Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Liberal Coalition Top Ten
Week of 11/12/06 thru 11/18/06

The cat's still meowing even after being fed. I'm just glad Robin has been able to get some sleep during these wee hours when I've been up, he has another killer day of work ahead of him with two deadlines looming. Me, I can just crash later, so I may as well do my weekly Liberal Coalition blogaround in the meantime, with a few non-LC posts of note added for good measure:

• Echidne suggests a drinking game based on dissing important women by referring to them by their first names in situations where, were these newsmakers men, they would be referred to by surname or title. I still find myself doing that way too much when making phone calls at work. Echidne also has more good news about chocolate (I love the bit about those tested having dropped out of another study because they couldn't give up the stuff) which could be very germane to my situation because I'd much rather ingest chocolate than the daily blood-thinning medication I'm told I'll have to take for the rest of my life.

• While another co-blogger from First Draft is actually the LC member, I liked Athenae's post about Battlestar Galactica enough to link to it. Money line: "What you are willing to do in war is not and never was about your enemies."

• John notices an engineering student who's unclear on the concept of gender bias.

• Moi finds an online dog who will obey your typed commands. This is a pretty clever idea, I wish I had the tech smarts to do something similar with my cat. (I can use my camera to make the movies, and upload them to YouTube, but I wouldn't be able to tie each trick to a corresponding user command.)

• Mustang Bobby has some good Florida-based blogging this week, including musings on Mel Martinez and Little Havana's reaction to the latest rumor mills about Castro.

• Norbizness has some wonderful family pictures of Thanksgivings past.

• For NTodd, it's a brand new year and he has the photos to prove it.

• Scott passes along the sad news that Lynn Johnston will end For Better or For Worse next year. She's had a great run on this comic strip! He also recommends a holiday toy that'll poke your eye out, kid.

• Steve Bates recommends a new widget called LibraryThing. Paging my ex!

Steve Gilliard has started a food blog, hooray! He also has a good follow-up to Digby's "Clinton Rules" post that I mentioned on Friday, where he proposes that the liberal blogosphere guarantees the Republican smear machine won't be able to get away with the same tactics they used in the late '90s. I dunno, we're still only bloggers, I think our real-life influence is a lot more limited than many A-list bloggers believe it is.

• Trish found a quiz just for Marylanders.

• Lastly, upyernoz celebrates a peculiar anniversary, looks forward to Global Orgasm Day (I don't, I dread the cleanup), and discusses the proposed Dutch burqa ban. I guess he's not one of those bloggers who went on the junket to Amsterdam earlier this year; I'm not holding my breath for one of those bought-and-paid-for bloggers to raise this particular topic.

And a couple non-LC links before reading through the rest of the group blogs and/or catching some more Z's:

• David Rees gets his disgust on over a recurring Billy Crystal character brought out once again for last night's Comic Relief. Dang, I forgot that was even on. I'd never considered this "can you dig it? I knew that you could" guy "earnest minstrelsy," but then I'd never really thought about it. I'd be curious to see what Kai and Gary and Mary Beth and other supporters of my posts against blogging-blackface think of this essay.

• Scaramouche reproes a concession letter regarding the loss of a MN state senate race by a presumed evangelical Christian to someone she knew damn well is Hindu. My jaw dropped.

• It's almost an axiom to note that Digby does it again, isn't it? But he does, this time with an interesting analysis of how the meanness of teenage girl hierarchies may be playing out politically and an observation on how "the base" is getting more than David Kuo thinks they are, in the form of incompetent evangelicals being appointed to influential government posts.

• There is no question in my mind that Kathryn Cramer's dad is very cool indeed. And I can see what attracted her to science fiction so much!

• Kathy Flake points out that it's amazing what can be accomplished when men actually listen to women and girls instead of assuming what they're thinking. More about that, I'm sure, during my review of last Thursday evening's event.

And with that, as well as with the sun now rising everywhere but in our be-curtained bedroom, I'm going to attempt to go back to sleep.

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