David Hyde Pierce is finally out of the closet.
OMG WTF!!!
… maybe the ghost of Charles Nelson Reilly gave him a little nudge.

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I’m embroiled in some serious end-of-the-month deadline drama this week, so posting will probably be lighter than usual for the next few days.
Fortunately for us all, Kate Bush is here to share vegetarian cooking tips! (From a 1980 TV interview.)
Here’s to putting nuts in everything!

 
I love the way Kate and the interviewer regard the brown […]

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This way-clever video, which I found on YouTube, uses short snips from various animated Disney films to provide an entertaining education on the nature of copyright, fair use, and the public domain.

 
The daunting reality is that copyright has way gotten out of control in recent years — where once upon a time copyright lasted […]

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Yesterday Russian homophobes made good on their threat to physically attack gay pride demonstrators in Moscow this year, as they did last year. The haters, who included contingents of nationalists and Russian Orthodox extremists, punched and kicked gay participants, and some wore surgeon’s masks, which they claimed was an attempt to protect them from the […]

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Profile of Newtok, Alaska: One of the first victims of climate change, a town gradually sinking into the mud. As the hardest hit of the 180 Alaskan villages suffering from erosion, “studies say Newtok could be washed away within a decade.”
Iceberg of Yuck: The Consumerist says, “Poison toothpaste, killer cough-syrup, and tainted pet food are […]

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The Rubber Nun is a big fan of this Random Ten meme-thingie and I’m a big fan of the Rubber Nun, so in honor of the elastic sister I thought I’d give it a spin myself.
Of course I think you’re supposed to do it on Fridays … but isn’t it still Friday in Singapore, […]

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This is a laugh-out-loud good time. Janet Maslin at the New York Times reviews the new book about Pearl Harbor (titled simply Pearl Harbor) by Newt Gingrich and his co-author, William R. Forstchen.
The title of her review? “An Assault on Hawaii. On Grammar Too.”
OK, I could have stopped right there, and that would have been […]

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Here’s a nice video find for Friday: “The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned” by Ultravox! (the early, John Foxx-led incarnation of the band). This song has possibly the most figuratively ambitious lyrics you’ll find in any song not written by David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, or Bob Dylan. And what a thrill to watch John […]

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For those who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Stephen Colbert in person, this backstage video of him prepping John Kerry before Kerry’s recent Colbert Report appearance is a fun little peek behind the curtain of the character he plays on his show.
I think knowing what a charming, mild-mannered, and self-effacing person Stephen is […]

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It’s the foreign policy, stupid: This great post at Crooks and Liars takes apart the simplistic and unhelpful notion that terrorists “hate us for our freedoms.” As Michael Scheuer, former station chief of the CIA’s Osama Bin Laden task force, says:
“The fundamental flaw in our thinking about Bin Laden is that ‘Muslims hate and attack […]

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“Professors are forcing our kids to submit to their pro-glacier agenda!”
Newsflash: Student traumatized when his university tries to make him learn things that don’t harmonize with his conservative worldview!
Fortunately, Stephen Colbert is here to make sense of the situation.

 
Yeah, what Stephen said! Because you should never, ever have to be taught something you don’t […]

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This an oldie from last fall, but it’s a classic Barney Frank rant and I got a kick out of watching it again when I happened across it a couple of days ago.
When the good Congressman gets going, he just mops up the rhetorical floor with whatever poor hapless soul has the misfortune to […]

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Hey! As I just noted in an update to my NY Ferrets Against Giuliani entry from Thursday, I cross-posted it as a diary over at Daily Kos, and it made the Friday Night Diary Rescue list! Not too shabby for only my second diary over there.
Also, regular commenters may have noticed that the comment delay […]

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I’ve been disturbed for a couple of days now by this story about a judge in the UK who was baffled by the concept of a Web site.
A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like “Web site” in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via […]

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