I see that a “former Bolivian president” (BBC) / “ex-Bolivian dictator” (CNN) / “former Bolivian leader” (Nando) has died. What kind of dictator did he become when he retired from being Bolivian? Why do you never see “Bolivian ex-dictator” (or “British former prime minister”) in the news? Hm, maybe Ex-Bolivia and Former Britain are different countries . . . .

LATER: I was delighted when it was briefly bandied about in 2004 that India might get a former Italian prime minister: Sonia Gandhi, Italian-born widow of Rajiv.

The Fighting Illini need a new mascot. Any suggestions?

If I only had a paycheck! Television’s best spy series ever is now on DVD. (Thanks to Jim Henley for the tip.)

Review of a German book which “tries to show that many of the obscurities of the Koran disappear if we read certain words as being Syriac and not Arabic.”

There’s a man in my neighborhood who has batwings tattooed around his eyes, a crown of thorns on his forehead, demons and such covering both arms . . . . He was in the Kwik-E-Mart just now, wearing Pikachu slippers.

It occurs to me that I ought to be logging not only the good stuff I find for the first time but also the sites to which I return periodically. So. Sites of the last few days. (Most of these are serials, and my bookmarks point to a specific date in the archives; for you I stripped the link down to a front page.)

Steve Jackson Games Illuminated Site of the Week. Some are satirical, some are genuinely loony. Warp 9 to Hell, a tasteless comic strip. Snail Dust, an introvert’s college strip, named for a shape-changing character that grew from the dust behind a computer. Science News (the magazine, which I also get in hardcopy). Bizarro, the surreal newspaper toon; painfully slow loading. Zortic, a silly space adventure strip. Alice, a strip about a middle-school girl with Calvin’s imagination. The Straight Dope. Astronomy Picture of the Day. The Periodic Table: Michael Swanwick (author of Vacuum Flowers, which I loved, and The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, which I did not love) is writing a short-short story for each element, in order. No Outlet, a deadpan philosophical college roommates strip. The Geometry Junkyard: Recent Additions. Plokta fannish news. How Stuff Works: Articles of the Day. Dirty Old Men’s Association International. White House in Orbit, a retro-scifi secret agent strip. Ron Paul’s weekly column.

Petition to Rename The Two Towers to Something Less Offensive. (Thanks and a tip of the whatsit to Astraea for the link.)