Clever, or harmful?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/books/review/Bellafante-t.html

I had pants on when I came in, right?

http://proof.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/22/really-its-the-booze-talking/

It's almost over

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/101904.html

American women, Saudi women

http://jezebel.com/5111365/what-american-women-can-and-cannot-do

http://americanbedu.com/2008/12/15/what-saudi-women-can-and-cannot-do/

A kinder, gentler nation

http://gawker.com/5110161/adorable-vp-adopts-adorable-puppy

It's all over but the shouting

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/11/powell-gop-polarization-backfired-in-election/

oh boy

http://jezebel.com/5106308/abortion-opponents-attack-planned-parenthoods-piggybank

an issue of our time

http://www.amazon.com/How-Break-Terrorist-Interrogators-Brutality/dp/1416573151/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228796731&sr=8-1

To be fair, I haven't read it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/dec/04/twilight-film-vampire

I don't want a diamond. Anything. Ever.

"I think the most depressing part of this advertising blitz around every gift-giving opportunity is that a lot of people live their lives in this way, where women’s compliance is bought off by a false pretense that women have power and a lot of shiny baubles."

http://jezebel.com/5103700/around-the-holidays--diamonds-are-a-girls-most-annoying-friend

http://www.freshyarn.com/1/essays/soloway_diamonds.htm

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond

Amen

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/opinion/06ayers.html?em

This looks really good.

http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Be-Frightened-Julian-Barnes/dp/0307269639/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1228536794&sr=8-1

"Bumper stickers and fridge magnets remind us that Life Is Not a Rehearsal. We encourage one another towards the secular modern heaven of self-fulfillment: the development of the personality, the relationships which help define us, the status-giving job, the material goods, the ownership of property, the foreign holidays, the acquisition of savings, the accumulation of sexual exploits, the visits to the gym, the consumption of culture. It all adds up to happiness, doesn't it -- doesn't it? This is our chosen myth, and almost as much of a delusion as the myth that insisted on fulfillment and rapture when the last trump sounded and the graves were flung open, when the healed and perfected souls joined in the community of saints and angels. But if life is viewed as a rehearsal, or a preparation, or an anteroom, or whichever metaphor we choose, but at any rate as something contingent, something dependent on a greater reality elsewhere, then it becomes at the same time less valuable and more serious. Those parts of the world where religion has drained away and there is a general acknowledgment that this short stretch of time is all we have, are not, on the whole, more serious places than those where heads are still jerked by the cathedral's bell or the minaret's muezzin. On the whole, they yield to a frenetic materialism; although the ingenious human animal is well capable of constructing civilizations where religion coexists with frenetic materialism (where the former might even be an emetic consequence of the latter): witness America."

Suck it, NRA

http://www.alternet.org/rights/109841/untold_story_of_election_2008:_the_death_of_the_nra/

10 gone from each side? An interesting thought experiment...

http://www.thedailybanter.com/tdb/2008/11/10-people-who-need-to-go-away.html

http://www.thedailybanter.com/tdb/2008/12/10-democrats-who-should-go-away.html

Simon Dumenco is a huge idiot who should do us all a favor and take his sense of self-entitlement and throw it off a cliff. Jerk.

http://men.style.com/details/blogs/details/2008/11/post-1.html?mbid=typepad

It's all about the benjamins

http://www.reason.com/news/show/129216.html

Sigh

http://jezebel.com/5100793/roe-vs-world

Beauty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9OUEokWR7A

I'll take it.

http://adage.com/mediaworks/article?article_id=132876