For a new pair of shoes? SAS gave all its employees a $1,000 bonus for each year they’d worked at a Maine factory. US company, US workers, and decent shoes, from what I understand…

Madonna endorses Clark.

She’s got great taste in chicks, why not trust her for president? Wonder if the Nuge is going to come public for GWB.

on our geekiness. The folks over at The Goat start their metareview of LotR:RotK with The first sentence of the Washington Post review reads:
“It may help if you know an orc from a Ringwraith or Aragorn from Gimli or Gandalf from Maiar.”

Gandalf is a Maiar. Thus, there is no difference between them as the sentence implies.

Wow. Just wow.

David Brooks in today’s NYT:

Dean is not a modern-day Woodrow Wilson. He is not a mushy idealist who dreams of a world government. Instead, he spoke of international institutions as if they were big versions of the National Governors Association, as places where pragmatic leaders can go to leverage their own resources and solve problems.

The world Dean described is largely devoid of grand conflicts or moral, cultural and ideological divides. It is a world without passionate nationalism, a world in which Europe and the United States are not riven by any serious cultural differences, in which sensible people from around the globe would find common solutions, if only Bush weren’t so unilateral.

At first, the Bush worldview seems far more airy-fairy and idealistic. The man talks about God, and good versus evil. But in reality, Dean is the more idealistic and naïve one. Bush at least recognizes the existence of intellectual and cultural conflict. He acknowledges that different value systems are incompatible.

In the world Dean describes, people, other than a few bizarre terrorists, would be working together if not for Bush. In the Dean worldview, all problems are matters of technique and negotiation.

Dip your CDs in beer, (let them dry off – duh,) and you’ll experience their familiar sounds in a whole new way.

The fungus had not ruined the disc – the original audio was still there – but it would sometimes change in pitch and there were small staccato noises in the background.

This bears remarkable similarity to my experience of dipping my brain in LSD and listening to CDs before it dried off.

From the first dog.# Includes cameo by Ari Fleischer, who apparently is evil in his NYY cap.

I’m going to have to get out of my head that Roger Clemens is evil if he decides to un-retire to play with Andy Pettitt in Houston. Although the biggest temptation thrown his way so far was a free Hummer he’s still holding out the possibility of playing downtown, and working out with his kid’s high-school team.

Now you can listen to the folks begging for cash do it drunk. NPR’s started its own label of wines. Sign up for monthly delivery!

I just can’t wait to hear Bob Edwards slur one morning “You know what Danny Shore? I like you. You’re a heck of a guy. I don’t care what Maura says. She can go get bent…”

The wine, BTW, is Californian, not French.