Okay, so I stole this idea was CoverSpy, but I’m going to start posting (along with my usual other stuff) the covers of books I see random people reading, along with descriptions of those individuals. (5 Mar 2010, 1732, Epoch Coffee: Male, 20s, White Polo with Navy Slacks. Glasses. Short Blond Hair. Sitting Alone at [...]

What You Missed If You Didn’t Read Today’s The New York Times 1. Read about the guy who used a park bench as shelter during Hurricane Ike. And this guy: Southwest of Galveston, officers said that one man from Surfside Beach was the only resident who did not evacuate the highly damaged area. He was [...]

This is a great read.

How would you do on Texas’ eighth-grade science test? Give it a shot. I got 44 out of 50 correct. Post your score below. Also, to my surprise, one of my friends, Krissi Trumeter, criticized my old college friend, Sofia Resnick’s, recent article in the Austin Chronicle. What’s surprising is that they don’t know one [...]

So, W. Thomas Smith, Jr., who criticized me for a post I made earlier this year by declaring his holier-than-thou reporting and fact-checking methods, seems to have run into quite a bit of trouble himself over his “reporting” in the Middle East. The story is all over the Web, but the Columbia Journalism Review blog [...]

What you missed if you didn’t read today’s The New York Times: In a story detailing problems with the Bush administration push for Medicare enrollees to utilize private plans for the new drug benefit comes this nugget: In March, Sierra Health Services ended drug coverage for more than 2,300 Medicare beneficiaries with H.I.V./AIDS, saying they [...]

Samantha Power, of “A Problem from Hell:” America and the Age of Genocide fame, an insightful book studying America’s indifference to various genocides throughout the 20th Century, had a great book review in last Sunday’s The New York Times. While I started reading her review just because I respected her and wanted to read her [...]

This is the title poem in one of Vikram Seth’s books of poetry. I found it while randomly “surfing” books at my high school library — quite a few years ago now. It’s still probably my favorite poem. All You Who Sleep Tonight All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No [...]

Okay, so here’s where my writing nerdiness comes out. (Even if you can’t tell from the quality of my writing on this blog.) Off the Kuff has a post discussing his belief that “they” and “their” should be accepted as valid, gender-neutral forms of singular pronouns. In responding to grammarians’ dislike of such a proposal, [...]

I received this e-mail from the Fort Hood Post Exchange (PX) earlier this week: BOOK SIGNING JENNA BUSH COMING SOON TO THE CLEAR CREEK PX JENNA WILL BE AT THE PX SIGNING HER NEW BOOK: “ANA’S STORY” JENNA BUSH BIO: Jenna Bush is the daughter of President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush. She [...]