This is outstanding:

Update: The way that clip updates on refresh is annoying. Moved below the fold.

10.2% is bad enough, 17.5% is even worse, but that's not even the whole story.

Holy crap, this is some rough soccer:

One of my favorite Joe Frank segments can be downloaded and listened to free without charge! Appx. 11 minutes long.

I know I'm not the only one who has noticed this type of thing, because I've had conversations with friends who have noticed it, too. But it's a hard thing to notice, because no one really pays attention to what other people are eating. But it was brought to my attention recently.

It's this: some women in their fifties, sixties, and seventies eat shockingly little. As in, a handful of baby carrots and maybe a piece of bread during the day, and half a sandwich at night. In a large part, I'm sure it's due to slowing metabolisms. But in conversations with friends, we've known more about the specific women and been able to confidently hypothesize that it's about staying thin. I'm not labelling it an eating disorder, because I don't know that they are preoccupied with how much they eat, or that it dominates their thoughts particularly. It may just be a habit of eating incredibly little. (One friend made fun of a relative: "Oh, I'll just save this other half of my piece of toast for later." And she'd put it in the fridge, and eat it later.)

It seems in poor taste to dissect other people's diets and accuse them of not eating enough. Sometimes I do things in poor taste.

Okay, I get it. Everything sucks. But I need some good news. Can someone please supply the briefest hint of a fart of something good that's happened recently?

I could really use a pick-me-up. Anything, really.

Prop 11 passed in Texas. I think eminent domain is an interesting issue because it so doesn't split down party lines. It pits the business Republicans against the libertarian Republicans, and it pits the environmental preservation and city planning Democrats against the libertarian Democrats

From what I gather, this proposition is a reaction to recent land seizures for building tollways. From what else I gather, the tollways are mostly pro-big-business in order to facilitate streaming semis from Mexico through Texas and on to the rest of the US. (There are more than one category here: the Trans-Texas Corridor, and urban sprawl/development/planning/insert-your-own-spin tollways around the cities.) (However, the tollways make my life much easier.)

Anyway, now the Texas legislators will be held to a very strict standard in order to seize land or declare neighborhoods blighted. I'm generally suspicious because I don't trust our legislators to implement this according to my liking, but aside from that, I'm torn.

I'm pro-labor. I believe that unions have the right to organize and a right to strike but what happened in Philadelphia today was unconscionable. A transit organization striking on Election Day is beyond immoral -- I think it crosses into a violation of civil rights. I want to see someone from SEPTA prosecuted for this. I'd be interested to hear from the lawyers out there whether there would be a legal basis for action -- the fact it most likely disproportionately affected minorities makes me wonder if, among other things, there was a violation of the Voting Rights Act.

I can't believe that Gov. Rendell and Mayor Nutter stepped in to prevent SEPTA from striking during the World Series but not on Election Day. They should have threatened to call in the Justice Department and hung SEPTA in the media for even trying to pull this. If anything, it shows that they're terrible bargainers along with having their priorities messed up.

From my latest concert-going experience, it appears that hundreds of flickering lights appearing at once in the audience at a concert aren't lighters, or even cell phones, being held up in appreciation but exactly the opposite: a sign that the audience finds the current song boring and thinks it's a good time to text their friends/check the World Series score.

Some news I choose to believe, no matter what, like the possibility that A. Rod has two portraits of himself as a centaur, hanging in his bedroom.

Did anyone else catch 60 Minutes' piece on movie piracy?

This issue is one about which my head ("oh, my, that's not good") and my heart ("yeah, well, whatever") are not at all clear.

Wait, Pearl Jam recently released a song that's resolutely pretty good? My world is turned upside down.