MemeMachineGo!

When Charles Schulz integrated the schools in Peanuts, it was a sufficiently radical move that he had to take a stand.

Another editor protested once when Franklin was sitting in the same row of school desks with Peppermint Patty, and said, "We have enough trouble here in the South without you showing the kids together in school." But I never paid any attention to those things, and I remember telling Larry at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said, "Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?" So that’s the way that ended.

Merill Lynch's CEO reportedly suggested a $10 million bonus for himself.

Thain has said he deserves a bonus because he helped avert what could have been a much larger crisis at the firm, people familiar with his thinking told the WSJ.

"I deserve a huge bonus, because I could have done a much worse job."

(Subsequent to this report and the ensuing outcry, he announced he wouldn't take a bonus. It pays to be prompt with your snark.)

EDAR stands for Everyone Deserves a Roof. It’s a cart that unfolds into a cot covered with a tent, giving homeless people a step up from sleeping in a cardboard box or on the ground.

But it’s not without its critics.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, said police fear the units could constitute dwellings where inhabitants would have a reasonable expectation of privacy. In that scenario, police would need warrants to search EDARs

Oh noes! One minute they have some semblance of shelter; next minute they might start imagining they have some semblance of civil rights, too!

In 2000, a Zapotec woman performed a C-section on herself.

In Florida, a teacher has accused a 9-year-old girl of selling drugs for accepting money for giving her friends Hall’s Defense Vitamin C cough drops. These are mostly sugar, and are basically candy. The active ingredient is 60 mg of Vitamin C (less than that in a typical orange) in the form of sodium ascorbate and ascorbic acid. These are widely included in food products, without fanfare, as a preservative. It’s water soluble, with a short biological halflife. Its LD50 (median lethal dose — the dose tested to kill half the test population) has been measured in rats as 11.9 grams per kilogram of body weight. We don’t know what it is for humans, but if it’s comparable to that for rats, then for median weight 9-year-old girls of about 30 kg, that’d be 357g, or the amount of Vitamin C in 5950 cough drops.

This kind of zero-tolerance, what lesson will it teach this girl? a) dealing drugs is bad, or b) that her teacher and principal are idiots?

=v= Throwing shoes at George W. Bush might be a guilty pleasure (replete with Sock and Awe video game), but I have to admit that I've got a peacenik, Quakerly side that compels me suggest a gentler alternative:

Tempting though it may be to suggest that Dubya's next overseas visit should be to a certain well-stocked Footwear Museum, we should stick with our finer instincts, and that includes not lapsing into bad jokes. Like for example, the one about how he's a lame duck, but not a lame ducker. Or the observation that, of course he was able to dodge the shoes, he was at a press conference and thought they were questions. Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week. Tip your waitrons and try the Veat®.

According to 23% of Americans in a CNN poll, Cheney is the worst vice-president ever leaving me to wonder: what percentage of Americans could name ten vice-presidents?