“She was wearing dark jeans tucked into tall brown boots, a crisp white shirt, and a long black blazer. She was dressed for a fox hunt. She looked terrific.”

“[Klein's home] is furnished simply, as though on one quick trip to Crate & Barrel.”

I guess a more cynical reading would be that the author is trying to undermine Klein’s thesis here. But then they really seem to genuinely love the outfits and the furniture over at the New Yorker.

Researchers learned that ants that perform specific tasks are no more efficient than regular ants. “It turns out,” said scientist Anna Dornhaus, “that the ones that are specialized on a particular job are not particularly good at doing that job.” … Ann Coulter had her mouth wired shut. … Planned Parenthood of Indiana announced plans to offer holiday gift certificates that can be applied toward the cost of checkups, contraception, or abortions. “They deserve coal in their stockings,” said Sister Diane Carollo of the Indianapolis Archdiocese.

And on that whole Wal-Mart stampede thing:

“It was crazy,” said a worker in the electronics department. “The deals weren’t even that good.”

Circuit City closing 155 stores
Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, and Catherine’s to close 150 store nationwide
Eddie Bauer to close stores 27 stores, more after January
Cache will close all stores
Talbots closing all stores
J. Jill closing all stores
GAP closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores, more to close after January
Wickes Furniture closing all stores
Levitz closing remaining stores
Bombay closing remaining stores
Zales closing down 82 stores and 105 after January.
Whitehall closing all stores
Piercing Pagoda closing all stores
Disney closing 98 stores, more after January
Home Depot closing 15 stores, 1 in NJ (New Brunswick)
Macys closing 9 stores after January
Linens and Things closing all stores
Movie Galley closing all stores
Pacific Sunwear closing all stores
Pep Boys closing 33 stores
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
JC Penney closing a number of stores after January
Ethan Allen closing 12 stores
Wilson Leather closing all stores
Sharper Image closing all stores
K B Toys closing 356 stores
Loews to close some stores
Dillard’s to close some stores

Tiny Tim says “Fuck yeah!”

[via Kim]

“Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the destruction of parts of an ancient Muslim cemetery, where some of Saladin’s warriors are buried, to make way for a new Frank Gehry-designed $250 million Museum of Tolerance.”

This looks like fun, but it costs $42,997. The plans alone are $995. Wonder how much it costs to build… (Permits not required, composting toilet not included.)

She started by describing the “unexpressable uneasiness” she and some others had felt early on in the campaign. Why? “We were getting what we wanted,” she continued, meaning, a smart, qualified, decent candidate the Eastern elite could get behind. And yet the frenzy surrounding Obama made her uneasy — both the sense that he was a young person’s candidate, “a generational thing we couldn’t understand” and the unthinking embrace of “naivete transformed to hope, partisanism as consumerism.” Didion bridled at the wanton use of “transformational” and said she couldn’t count the number of times she heard the 60’s evoked “by people who apparently had no memory that the 60s” didn’t involve decking babies out in political onesies.

Didion was at pains to say that she did not think any of this was Obama’s doing, nor to his tastes. He would, she speculated “welcome healthy realism” and achievable expectations. In our frenzy, we are doing him a disservice, expecting miracles “at a time when the nation can least afford easy answers.” She recalled, the day after the election, an overexcited newscaster declaring that we now possess “the congratulations of all the nations.” She likened this to the naivete of thinking we’d be regarded as beloved saviors in Iraq. But, she ended, “in the irony-free zone that our country has become, this is not what people wanted to hear.”

Sorry, you can go back to worshiping your Hope posters now, kids.