...more recent posts
African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. William Henry Seward, Lincoln's anti-slavery Secretary of State during the Civil War, born in 1801, grew up in Orange County, New York, in a slave-owning family and amid neighbors who owned slaves if they could afford them. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves.
The North failed to develop large-scale agrarian slavery, such as later arose in the Deep South, but that had little to do with morality and much to do with climate and economy.
WhatEVER--Okay, I apologize
if we had a humor page id put this cavett blog there
Ring bearing Barn Owl
via Birdchick
someones avatar. seemed very tree-like.
New Orleans wins, or, almost wins, again.
worst name for a college football bowl game:
the san diego county credit union poinsetta bowl or the gaylord hotels music city bowl?
On the heels of the success of September's Salvage Fest event, Brownstoner.com is launching what will be the largest weekly flea market in Brooklyn next April. The location? A 40,000 square foot schoolyard in Fort Greene. The Bishop Loughlin school yard is located on Lafayette Avenue between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues, positioning the flea market just a block from "brunch row" on Dekalb Avenue and only four subway stops from Downtown Manhattan. Our goal is to create a destination event that gives people from all over the city yet another reason to visit Brooklyn. We plan to put together the best assortment of dealers across a wide range of interests, from antiques to crafts to vinyl records; we're also hoping to create a food court of local and organic offerings.
deli cat / i like to shake the friskies box when i walk down the petfood section of the isle and see if i can get a rise out of the deli cat.
interesting software dude , read an article on him in economist titles "doing well by being rather nice"
you stay classy, media!
ny post
trentonian
I waited too long to buy a PS3 60 GB. It's the one that has HW support for PS2 games -- a feature no longer available in the new 40 and 80 GB units. I'm now in Amazon Marketplace/E-Bay hell. The first one is going back after dying within a week. It was "new", except for the fact that it had obviously been out of the box. The second one is now order. It's allegedly "factory sealed".
Part of my testing is playing the Simpson's PS3 game. I'm really a one game gamer (Gran Turismo), but the Simpson's game is kinda fun. One of Homer's super powers is a super belch that can be used to destroy things. Heh heh heh.
Oh, and Blu-ray is freaking awesome.
How could you not buy PC cooling products from a company with a logo like this?
Terrorism in New Orleans, and a selection of comments from its enlightened citizens.
speaking pigeon
When Ray Bengen learned that he was going to start work at the New York Times new Eighth Avenue office tower back in July as a software engineering consultant he thought, "Great. It's just up the street from where I live. I can ride my bike to work."
There was just one problem. While the Times and developer Forest City Ratner were promoting their new Renzo Piano-designed skyscraper as a "technologically advanced and environmentally sensitive" exemplar of green construction, a lack of bike parking and policies hostile towards cyclists were discouraging employees from commuting to work by the city's most environmentally-friendly mode of urban transport.
"I couldn't believe they built such a supposedly 'green' building without a bike room," Bengen said. "This isn't exactly the best neighborhood to leave a bike outside all day."
For a few weeks a friendly security guard allowed Bengen to bring his "cheap old Giant" bicycle into the building through a freight elevator. Then one day in September the guard said that he wasn't allowed to do that anymore.
Economist is good for pointing a good death, this guy while interesting isn't missed by me
google maps does terrain
Last summer, even as he talked about facing jail time, Jim Stevenson couldn’t stop looking for birds. “There’s a couple yellow-crowned night herons,” he said, pointing out his living-room window. “They roost in that chinaberry tree.” He rested his eyes on the blue-gray birds. “Anyway, the cops pulled me over and searched my van and found the gun, and —”
Stevenson is a bearish, ruddy-faced 54-year-old former science teacher who is known as the ornithological guru of Galveston, Tex. Ten years ago, he moved to this Gulf Coast barrier island because of its abundant shorebirds. Enormous flocks of American avocets, willets, sanderlings, dowitchers and plovers feed in the shallow, fertile estuary of Galveston Bay. Stevenson built his house amid a clump of trees so he could always be watching birds; he lives in a bird blind. Birds are his obsession and his profession. He is the director of the Galveston Ornithological Society and publisher of the quarterly newspaper Gulls n Herons. For money, he leads bird-watching tours.
evel dead
Some video camera geekitude follows
Eastern bloc retro futurist art (mostly magazine covers) from the 1930's through the 1970's
An 18-foot minke whale ran aground on a sandbar in the Amazon jungle some 1,000 miles from the ocean, Brazilian media reported Friday.
Can an operating microwave oven interfere with a wireless signal?
A - Z in pictures
