Epistemographer

Spent yesterday doing the traditional Christmas festivities: chinese food and a movie, natch! The movie was a particularly appropriate one, The Hebrew Hammer (tagline: “He’s the baaaadest Heeb this side of Tel Aviv”). It’s been billed as a sort of Shaft for Jews, which is appropriate not just in its appropriation of its riffs on [...]

Happy Holidays to all…I’m down in Florida, adjusting to wearing shorts and sandals while I get some reading done by the pool. Sometime in the next few days, we’ll get a wireless network set up at my father’s place, and then I’ll barely have to come inside at all!
In the meantime, dissertation work proceeds apace [...]

I’ve been wanting to delve more into foodie blogs, and in my first excursion into that world I came across Fuck Corporate Groceries, a Chicago-area blog with a singular mission:
…so i decided to spend the next [while] not shopping at corporate grocery stores, living instead on food purchased at neighborhood places. i figure this way [...]

Via Wired News:
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by the recording industry to compel the nation’s Internet providers to turn over names of subscribers suspected of illegally swapping music online.
The ruling from a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a dramatic setback [...]

Spend a few hours tonight at a positively cutthroat game of holiday bingo organized by my friend Elisa. The drill was straight-up bingo, where every time you won you got to choose from a pile of presents brought by participants or, if you weren’t really feeling the whole 10th commandment thing, steal a gift that [...]

Chapters 2 & 3 are in the mail (well, e-mail) to advisors. It’s funny – I know they’re not perfect and need a little more work, but there’s still the same sense of satisfaction when I actually have something good enough to send. Now, here’s hoping that my judgment’s not totally off, and that they [...]

Wicked cool wiki (if you’ve never heard of a wiki, here’s more info) – this one’s being used to build a database of restaurant reviews in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and elsewhere…

Non-Widescreen Version Of DVD Received As Hanukkah Gift
Bernie spoke in reference to last year, when the Greenbergs came close to finding a gift Rosenstein would like. The misguided couple gave their nephew the theatrical-release version of Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, instead of the extended version which contains 40 extra minutes [...]

So, Jenny and I are leaving today’s taping of The Daily Show (we were supposed to go a few weeks ago, but wound up too far back in line and had to reschedule our tickets), and as we’re walking out, this absolutely beautiful version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow comes over the studio speaker system [...]

A newspaper story:
Flags are still flying along the neat blocks of bungalows on the border of Cleveland and Euclid. Shops still carry signs urging all who pass to “support our troops.”
And for the moment, at least, George Bush seems to be a part of the patriotic tableau, an ominous sign for the Democrats. Even some [...]