Until about five minutes ago, my least favorite candidate in this race was Hillary. Not any more:
Biden on Obama:
bq. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,� he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.� But—and the “but� was clearly inevitable—he doubts whether American [...]

Posted in Politics 3 Comments »

We order a lot of stuff online. Sometimes we get !!!EXXXTREEEM!!! !!!PACKAGING!!!.
p(imgcenter). !http://farm1.static.flickr.com/136/375421554_2772eb0e5d_m.jpg!:http://www.flickr.com/photos/thudfactor/sets/72157594510268802/
The above doesn’t look extreme. But “see the four-photo set”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/thudfactor/sets/72157594510268802/ to get a look at what was _inside_ this Office Depot box.

Posted in Commerce, Diary 4 Comments »

!(inset)http://www.thudfactor.com/images/tori.jpg!
Arrived today:
A Piano: The Collection, a Tori Amos box set from Rhino. I haven’t listened to it yet, but the package design seems to mimic the attitude of some of her later work — that is, I think it’s designed to infuriate.
The track listing is excellent, which is why I bought it. It’s a [...]

Posted in Art and Writing No Comments »

As “you recall”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2007/01/23/i-think-its-worth-mentioning/, Obama is a Baptist and he did not attend a madrasa. But this story has been more interesting than I originally thought. First, there’s the fact that the rumor was _originally_ traced to Senator Clinton. And then there’s the rather unusual spectacle of news agencies actually fact-checking the rumor mill. See the [...]

Posted in Politics, Speaking Very Slowly 10 Comments »

Via NotCot, here’s the 2007
Death and Taxes chart, showing how federal tax money is being spent. Here are three projects:

Find that conservative budget bugaboo the National Endowment for the Arts. Ponder how many more
V-22 Ospreys that money could buy.
Find a non-terminated goverment program that is funded less than the Office of Government Ethics. [...]

Posted in Politics No Comments »