URLs du Jour

2007-10-26

  • The magic number for Pun Salad's free mattress is now 2. Will this be the year the Red Sox finally break the curse?

    The Boston Red Sox, who have failed to win a single World Series since the departure of relief pitcher Curtis Leskanic in 2004, are attempting to defy the odds and do the impossible: reverse the curse of the journeyman reliever whose ghost has haunted this team since the mid-2000s.

    Curt Leskanic's Wikipedia page is here.

  • The University of New Hampshire gets a mention from Stanley Kurtz at NRO's Corner blog today. Specifically, he's collecting "turn in your fellow student" websites, and, um, someone mentioned the reportit! site, run by UNH's Thought Police Affirmative Action and Equity Office. Stan's not a fan of this sort of thing. If you know of an equivalent site at a school near you, you might want to drop him a note.

    [Update: also see Professor Volokh's comments. This is getting to be a habit.]

  • Professor Volokh throws cold water on yesterday's George Will column that derided the University of Montana's expenditure limit for student government campaigns. Generally, Volokh tends more toward the libertarian side than does Will; they seem to have switched places here. I liked Will's column, but I think this means he and I might be on the legally wrong side here.

  • Interesting article from Stephen Green on his political odyssey. His current situation is disturbingly similar to mine, and a lot of people I like:

    From here, it looks as if the Republicans have become wrong and corrupt, the Democrats are stupid and corrupt, and the Libertarians have gone plain crazy.

    So that's an easy choice, right?

  • I've been a Comcast customer for cable and internet service for a long time, and I may be their only customer who doesn't hate them. Jeff Taylor does hate them, though. He has a pretty good column summarizing their latest clumsy efforts in degrading service to their bandwidth hogs, and how this doesn't imply the need for "net neutrality" regulation from the Feds.


Last Modified 2012-10-16 2:07 PM EDT

Now and Then

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It's a happy day when UPS brings me a new Spenser novel. I've been reading the series since 1975, and this is number 35.

Things kick off when Spenser is hired by a moody husband to investigate what his wife has been doing behind his back. That turns out to be all too easy for Spenser, and it's pretty depressing and sordid. But the mere act of bringing it out in the open has its own repercussions, and pretty soon a couple people wind up dead.

A recurring theme over the past few books is that Spenser's clients always regret hiring him. I wonder if that's intentional on Parker's part?

The book's title reflects that Spenser's client's situation is similar to what happened to Spenser himself years ago, when his beloved Susan took off with another man. So there's a lot of discussion between Spenser and Susan about that; longtime readers will know either to lap it up or skip over it, as their tastes dictate. But—gasp!—there's an indication here that the Spenser/Susan relationship may actually be heading for a change.

If I had to quibble, it's with the bad guy. Without giving away too much of the plot: I don't really understand why he does what he does.


Last Modified 2024-02-02 4:18 AM EDT