Events

Beloit College professors Tom McBride and Ron Nief annually compile a list of assumptions that first-years bring with them based solely on the year of their birth. It's fascinating: This month [August 2008], almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies...

I have a Daily Dilbert desk calendar. Here is today's strip: Had to share.

Despite my joking about the inconveniences an Obama Presidency will bring to us in Chicago, we really are ecstatic that our guy won. It's so good, even the New York Times has acknowledged it: In 1952, when an article in The New Yorker derisively referred to Chicago as the Second City, little offense was taken. It became a marketing pitch, with the thinking that second fiddle was far better than no fiddle at all. But that gawking, out-of-town amazement — gee, there really is a city here! — has long...

Via Krugman, Bernanke lolfed:

It seem as if Attorney General Michael Mukasey may have had a stroke during a speech this evening: The 67-year-old Mukasey was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, where his condition was not immediately known. Mukasey was delivering a speech to the Federalist Society at a Washington hotel when "he just started shaking and he collapsed," said Associate Attorney General Kevin O'Connor. "They're very concerned." Mukasey was 15 to 20 minutes into his speech about the Bush administration's...

First my U.S. Senator got elected President. Then he picked my Congressman to be his chief of staff. Now my state senator has gotten elected president of the Illinois Senate. Cool.

Missouri goes to McCain by 3,600 votes of 2.9 millions cast, ending the 2008 Presidential election and Missouri's streak of picking the winner. So, final tally, Obama 365, McCain 173. And that's the ball game. FYI: The electors transmit their ballots on December 15th, and then Vice President Cheney preside when the Senate counts them January 8th.

I must say, the new terminal at RDU looks great. I hardly believed I was in North Carolina. And the last time I was here, it was a red state. Now it's blue. Tempus fugit. Actually, I'm kind of sad I'm not staying longer. My host couldn't stay tonight (the S.O. is unewell) so I'm on my own until a 9:00 meeting tomorrow morning, about which more later, and after which I'm back on a plane to do work related to the trip for, like, ten days. Everything from this trip is due on December 1st. I could like...

Salon has a sublime ode to the "I can haz cheezburger" crowd: By now, even the most casual observers of the Internet are aware that lolcats have become a certifiable Internet phenomenon. Their flagship site, Icanhascheezburger.com, is one of Web 2.0's big success stories -- on track to top a billion page views this year -- and its content is entirely user-generated. Readers upload over 5,000 homegrown submissions every day, of which six or eight are posted on the site. And in October, the lolcats got...

MSNBC reports that convicted felon and Alaska Republican Ted Stevens has lost his Senate seat to never-indicted Mark Begich: Stevens' ouster on his 85th birthday marks an abrupt realignment in Alaska politics and will alter the power structure in the Senate, where he has served since the days of the Johnson administration while holding seats on some of the most influential committees in Congress. Tuesday's tally of just over 24,000 absentee and other ballots gave Begich 146,286, or 47.56 percent, to...