United States

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman Fries” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Roger \”Life of the Party\” Cohen\’s column, \”Europa! Europa!\” There is something irresistibly comical about...

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Paul \”The Little Professor\” Krugman, who in today\’s...

Guys, I don’t know about you, but for me it has been a long week, in a number of ways, not all of them bad.  Nevertheless, I have been ready since about Tuesday for this week to be over.  Here’s what cheered me up today: a mid-afternoon break to walk over to a nearby farmers’ market with my friend from work.  We ranted and soapboxed for a while about our various gripes, and then we made our way to the best of the three bakery stands, where the endearing and flirtatious Bakery Man (who recognized me from...

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: David “Yawny-Pants” Brooks, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Gail \”The Colander\” Collins, who in her column \”Congress, Up in Arms,\” eviscerates the double-speak in...

(title quote from Amanda Hess, link to article below) So partly because I work in the women’s health world, and partly because I just find the subject fascinating, I think about sex education a fair amount.  Mostly I think about how much the sex ed I had, freshman year of high school, sucked.  It just sucked.  I went to a public, suburban high school, and even at age fifteen I was completely dismayed at the overt religious overtones of the “education” we received in this area.  Here are 3 highlights: Skit:  Two volunteer students stand on a...

This is pretty hilarious: The survey also revealed some serious gaps in the knowledge base of Americans following foreign policy. For example,  although 78 percent of respondents claimed to “closely” follow international affairs, an equal 78 percent said they had “never heard” of Ban Ki-moon when asked about him. When those surveyed were told that Ban was the secretary-general of the United Nations, 41 percent of respondents still had no idea who he was. It’s actually an interesting survey, done by the Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research Associates on behalf of the United Nations Foundation. It...

Al Jazeera with a pretty solid explanation of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Guess the other news channels were busy or something.

If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: David \”Yawny-Pants\” Brooks, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Maureen \”Refrigerator\” Dowd is off today, so today\’s has to be from Tawmy Frieds, who in his column \”No...