Rot? Not!

After five years of blogging here, I hope and expect this blog to be idle in '07, to allow me more time and energy for my work, my reading, my resting, and my family. (Chances are I'll cheat and add something here under Comments.)

But to fight blogrot, I'm posting some random things that might be worth revisiting: cool Wikipedia reference charts, best first lines from novels, Steven Wright quips, Amazon Light, and monkeys typing Shakespeare.

And, of course, my post to end all posts.

Also idling: my home page, and my blogs on heaven, language, golf, and ideas.

Remaining active: worship and N&A.

On Wednesday I drove up US-131 and saw the herd of media trucks surrounding the Ford Museum, and couldn't decide if it was honorable tribute or just inane swarming. The media has a tendency to go way over the top at times like this; the local Grand Rapids Press gushed with messianic melodrama the day after Ford died, "He Saved The Nation." (True of Lincoln, but not Ford, and as Ford himself said, "I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln.") Gerald Ford was a decent president and a rare case of a leader who is a perfect match for his time and circumstances. But what got him to where he went, and made him a success, was not saintliness, but ordinariness. Still, it's a rare honor for my hometown to be home to a president, his museum, and his burial.

more: WP - NYT - GRP - TV8 - FM/L - W

Update: photos here and here

Recent New Yorker cartoons:

Terrorist to terrorist on on laptop:
"I just think it undermines our organization's fiery rhetoric when you close your Internet postings with a smiley face." (10/16/06)

Wife to husband:
"I wish you'd open up to me--I need some ammunition." (11/27/06)

Therapist to patient, gesturing to woman with laptop:
"That's Eleanor. She's a fact-checker." (12/18/06)

Santa to cab driver:
"I'm going to have to make multiple stops." (12/25/06)

Sign behind author at book table:
"Author will text you, 1-3 p.m." (12/25/06)

Vultures eyeing dying desert wanderer:
"Oh, love handles! We haven't had those in a while." (12/25/06)

Patient paging nurse:
"Come quickly--I think I had an out-of-pocket experience." (12/25/06)

Previous New Yorker cartoons

The Onion's Headlines of the Year

- Thousands More Dead In Continuing Iraq Victory

- Al Gore Caught Warming Globe To Increase Box Office Profits

- Kevin Federline, Wife Divorce

more...

Coming Distractions from ABC's The Note

How To Grade Exams

Thankfully, I don't have to grade papers this semester, but if I did, I'd be tempted to adopt this method (seen at Gideon Strauss):

As true as it was last year:

Some cool navboxes, tables, and map references from Wikipedia

- IPA table of consonants

- Unicode entities in HTML

- Writing Systems of the World

- Human language families

Update: Another useful chart -- additions to standard proofreading marks [via LanguageHat]