Banned in Virginia.

Kir Royales, which violate a 1934 law against mixing wine with spirits (as does sangria).

50 book challenge: #2.

Marcia Davenport, The Valley of Decision. An epic saga of one Pittsburgh family, and the sweet Irish maid that loved them, spanning the eventful years from 1873 to 1941. Actually, this book was defiantly mediocre in character sketching, plotting, and overall tone (everyone regardless of time sounds like they're talking in 1940-speak), but of course it was the local color that kept me interested. The family in question, the Scotts, live in a grand house on Western Avenue, on the North Side of today but what was then better known as Allegheny (formerly an independent city from Pittsburgh). One day a poor Irish lass, Mary Rafferty, shows up to begin work as a servant, and slowly grows closer to the family, falls in love with the family's scion - a love that must be denied! - etc., etc. At the same time, the Scotts' iron works suffer all the upheavals of labor disputes, business struggles, boom times during war, etc. Conveniently the book allows Mary an opportunity to better herself and drop her Irish brogue, which is fortunate as it is so difficult to empathize with a character who talks all low-class and whatnot. There was a somewhat odd diversion in the last third into the politics of Czechoslovakia, as one of the main characters falls in love with a Czech. This was part of the book's overall very noble socially progressive attitude toward getting deeper into the lives of the people known in Pittsburgh simply as "Hunkies" (short for Hungarian), but who were in fact from any of the former Habsburg Empire countries, mainly including Slovakia and the Czech lands. Apparently, Davenport, who was a writer for the New Yorker, spent two years living in Pittsburgh to prepare for writing the novel - and she clearly loves the place. I only wish I could have seen the "hell with the lid off" qualities of the infernal mills lining the rivers as she describes them - how they would fill the sky with fire at all times of the day or night. I mean, I'm glad I don't have to live with that, but I wonder if there's video of it.

Let's trade.

What if you renamed U.S. states for countries with similar GDPs? The result. From the wonderful Strange Maps.

50 book challenge: #1

33 1/3 is this series of little books on great rock albums. I've read two of them, but each is so small that I'm going to count it as a half-book. The one on OK Computer hovered, unfortunately, at the very border of literacy and illiteracy. Possibly the author thought that if Thom Yorke could get away with writing cryptic, not-always-grammatical sentences, then he could, too. Ah, but Mr. Dai Griffiths, Thom Yorke is a Rock Star and you are not. Therefore, you had best stick to making your meaning clear via the usual progression of subject-verb-object, and leave the musings on "Gucci little piggies" to the professionals. This had the definite flavor of "o god, it's 2 a.m. and I totally have to hand in my paper on OK Computer by 9 a.m. tomorrow morning! No time to edit! Just wriiiiiiiiiiiiite!" But the second book, on Highway 61 Revisited, was much superior. Interesting tidbits on the recording sessions (Like a Rolling Stone, for example, recorded on my (not yet) birthday in 1965), discussion of various interpretation of the songs, etc.--in short, a nice mix of literary analysis, musical analysis, and a history of the recording process itself. Next up, as soon as it arrives from the library, will be Murmur. Here's a blog on the series.

In our time.

I am so very, very happy to live in an age when you can look at the front page of a newspaper and see a headline like "Monkey's Thoughts Propel Robot ."

To be fair, they have fiber.

So it's not all bad. Because I was (morbidly) curious, I checked out the nutritional information for KFC's so-called "Famous Bowls" (heh more like infamous bowls amirite?).  Take the Chicken and Biscuit Bowl, for example ("homemade taste, served up quick!").

 

The good news: 7 grams of fiber per bowl (which, remarkably, counts as a single serving, but that's probably a deserved nod to actual practice rather than the arbitrary figures found elsewhere).

 

The bad news: 870 calories! 44 grams of fat! (That's 68% of recommended daily value for a 2,000-calorie intake.) 4.5 grams of trans fat! 2,420 milligrams of sodium, which means you can swear off salt for the rest of the day since you just hit 101% of your RDV!

 

Full info here. And if you're looking to slim down, consider the old favorite, Mashed Potato Bowl with Gravy, which weighs in at only 730 calories. Is anyone else feeling hungry?

Signs of the decline of western civilization.

The movie Bucket List.

Misc.

18 stunning bridges (some only concepts).

Coolest flash game ever.

Here (via MeFi).

Dear olde Harvard.

Harvard Square back in the 1980s.