ICELAND

WheelTug picked up its eleventh airline yesterday — Icelandair.  I know the Arctic is not technically a continent — just frozen water — and that probably the folks at the Iceland Tourism Department would rather identify their country with Europe than with the Arctic anyway. But if the Arctic were the eighth continent, […]

RELIGION

Tamara Hendrickson (responding to yesterday’s post):  “My mom has a bumper sticker that says ‘Proud Member of the Religious Left.’  I’ve always loved it.”

☞ Blessed are the meek.  Turn the other cheek.  Love thy neighbor.  Judge not lest ye be judged.  Cut taxes on billionaires.  Cut Medicaid.  Bomb Iraq.  Increase corporate […]

THANK YOU, GROVER NORQUIST

Following up from yesterday, may I say one more thing about Grover Norquist?

Things were pretty good in the Nineties: low unemployment and an economy pretty much in balance, with everyone getting richer and our National Debt shrinking relative to the size of the economy as a whole.

But […]

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

Twenty-three thrilling minutes from Amory Lovins.

Ultra-lighting saves half the weight and half the fuel – like finding a Saudi Arabia under Detroit. And the stuff absorbs 12 times as much crash energy per pound as steel, so our lighter vehicles would also be safer. The efficiencies in car-making would make […]

SHUCK-A-KHAN

Sarah Johnson: “Maybe this is yet more proof I’m not a guy! My shucking method is as follows (works on ALL shellfish): Locate MetroCard, go to Grand Central Station and walk down the ramp to the Oyster Bar. Sit at marble counter and order. Eat when shucked shellfish arrives. Added benefit? I get […]

DON’T ASK/DON’T TELL

What a disappointment to fall just shy of the 60 required votes. But with the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the House of Representatives, a majority in the Senate, 64% of the Republican electorate and 80% of Democrats all favoring repeal – and […]

DEMOCRATS.ORG

Check out the revamped democrats.org, launched yesterday. There’s a lot there, including links to articles like this encouraging report from Time on the stimulus:

. . . Yes, the stimulus has cut taxes for 95% of working Americans, bailed out every state, hustled record amounts of unemployment benefits and other […]

SAVE INK

Who’d a thunk. According to these tips, some fonts – like Ecofont– use a lot less ink than others. (Try Century Gothic?) Using readability to print web pages will save the expensive color ink required to print ads you probably didn’t want to print anyway.

THE BEEP

AARP […]

EAT LESS MEAT

Manish Bhatia: “I read a lot about the actions that we all need to take to reduce the impact of global warming (and avoid it – if we are not already too late!). You have advocated efficient light bulbs, solar energy, hypermiling, and myriad other things. The one thing I […]

Last week I missed a day, ostensibly to eggnog.

Richard Theriault: “Eggnog is the best of reasons. None other is required. William Rainey Harper, first president of the University of Chicago, drank a quart of it every day with his lunch (and though it was a Baptist school, it did contain rum or brandy; I […]