Miscellany/Linkage « A Progressive on the Prairie

Current books:

Seth Bullock: Black Hills Lawman by David A. Wolff

Recent books:

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker
The Virgin Warrior: The Life and Death of Joan of Arc by Larissa Juliet Taylor
Eternity Soup: Inside the Quest to End Aging by Greg Critser
Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr.
God’s Brain by Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire

Weekend Edition: 3-6

Bulletin Board

The latest developments on The Last Train from Hiroshima, which I reviewed last month, aren’t good. The publisher has pulled the book because the author wasn’t able to answer various concerns, including, according to the AP, “whether two men mentioned in the book actually existed.”

Blog Headlines of the Week

Q: Is it Really a [...]

Weekend Edition: 2-27

Bulletin Board

Looks like the author of The Last Train from Hiroshima, which I reviewed last month, got scammed by a faker. The phony information wasn’t discussed in my review.

Blog Headline of the Week

39% Of Bagged Salad Is Gross, Some Has Poop

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

Temple built 6,000 years before invention of writing suggests [...]

Weekend Edition: 2-20

Blog Headline of the Week

Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination (Via.)

Blog Line of the Week

Libraries can be confusing places — what with all those dern ideas and books and things. (Here’s more details on the kerfuffle of Michelle Obama’s socialist books in the White House.)

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

The Return [...]

Friday Follies 2.4

Insurance.com lists “Attorney/Judge” as the most dangerous driver by profession. And, it asks, “Why chase ambulances if you can bring them to you?” (Via.)

Stupid proposed state legislation of the week: A South Carolina legislator has introduced a bill to require the use of gold and silver coins as the legal tender of [...]

Weekend Edition 2-13

It must be the mid-February, I’m sick of winter effect. A very abbreviated edition this week.

Bulletin Board

I modified my post Monday on the “blogger bills” for an op-ed piece that ran Wednesday in my hometown newspaper, the Watertown Public Opinion.

Nonbookish Linkage

A man who had a major influence on my teens and twenties has died [...]

Friday Follies 2.3

When any state legislature meets, there’s some daft bills always appear. This week’s winner comes from Iowa, where first-term Rep. Jason Schultz has introduce legislation to make it an impeachable offense for a judge to use “judicial precedent, case law, penumbras, or international law as a basis for rulings.”

Canadian Supreme Court agrees that man [...]

Weekend Edition: 2-6

Bulletin Board

I said yesterday I wasn’t going to speak up on the so-called “blogger bills” but, so far, the debate seems to lose the forest for the trees. I’ll have a post Monday on why these bills shouldn’t pass.

I was pleased to see that Five Peace Band Live, my album of the year, won [...]

Friday Follies 2.2

Since Friday Follies deals with humorous or idiotic matters with some arguable tangential relationship to the law, I will point to citizen journalist Corey Heidelberger and three separate posts by the omnipresent PP on the folly of the South Dakota “blogger bills” (HB 1277 and HB 1278). I see no need to recreate the [...]

Weekend Edition: 1-30

Bulletin Board

I’m not surprised because it’s happened before. The National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for its annual awards last Saturday. As a member, I get to vote and, again, not a single book I voted for is on the list. Moreover, I haven’t read any of them. Once again, [...]

Friday Follies 2.1

Defamation suit over a Tweet dismissed because much of Twitter is “pointless babble.” Personally, I think courts could take judicial notice of that.

Jurors in a murder trial in Winnipeg, Manitoba, were sent home early “after the star witness . . . couldn’t stop vomiting while under cross-examination.” (Via.)

Gotta agree with this: “I didn’t know [...]