One of my new favorite blogs is Pharyngula. I have to be honest, I can’t remember who turned me on to it, but I love this stuff; and it’s even a local blog — a professor, of course. (I’m such a sucker for the academic.)
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A Top Undiscovered Reading Web Site
My first discovery from PC Magazine’s Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites: Verbotomy challenges you to create a word for a given definition.
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It's All Right Here
Oh, yeah. This one is going to nourish me for quite some time — as well as nourishing my Net Raker posts. Hot Soup in the Eye just posted a link to my former employer’s website — PC Magazine’s Top Web Sites 2007. The best part is the second list, the Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites. Well, phooey, they ain’t undiscovered now, huh?
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Microtrends
Mark J. Penn has an interesting Trendsurfing post today at Forbes.com, “The Critical 1%.”
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Finally, Maybe People Will Listen
New immigrations policies are hurting us all. Now they’re even jacking up wine prices.
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Who Has The "Wide Stance" Beat?
Not that it quite rivals the Wall Street Journal stealing a Pulitzer Prize out from under the local dailies’ nose with Bill McGuire’s United Health back-dating scam, but it’s a little embarrassing to miss a U.S. Senator — Larry Craig, aka “The Militia Senator” and “The Right and Honorable Senator of the Aryan Nation”, not to mention one of the far right’s High Priests of Gun Worship and Family Values — soliciting anonymous gay sex right there in our own airport.
WCCO TV’s Jason DeRusha over on MnSpeak.com offers this explanation why no one in town caught the Craig arrest back June or the court action earlier this month:
“1. Airport Police are a pain in the neck… and extremely secretive. Even yesterday, no one would come back to the office to send us the report or give us the mug shot. “They close at 4 p.m.” is what I was told.
“2. Because airport police is separate from Minneapolis Police, or the Sheriff’s office, media would have to go to the airport to request reports. The arrest information doesn’t leave their property, and as the charge was a minor charge, I don’t think it even went to the county attorney. It was like a ticket.
“3. No one locally would raise an eyebrow about a “disorderly conduct” at the airport for a guy named Larry Craig even if they saw the report’s front page.
“4. The plea deal at the courthouse happened the week after the bridge collapse. So the usual suspects who would have tipped someone off, were too busy with other things to even concentrate on this.
Someone nationally had to tip off Roll Call, the Capitol Hill Newspaper. That’s who broke the story.”
»» Submitted by »»» jderusha at 7:44 AM on August 28.
Earlier today I called the Star Tribune’s dogged Minneapolis reporter Rochelle Olson, surprised that she of all people hadn’t caught that one. “The name alone wouldn’t have meant anything to me,” she said. “Believe me, I wish I had. But I didn’t. Are you going to rip me?”
No. I’ve missed WAY too many good stories to lob stones over this, which as I say, isn’t quite on the same level as a billionaire ripping off shareholders and contributing to the outrageous cost of health care in this country. But since Olson has just about everything else in Minneapolis to cover, thanks to Avista/Par “right-sizing”, it is worth wondering aloud how maybe if the big paper did have more bodies working city government and cop beats, downtown and out with MAC, they might have had a source who would have tipped them to this particular “Larry Craig” flashing the card of a U.S. Senator after getting yanked out of toilet stall. A cop tipster was about the only way a local reporter would have gotten the story last June.
Meanwhile, I gotta ask, what gives with these guys? I mean Republican Congressman Mark Foley and the pages, McCain’s Florida guy Republican Bob Allen soliciting gay sex in a public restroom because he was frightened of black guys in the vicinity, uber-evangelical proselytizer Ted Haggard (wild guess — Republican) buying meth … meth! … and banging a gay body builder, Jeff Gannon credentialed by the White House as a reporter for Talon (virtual) press (wha?) and later revealed to have worked with a gay escort service, the chairman of the Clark County Republican Party out in Vegas fellating some kid while he slept, and now Larry “Wide Stance” Craig tapping feet in Minnesota, as well as Deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias and his romps with a D.C. escort service and Republican Louisiana Sen. David Vitter and the –female — hookers. (Do those last two guys get a pass for just nailing women?)
I mean, can we just agree that from this point forward any politician or evangelist who declares themselves pro-family values and makes a huge, vote-getting, money-making scene about ripping gay marriage decrying the slippery slope from gayness to turtle sex is in effect acknowledging both their own closeted homosexuality and an affinity for a little clandestine quick-and-dirty, probably in a noisy john, with meth and without?
It is so far beyond easy satire, Jon Stewart’s gotta be stumped.
By the way, check out these characters reenacting Sen. Wide Stance’s Lindbergh Terminal shtick.
Why didn’t Shelby and Vascellaro do this?
Also, Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a terrific “then and now” with right-wing bloggers and pundits excoriating, Mike Rogers, the guy who blogged about Wide Stance last October … and what they are saying today. His post comes with every imaginable link to all things Wide and Stancey.
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A Tip of the Hat
I just wanted to point out what might be one of the best blog headlines ever over at clothesline blog.
“Gonzales may have resigned — says he can’t recall”
To say anything else would be gilding the lily.
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You're invited: Szechuan Dinner With An Expert
When Jim Harkness, the new executive director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, dines at Little Szechuan in Saint Paul, he orders in Mandarin, and sometimes he throws in a Szechuan accent, just to mess with the waiters’ head. My Rake co-blogger and I will be having dinner with Jim this Sunday, September 2 at 7 p.m., and we would like to invite some Rake readers to join us. It’ll be a chance to learn more about the cuisine of Szechuan, and the work that Jim is doing with IATP. We’ll split the bill – we’ll try to keep in under $20 per person – – and you have to pay for your own wine and beer. Probably about half the dishes will be vegetarian or seafood. If you would like to join us, please email me at iggers@rakemag.com, no later than this Friday at noon.
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The Best Car You Can't Buy
The once again iconic Fiat 500I usually hate these articles in car magazines. However, there is a little car (accent on small) that is currently taking Italy by storm and threatens to topple the Mini, Peugeot, and everything else in its path once it is exported.
With this kind of success and with the resurgence of Fiat (now run by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the best CEO on the planet–from Ferrari), it may only be a matter of time before you see it here.*
The car is the much beloved Topolino/CinqueCento, now called the Nuova 500. This little thing makes women melt and men wish they had its mojo. It is so hot in Italy right now that they cannot even export it, so I hear. It is designed by Frank Stephenson (almost as cool as Luca), who previously penned the first generation Mini for BMW.
* You can’t buy this car, yet, but you can probably buy Fiat as an ADR on the NYSE. I did this with Toyota eighteen months ago and it has treated me well. So I recommend you buy the ADR, wait two years, and then allow your stock appreciation to pay for the car. Worth visiting the “Street” Rake, eh?
Mr. Montezemolo: a small picture of the biggest man in cars. -
Old Style, New Standards
If you haven’t already, check the photo shoot we did with members of the New Standards for our September issue. Not only does it provide a rare glimpse of the musicians’ doll-faced (and successful!) wives. But it’s also a hosanna, of sorts–our tribute to the gentlemen of yesteryear who, you know, wore fedoras and went through all that trouble of polishing their shoes.