Bob Herbert's Last NY Times Column

Losing Our Way
By BOB HERBERT
Published: March 25, 2011

So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life here at home. More

Geraldine Ferraro Dies at 75

Geraldine Ferraro, First Woman Vice Presidential Candidate on a Major Party Ticket, Has Died at Age 75 [12:07 p.m. ET]

cAN hAZ rICE cOOKER iNSTRUCTIONS

Today I downloaded and printed the instructions to the rice cooker. It's used at the table to cook beef for spring rolls, but the instructions are long gone. The two-minute heating cycle we get it in is a bit too short for heating the beer and cider, let alone cook the beef. It has spent its life cooking rice, and it does that pretty automatically.

hUGO nOMINATIONS

cAN hAZ! Hurry, deadline fast approaching... Link: http://hugos.renovationsf.org/nominations.php

Recessions

How the Government Dealt with Past Recessions
Ye ghods, every ~ten years? And we can't fix it?

NY Times Firewall

The Time's firewall goes up on Monday. I ustta get the paper edition, and the last time they firewalled their editorial and op-ed writers, I had access. I obviously steal borrow and link to a lot of their articles. Because I'm cheap On principles, I don't want to pay. OTOH, there's going to be severe withdrawal going on.

Once Upon a Time...

I had a journalism teacher whose pet peeve was that "pass away" does not belong in the news business. People do not pass away. They die. In the paid obit, they may saunter off beyond the rainbow, or shuffle off this mortal coil, but in the goddamned newspaper they goddamned died. These days I see more and more euphemisms. It's too bad that my journalism teacher o' old ain't dead yet, so she can't roll in her grave...

On the other hand, you people out there, stop dying.