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The continuation of war by other means
Regular readers are aware of my fascination with all things North Korean. I check the Korean Central News Agency site almost every day, and just this morning found this gem: China Strives to Create Sound Social Atmosphere Beijing, February 20 (KCNA) — China intensified the campaign against yellow culture and illegal publications in order to […]
Nancy Nall sums it up perfectly: “It’s just as well that the weekend is coming, as I need to unplug from the internet and stop paying attention to politics for a while. I’m starting to feel that old sourness, the simmer I maintained from roughly 2004 through 2008 … no, through now, that pecked-to-death-by-ducks feeling.” […]
Positive bloggage fallout: a cousin I haven’t seen since the late 1950s discovered this site and established contact. Nice. Along the way my blog has helped me reconnect with former co-workers and school friends. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s always a pleasant surprise. There are other kinds of fallout. I blogged […]
Earlier today, as Schatzi and I emerged from the house for our morning constitutional, a raven lifted off from a palo verde tree across the street. It’s a windy day here in Tucson, so the raven was able to turn into the wind and hover, holding position a few feet away and slightly above us. […]
I make a dish called pasta puttanesca; literally, “whore’s spaghetti.” The sauce is made of olive oil, garlic, anchovies, chopped tomatoes, capers, basil, and perhaps a few olives, tossed into pasta. Last night, since I was about to sit down to watch President Obama deliver the annual State of the Union address to an assembly […]
I’m getting some hits over two previous posts (Gabrielle Giffords and Political Violence). As is often the case, the criticisms were emailed directly to me rather than left here as blog comments. Which ordinarily would mean you wouldn’t get to see them. It seems a bit like censorship to me, getting reasoned criticism from friends, […]
Two things. One, this post is going to go all over the map because I’m still in shock, angry and incoherent. Two, what I have to say is mostly personal, not meant to be a recap of news you’ve already heard elsewhere. We all know what happened in Tucson this Saturday was political. Politicians and […]
This is Sinterklaas, the Dutch Santa. Formerly the Archbishop of Turkey, Sint Nicolaas, Sinterklaas is shown with two of his Zwarte Pieten (there are six to eight Zwarte Pieten — “Black Petes” — originally Moorish slaves, but today more gently described as servants or even companions). Sinterklaas arrives in The Netherlands each November by steamboat […]