two female chefs first, which sounded incredibly sexist to me, but explains that this proves beyond doubt that the judging is independent and based on merit alone. Yuh-huh. He likes Gordon Ramsey's new show, which I did too on the one episode we happened to watch because it dealt with a restaurant not too far away from us. Except I found it overly staged (two cameras?) and unevenly paced, focusing far more on Ramsey than on the success story the restaurant supposedly became due to his machinations. I'm told this is about par for the course with Ramsey. Also on the food blogs, Melissa Hall takes a look at boudin, which of course made me think of Steve.
• I see where Mark Evanier agrees with me, or appears to, about journalists pressing politicians to define their terms. I want to hug Richard Wolffe (even though) for asking President Bush the "simple question" to define "torture." Now we need to corner these folks to define other deliberately vague terms like "family values" and "culture of life" and "freedom" and "supporting the troops" and, heck, even "war on terror."
• Speaking of which, what's the diff between the kind of terrorism practiced by the odious Osama bin Laden and that practiced by the odious Michelle Malkin? August Pollak compares and contrasts. And the Rude Pundit reminds us what we might have had if enough American citizens had only been a little more on the ball.
• The slebs are coming out of the woodwork at HuffPo. Richard Belzer applauds our propensity for self-fright during this Hallowe'en season, Mike Farrell's more worried than ever about our plans for Iran, and Paul Simon's disgusted with the way the administration is playing politics with children's health, and is doing something about it.
• Tammy Pierce echoes my sentiments when she asks, "Why is anybody surprised?" at the paucity of decent roles for women in movies. Maybe it's like Cheryl Lynn says, you can't blame a leopard for its spots. Although Val D'Orazio still prefers that we publicly call the T&A superhero subgenre what it is.
• Cory Doctorow apologizes to Ursula LeGuin for going beyond what he considered fair use but what she believes was wholesale swiping. See, if one paragraph constitutes an entire story and you didn't ask permission to reprint the whole thing, that's not fair use. But as Cory has, for a long time, seemed to be one of those fans-turned-pros who repeatedly touts how everything should be freely available and consumers should never need permission from creators for anything, I have my suspicions as to whether this incident has changed his mind.
• Okay, I'm officially creeped out. Dragonspies?, asks Eli. It's like something out of a Bond villain's cache.
Lastly, this has been another edition of What Krugman Says About What Digby Says. I can goes home now?
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