VIA: Tuesday, December 16 (UPDATED)

VIA Indexed: Time to look busy.

Ancient precursors of "distance learning." The "Draw Me" Schools Of Commercial Art
• Fools rush in where fools have been before: How I Got Screwed by Bernie Madoff

• On addiction: Ars Psychiatrica: Strung Out

• If we were as "multi-cultural" in 1989 as we are today Salman Rushdie would have had his head cut off.

• Smoking green. WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THERE'S SPINACH. [VIA: David Thompson ]

• Donald Sensing's Moment of Clarity"Jesus, it's your automobile."

• "Honey, what's that in the garage?" Subdivision Wildlife wants your urban and suburban wildlife pictures.

• A sharp photoessay by Jules Crittenden on The Battle of the Bulge which began 64 years ago today.

• The O-Kennedy Plot:

  Caroline gave Obama her endorsement for a quid pro quo, that payoff being the Senate seat. To clear that particular deck Obama had to proffer Hillary the SecState role, which, given the stage she loves to strut upon, she could not refuse. Now Obama has a beholden Camelot ally in the New York Senate seat, and he may, at any time after 18 months, grimly unfold his Hillary Clinton dossier, stamp FAIL upon her forehead, and summarily fire her ass with extreme prejudice, never to be pestered by the uppity bitch again. I wouldn't bet my firstborn upon such a scenario, but I'd bet a dog. - Velociworld: Distaff Politics: The Harkening

• VIA lines and colors - American Impressionism from the Phillips Collection

• On that gutless Iraqi reporter:

  Real courage would have been to throw shoes at Saddam; or even to return to Cairo and throw something at a Mubarak during a public event. That would take singular courage and establish the integrity of the journalist as a consistent critic of authoritarianism and might additionally earn you a noose rather than accolades on Arab websites. -Works and Days ｻ Lala Land

• A Formal Debate. It's On. Dave Schuler takes the negative side. Dr. Bernard Finel, senior fellow at the American Security Project takes the affirmative.Resolved: that the United States should disengage from the Middle East. Dr. Finel goes first with Pulling Out: Debating Middle East Disengagement (Affirmative)

• The creepy question, Are Five-Second TV Spots The Future? is the same as asking "Are 60 commercials every commercial break the future?"

• Assistant Village Idiot: Power Outage II

  Class envy reared its ugly head the night the power went out. The people next door and behind us were unaffected at first, and I watched resentfully from the porch as they watched their TV's.

• Smells Like Teen Lincoln Spirit: Obama To Journey To Washington Inaugural Via Train

• Mark Bauerlein asksIs Tenure Doomed? Please let it be so.

• Why TV news is boring:

  It is obvious that most of the major stories are brought to light through blog posts about three days before the big mainstream news outlets get around to telling the public what is going on. -Chicago Boyz ｻ Blog Archive ｻ The Death of TV
  

• Cosmos magazine sees that Sarcasm useful for detecting dementia

  "What did you expect to see out of a Torquay hotel bedroom window? Sydney Opera House perhaps? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically...?"

• Best blog title since forever: Fuck You, Penguin: A blog where I tell cute animals what's what. VIA: Rachel Lucas

• Sucking up the gravy:

  By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. -- .: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :. [VIA: neo-neocon - Mind change on climate change? ]

• Brutally Honest: How does hopping around the globe help the poor?

• Big Transistions Mean Big Government:

  After the Imperial Campaign -- that two-year extravaganza of bread and circuses (and money) -- comes the Imperial Transition. Everything in these last weeks, like the preceding two years, has been bulked up, like Schwarzenegger's Conanesque pecs. In other words, since November 5th, what we've been experiencing in the midst of one of the true crisis periods in our history has essentially been an unending celebration of super-sized government. Consider it an introduction to what will surely be the next Imperial Presidency. -Tomgram: Transition Mania

• Prometheus says Be careful what you wish for. "It appears that the auto industry may be aided by government with one hand and then hit over the head with the other."

• Head Idiot of Book Publishing Thinks They're All Smart:

  Yes, we're a group of smart, ultracompetitive people, but lately, for reasons of both season and economy, we're up against each other in “combat” far less frequently. And when we meet up—at the NBA, or the Mercantile Library awards or at a memorial service for Robert Giroux—we're all the walking wounded. The Biz Is Alright - 12/15/2008 - Publishers Weekly

  1) If they were smart they wouldn't be broke. 2) They're all girls. Even the boys.

• The Sleep Diet: Snorers 'burn more calories at rest than non-snorers' - Telegraph

• Would you hit this thing for $60 million? No? How about $70 million? Liar!

  Ritchie would be receiving between 60 and 70 million dollars in cash and property which included the couple's country retreat Ashcombe House in Wiltshire. Maybe Guy Ritchie and Heather Mills Should Compare Notes at Deceiver.com

  [Fess up. You'd hit it for free just to say you'd been there.]