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]

The Best of Impressionist Week on Letterman
Frank Caliendo doing the best John Madden, George W. Bush, and Robin Williams in the business:

Better Stay Away From Microsoft's Response To the IPod

It doesn't have the three buttons no Microsoft product should be without: Ctrl, Alt & Delete.

When religious discrimination is the more appealing, though indefensibile, alternative

From CNN.com:

Soldiers' widows sue for pagan symbols on headstones

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The widows of two combat veterans sued the government Monday for not allowing Wiccan symbols on their husbands' military headstones.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs allows military families to choose any of 38 authorized headstone images. The list includes commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie.

The Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, is not on the list, an omission that the widows say is unconstitutional.

continued...

Good Thing He Restored Honor and Dignity to the White House

From WhiteHouse.gov:

You asked me the question one week before the campaign, and basically it was, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the Vice President? And my answer was, they're going to stay on. ... The only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that [blatantly false] answer.

"I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from."

- Eddie Izzard

Transit of Mercury today:

Election Day Priorities