A GROWING NEED FOR A PROGRAM ONCE SCORNED Greg Dawson and his wife, Sheila, of Martinsville, Ohio, help feed their family of seven with a $300 monthly food stamp benefit. Center and right, the food pantry in Lebanon, Ohio, where residents can also enroll in what is formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. More Photos >
By JASON DePARLE and ROBERT GEBELOFF
Published: November 28, 2009

MARTINSVILLE, Ohio — With food stamp use at record highs and climbing every month, a program once scorned as a failed welfare scheme now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. More

Kuma’s Corner is known for long waits (no reservations) and for its long list of burgers.
By PETER MEEHAN
Published: November 29, 2009

PAUL KAHAN is one of Chicago’s best chefs, and his restaurants are reliable bellwethers for what’s going on in the city’s dining scene. When Blackbird, his first restaurant, opened 12 years ago, it presaged Chicago’s rebirth as one of the planet’s most dynamic restaurant cities — a promise fulfilled by restaurants like Alinea, Schwa and L20. Mr. Kahan followed Blackbird with Avec and the Publican, restaurants that are less formal, better suited to a city that needed less pomp and polish to go with good food. More

Looks like we've got Bin Laden trapped--Ooh! Iraq is shiny!

Thanx to Oliver Willis

Swiss right-wingers find minarets offensively symbolic

Thanx to Oliver Willis

What we can learn from the Toilet Twilight series

Thanx to Amie Rose Rotruck on Facebook.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DilbertDailyStrip/~3/23F8RlqsM7Y/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-29/

http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/greyhounds.asp

Unlike many of the people I know, I am not at Loscon, nor at OryCon, or even at SorcerorCon going on in its small way just a few miles from me. I'm taking the weekend off because I need the rest and because starting next Friday I start my five weeks on the road in Austin, Columbus, and Mehama.

My thoughts are with everyone I know who is at one of those conventions, and I hope y'all are having fun. But my body is here at home and I'm getting extra sleep, which I need rather urgently.

Current Mood: relaxed

But it looks like it's in a shop somewhere to me.
( Pic not safe for work (or life) )

Found here

Mike Brown has a paper he'd like you to look at.

“The size, density, and formation of the Orcus-Vanth system in the Kuiper belt.”

[Since when did Dreadstar star getting worlds named after him?]

Cheney for President

Nader for Senate

Does the horror never end?

Thanx to paft and jblaque

We lost our cable tv around 2 pm (we still get the guide, but instead of programming, there's a message saying that the "channel should be available shortly." Comcast says not to worry*. They are working on the problem and expect to have it resolved in 6 to 24 hours. And have I tried watching fancast.com?

Of course, now my internet connection (also provided by comcast) is sketchy at best and threating to go out entirely. I'll be pleasantly surprised if I can post this entry.

Fortunately, I have dvds, cds, and books. And a generator if the electricity fails in solidarity.


*Literally and repeatedly. I think their live chat support is a bot. It seemed to engage in conversation slightly below the level of Racter.

Originally posted to http://batwrangler.dreamwidth.org/ -- comments welcome wherever you are reading this.

But many of them are pretty.

nicked from badgerbag

Enough with the gratuitous fan-service already.

If I wanted to read more analysis and commentary on manga, what sites should I be reading?

Guys! There are wonderful things up for auction to raise money for the Interstitial Arts Foundation. New stuff goes up every day; auctions end every day. I'm doing some Christmas shopping there. (Beats the mall! Especially this weekend.)

One of the items currently up is one of Laramie Sasseville's art bookmarks. I got one of these in another charity auction and it's so gorgeous I use it as house jewelry rather than a bookmark. It's wrapped around one of the newel posts on the stairway so that it's one of the first things you see when you come in my house!

I have also just bid on this skirt which is gorgeous and size adjustable, either by you or the original maker.

And here I go cutting me own throat, the piece I most want is Freddie Baer's necklace. The bidding ON THIS PIECE ends at 5:11 pm today, but I don't know what time zone that's in.

There is so much wonderful stuff up. Kate Schaefer's cocktail hat - Kate's hats are really wonderful and she's offered a donation to match the size of the winning bid. Which is currently only $52 - do you have *any* idea what you'd pay for a hat like that in some chi-chi store? That really cool bracelet with the moon. Some beautiful earrings.

Dudes - GO SHOPPING!

Shamelessly stolen from tor.com

I like long weekends, except they get me confused. All day yesterday I kept thinking it was Sunday, because it was the 2nd day of my weekend. Oh but no, I have 2 more days of weekend goodness, which I'm digging, especially considering the week ahead at work that I'll have.

Thanksgiving with sillysarasue and Keith, and another couple they are friends with was a lot of fun. Great food, great conversation. Sara's apple pie was freaking ridiculously good. Yesterday I did not go shopping. There's no sale good enough to get me to hit the stores the day after Thanksgiving. Maybe if the sale was 90% off. But 60% - no way. I can get that after Christmas at the after Christmas sales. I'm so sick of the message of shop shop shop shop shop.

I went to TRF with schnookiemuffin. We left around 9, got there just before noon. Walked around, ate fair food, looked in a lot of stores. Didn't buy anything. Joy was getting a little tired of all the people, so we left at 4 and got to her house just before 7. I then went home and stayed up until 3 reading a new Sophie Kinsella book.

And since I went to bed so late, I of course got up at 8:30 this morning. Charlie helped by kecking up a furball and Ginger wanted to be brushed. I popped over to spielmadchen's house to make sure her cats had food and water, then hit up Elsi's for breakfast. Am now for the time being at Genuine Joe's, having paid all my bills and such.

I don't know what I will do with the rest of the day, the rest of the weekend. Maybe go see a movie, maybe not. I'm feeling the apathy. I could go home and watch football and work on Christmas crochet, I really need to get a handle on that. I'm scaling way back this year.

I could also finish the book I'm working on, since I'm enjoying it, and it's an easy read.

Post-Thanksgiving apathy has set in.

Aria (gondoliers on a massively terraformed Mars) or Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (A robot runs a teahouse in a largely empty Japan after what seems to have been a very low key The End of the World as We Know It)?

I should cite Aria the next time the Comparatively Utopian Settings Problem (CUSP) comes up. Although I suppose there's a large fraction of readers who would find the pace at which nothing really happens in Aria excruciating.

Not that Aria is supposed to be hard SF but would giving the place a 1 bar atmosphere like Earth's and covering almost all of the planet with oceans provide enough to provide enough of a greenhouse effect to keep the world warm or would we need to fiddle with the atmospheric composition as well?

Poll #1491510
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 114

Are the Japanese as a whole more tolerant of cute than people in Canada and the USA?