Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

Oliver Willis engages on a one-man branding campaign for the Democratic Party. I think he’s really onto something here. The Dems have tried to be so many things to so many people for so long, the core message has gotten diluted. This is a good way to bring it back—combinations of evocation of famous Democrats [...]

Plastic: Papa Wemba Running A Congo Line. Seems that one of the finest musicians on the world stage has been using his fame to bring his countrymen into France illegally, charging them $4,500 a pop for the privilege. Decidedly uncool.

Lockergnome’s RSS Resource: If RSS is broken, why does PodCasting work?. A very good question, in my opinion, and one I’ve been asking ever since the RSS-is-broken meme crescendoed into the Atom (née Echo, née PIE) movement.
The answer: RSS isn’t broken. It may be clumsy for stating certain kinds of relationships, but it’s not broken. [...]

RSS in Government: Virginia Recognized for RSS Services. My home state won an award for its embrace of RSS on the Commonwealth’s official web site, with about 34 feeds (plus more on the way). The RSS 0.91 feeds appear to be auto-generated by the CMS system behind the site and have a few quirks—for one, [...]

Lisa’s folks are joining us at our house for Thanksgiving this year, and as the one with nothing else to do but a job search, I’m planning the menu. So far it’s pretty straightforward:

Appetizers:

Mixed nuts
Assorted cheeses
Cocktails

First course: light risotto
Main course:

Roast Turkey with Cider Sage Gravy (turkey cooked a la Alton Brown, assuming I can replace [...]

I feel bad about not posting anything after Virginia’s loss last week to Miami—after all, it was one of the few games all season that I watched from beginning to end. But this week’s win over Georgia Tech, which carries the Hoos into a three-way tie for ACC conference champion, lifted my spirits considerably. Makes [...]