Category: links

roast this

I’m feeling a little guilty about this, a little scared to admit to it, but I guess the only thing to do is ‘fess up and hope for the best.

I’ve started a new blog, but it’s not what you think.

I asked for green coffee beans for Christmas. That’s coffee that hasn’t yet been roasted. My family has a $15 gift limit, so I figured I’d get a pound or two of coffee — just enough to try it out, see if it was something I’d be interested in doing on a regular basis. Instead, though, my grandmother, who is not bound by the limit, gave me something like eight pounds of beans.

It’s taken until this past week for me to gather the equipment, time, and guts to try roasting. It was easy and fun, and the coffee that resulted was so good and so different from any coffee I’ve ever had before that I was pretty much immediately hooked. Also, I still had almost eight pounds of coffee left to roast. All the coffee roasting sites I’ve read say you should keep a log of all your roasts — and since I found it hard to believe that I’d actually take pen to paper, well, I figured I’d start a blog.

You can find it at www.roastthis.com. I don’t plan on it replacing this one, but no promises on frequent updates. As if you didn’t already know that.

footnotes for cliffs notes

I am, at least theoretically, writing a paper about language usage in The Daily Show and NBC’s Nightly News. To begin, I typed up transcripts of the respective episodes aired on Thursday, April 27th. I was hoping that the differences in language would jump out at me once I’d completed that tedious task and the 8-10 page paper would write itself from there. Instead of language differences, though, what I noticed most was a content difference. The Daily Show covered a lot more news.

Brian Williams was reporting from New Orleans. Most of the stories centered on New Orleans — mostly, will the levees be ready for the coming hurricane season, and should FEMA be dismantled. The other two big stories were about gas prices and the Sago mine survivor.

The Daily Show mentioned Rove’s court appearance, Rumsfeld & Rice’s visit to Iraq, the president’s approval ratings, the Ken Lay trial, the New Orleans mayoral race, new tapes from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, Zacarias Moussaoui’s sentencing, and the appointment of FOX News commentator Tony Snow to White House Press Secretary. Granted, it didn’t cover any of these topics in any depth, but it was a much better overview of what’s going on in the world than was offered by the Nightly News.

According to FootnoteTV, “A 2004 study found that 21 percent of young people regularly were getting their campaign news from comedy shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Saturday Night Live.” No wonder, if shows like these are the only places where actual news gets any air time.

FootnoteTV’s solution? Provide footnotes for shows like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live, and even West Wing, among others.

Watch funny news, read bite-sized footnotes on FootnoteTV.com, and be better informed than those watching the “real” news. Ah, the 21st century.

judging roberts

Newsweek: Judging Roberts

This article is encouraging, given, you know, everything else. I was recently lamenting the political nature of modern Supreme Court nominations, wishing we could return to the days when nominations were
based on legal prowess, rather than stance on issues. I don’t doubt that Roberts’ stances, where they are discernable, are not necessarily in line with my own, and I’d rather he err with the Constitution rather than with the legislature, but… It’s also possible that he sees the difference between a district court and the Supreme Court, and will be less likely to side with legislatures when his is the final word.

Anyway, it’s impossible to know what kind of justice he will turn out to be, but I’m thinking it could be a lot worse.

who will play you?

This poorly titled New York Times Opinion piece by David Brooks lends an interesting slant to the Woodward & Bernstein legend.

Watergate has become a modern Horatio Alger story, a real-life fairy tale, an inspiring ode for mediacentric college types – about the two young men who found exciting and challenging jobs, who slew the dragon, who became rich and famous by doing good and who were played by Redford and Hoffman in the movie version.

crisis of doubt

Have you ever been somewhere you probably shouldn’t be, then seen something you probably shouldn’t see, and then need to tell everyone about it?

Well, I hate to admit it, but tonight I just had to go and check out my ex-boyfriend’s blog, and I had to get all intrigued by the quote he’d recently posted. That let me to google Andrew Boyd, which eventually led to the discovery of Skeptical Mysticism.

“I am One with a God I do not believe in.”