pbump

January 20, 1992, was a good day. So Ice Cube wrote a song about it.

Via @cordjefferson. [ Also from @cordjefferson. ]

The Nevada GOP will tweet caucus results as they come in. Smart - and savvy.

The grandson of a guy who was President before Lincoln thinks Gingrich is a "big jerk."

Via @mollyesque. [ Also from @mollyesque. ]

The personality traits of members of a SWAT team.

At some point, I think we can expect a book and/or movie about this guy.

For a sense of the scale of a wind turbine, see the eighth photo.

"Our New Age," science fiction and futurism on late 1950s funny pages.

A map of the weather on the morning of June 6, 1944.

Via @capitalweather. [ Also from @capitalweather. ]

I'd be just fine with Flash chewing up 20% of my processor, but censoreded if I know what it's doing with it.

Times headline: "Winter Jam Canceled Due to Lack of Winter"

The time the KKK played the Knights of Columbus in basketball at the Masonic Auditorium to benefit the Jewish Relief Fund.

Via @stevesilberman. [ Also from @stevesilberman. ]

I once wondered why Google Maps showed a jeweler in the Pentagon. Apparently, the thing basically contains an entire mall.

Renewables are at a point that they're cost-competitive with fossil fuels even without subsidy.

Pretty smart to send your drugs using UN diplomatic pouches - until they're delivered to the UN.

Via @antderosa. [ Also from @antderosa. ]

A brief history of emergent love on public transit.

Associates of Ron Paul say that he was hands-on with the newsletters, "signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day."

Via @tpm. [ Also from @tpm. ]

A dog park, from the vantage of a dog-mounted camera.

Via @yo_stellar. [ Also from @yo_stellar. ]

Politicians in Poland express their unhappiness with ACTA by donning Anonymous / Guy Fawkes masks.

As she flew back to Washington from Dallas, Kennedy's secretary wrote a list of suspects. Guess who was first.

A 16 year-old successfully petitions to have a prayer removed from the wall of her school. This doesn't make her popular.

At 4:15, we were awakened when our neighbor chose to ignore his alarm clock.

At 5:20, we were awakened by screams.

Fear and confusion is a bad way to wake up. We blinked, listening, hearts racing. We looked outside. A house behind ours had lights on in a second floor room; someone in it ran toward the front of the house. On the first floor, a dim orange light flicked off. An untranslatable clunking, a few more screams.

The tranquil tedium of morning is shaken off and we're at our posts. Me, at the back door, which I lock with urgency if I step away. My wife at the window, holding the shade to the side rather than lifting it. This is the house with Sparky, a dog that likes to bark at ours - the sum total of what we know about it. Quiet conversation, do we call the police?, has someone already? More screams. A booming voice from next door to us: the police are on their way. We text our upstairs neighbor. We fret. We check our locks. Finally, after way too long, the deep groan of a DC cop car and the paint on the houses outside flickering red.

A siren is the sound of tragedy brushing against your life, tragedy we usually don't see. But sometimes the background characters in our lives move front and center, performing brief dramas, receding. There are years of maneuvering and conflict and love that propel everyone forward and into conflict, which we forget. We only know our own paths; to us, these moments of tension and furor are bizarre, as though Rosencrantz and Guildenstern began a fistfight in the audience. Then the actors move forward again, altered, as do we.

When we earlier called the police, the dispatcher simultaneously received another call from the house itself. A "family matter" - to us, a relief. The matter unresolved, the drama subsided, that family and Sparky fell again into the background of our lives. We and the neighbor that yelled and the cops and the ambulance driver and God knows whoever else stayed quietly in the background of theirs.

At 7:30, we were awakened by rain. The tedium was back, if not entirely the tranquillity.

Dustin Richardson has set a new baseball record, earning a 50-game suspension in the process.

Stork Nest Farm, in the Czech Republic.

The Gingrich SuperPAC has another trailer up, with accusations about a company associated with Romney and Medicare fraud.

Slick production values play a role in making it easier to believe.

"The blind trust is an age-old ruse." Mitt Romney, 1994.

Via @thinkprogress. [ Also from @thinkprogress. ]

The most and least literate cities in America. Bottom five are in Texas or in California's Central Valley.

I look forward to the next CNN debate: two hours of melodramatic b-roll and voiceover, followed by letter grades.

There's something about a mass-produced placard reading "Don't believe the liberal media!" that's disconcerting. That word "believe," the choice-making involved in that. This organization reminds you not to believe certain things.

The liberal media is Eastasia. It's the Times, of course, but today, also Drudge. Which is insane. Insane! Drudge? If the facts don't comport, or if there's disagreement, it's imperative: don't believe.

This is fascinating. Go ahead. Type. Anywhere.

Via @cordjefferson. [ Also from @cordjefferson. ]

There appears to be a correlation between being racist or prejudiced and being dumb.

Via @drgrist. [ Also from @drgrist. ]