Obama and Bernanke, take note.
No, it's not investment banking, nor the domestic automobile industry. Not even steel.
It's...here (scroll down to, and click on, the "Bloom County" panel).
...but not as much as the male, erm, members.
Air New Zealand, in an attempt to prove their fares have nothing to hide, present this video in which their airborne staff appear in nothing but body paint.
Nothing to hide. Hmm. Except that, apparently, at Air New Zealand, men have nipples but women don't. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Remember where you first saw this: Peter Cresswell chose not to share this with you, but I did.
(Hat tip: KiwiTexan Naomi, who loves pit bulls)
Robert Garmong on teaching non-traditional undergraduates:
Class discussions were often rambling but always fascinating. I assigned only very brief reading assignments summarizing philosophical theories — perhaps four pages per class. All of utilitarianism, for example, got only a couple of pages, written in the simplest possible terms. The students struggled with the philosophical terminology, but most of them made it through. Their books, issued by the state with stern warnings against damaging them, were always open, always dog-eared, and usually marked up. For the first time in my teaching career, several students asked me for extra readings and extra assignments. It was professor catnip!At the same time, they were an amazingly manipulative bunch, and they played my policies like poker hands. When a nasty flu outbreak sickened half of the prison's inmates, I let two clearly sick students leave class. Next class, after more than half of my students quietly disappeared before an hour had passed, I stood in the doorway to stop the attrition.
(Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily)
I really liked this one:
(Hat tip: Ari Armstrong)
Objectivist Round Up #103 is up at Rational Jenn. On this Independence Day, it might be particularly relevant to read and ponder Adama Reed's piece, "Sunk With the Tea." Food for thought there. I do wish the Tea Partiers well -- or most of them, anyway. But I think the whole movement, such as it is, is going to be easily co-opted by kooks and cranks and the various types of Republicans who have already helped trash this country's heritage -- and Adam's right, there's no need to participate in that, and every reason to avoid it.
Wow, somebody sounded really negative there, didn't he? Hmm, well I didn't really mean to. Today's a good day and will remain so, likely as not. And good reading at the Round Up!
An older piece on Independence Day and two of its creators.
Just for something to post on Independence Day: Ten Things to Love About America:
(I'll try to ignore the obvious (Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, Raquel Welch, Bill of Rights, jazz, Macs, universal franchise, Carl's Jr., rock and roll), and I'll try not to repeat anything I've written before)
1. Baseball -- in particular the Red Sox and the Dodgers, sure, but baseball in general. Hitting a ball with a stick is very, very hard -- so is it so surprising that baseball (and cricket) account for squillions of sports fans all over the world?
2. Bacon-wrapped hot dogs -- and Cajun cuisine and barbecue and all of American cuisine in general, whether anyone accepts the idea of "American cuisine" or not. So good they're illegal, the bacon-wrapped hot dog -- an L.A. specialty -- is http://www.laweekly.com/2008-02-07/eat-drink/the-hot-dog-so-good-it-sillegal/ illegal in L.A. But you can make them at home, as I do.
3. Bourbon -- start with Maker's Mark or
4. Pit bulls -- Than which. I am a German shepherd chauvinist of many decades' standing, but pit bulls are awesome dogs, and I look forward to many happy years with my little girl Scottie.
5. MITOpenCourseWare -- please, people, this is just awesome. Calculus? Linear algebra? You could, literally, get lost here, and never care. Berkeley and Stanford have great stuff online, too.
6. Bogart in Casablanca and The Big Sleep
7. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Ayn Rand, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Robert Frost.
8. Berlitz, Pimsleur, Michel Thomas -- All three language-learning methods began here -- coincidentally, all three began with French, I believe. Good stuff.
9. Diet Dr. Pepper. Need I say more?
10. Firefly.
It is in fact entirely appropriate in America to name a pit bull puppy after F. Scott Fitzgerald.