Via DCist, I find a City Paper editor complaining that he “hates” the serial comma, which is house style at CP, for what strikes me as a truly bizarre reason: My argument against the comma is simple: It’s ungrammatical. Here at the copy desk, we hunt down and fix phrases such as “I ate tuna, […]

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Erstwhile roomie Glen raises a point I sort of dodged in the post below, partly because it was already way too long, partly because I’m not sure what the right thing to say is. What I suggested was that there’s a tension between the idea that it’s counterproductive to shame or judge young prospective mothers […]

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Things are not looking up for very-sharp-blogger Gary Farber; if you can afford to help him out a little directly, or if you know of some writing/editing work he can do telecommuting, please swing by and give the guy a hand.

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Jill at Feministe has a long post about a recent Hoover study on obesity and food stamps. I haven’t read the study, nor do I particularly care to, so I don’t want to get into its merits or demerits. (Though, as an aside, does “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer” seem […]

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The Washington Post Times reports on the few remaining places it’s legal to grab a smoke in the district—including, it’s nice to see, a few hookah bars in my vicinity. I note, however, this explanation for the exemption from council quisling Jim Graham: There is an element of consent so much greater if you’re going […]

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A Slashdot contributor editorializes about a survey purporting to show that, all the sound and fury notwithstanding, offshoring has not been a net source of job loss in the tech sector: The article quotes the executive director of the SIIA as saying, ‘[Offshoring] was used almost entirely as a form of expansion, not as a […]

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My neighbor Heather reports from India on all the goodwill our democracy-spreading efforts in Iraq are generating. Remember, if we make everyone despise us everywhere else, we won’t have to fight them over here. Or something.

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Network Performance Daily has an interview with Chris Yoo, probably the leading academic opponent of Net Neutrality legislation.

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In theory, at least. Bill O’Reilly and Stephen Cobert will mix it up, each hosting appearing on the other’s show, on the 18th.

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Via Liz at Yellow is the Color, schools are apparently now sending home “obesity report cards,” I suppose on the premise that our culture is insufficiently weight-obsessed as it stands, and that parents lack the expertise necessary to detect whether their kids are getting fat.

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