This rant by Llewellyn Rockwell makes me curious: who was the last President to be booed while addressing Congress? I’d be surprised to hear that it has never happened, because the cult of the office was not so strong in the younger republic.

How can we remain competitive on the world stage without single payer health care?

I’ve just been looking over a meta-collection of verses in a peculiar form, and am inspired to compose one of my own:

Poet, tragedian,
William McGonagall
sang to a bridge o’er the
silvery Tay.

“Quit not thy day job,” said
fellow Dundonians.
“Polyprosodical
verse is outré.”

Twenty years ago I’d barely heard of cilantro; now it’s hard to avoid. (I’m in a hereditary minority afflicted with the ability to taste it.) When did cilantro replace parsley as the ubiquitous garnish?

An embarrassing cartoon of n guys with beards, glasses and hats not entirely unlike mine, babbling about the Singularity and stuff, in 1993. Heh. It’s a scene from The Guy I Almost Was, a story by one Patrick Farley, who probably wasn’t at Extropaganza.

I hear through Dad that the Russian Government is incensed at Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers. Why?

(There was a pause as Dad gave me time to guess. I had no idea.)

Because Gollum looks like Esteemed Comrade President Putin!

Learn new words from the (US) Dialect Survey Results. (I wish there were some factor analysis.)