Ongoing list of things to do before the kids arrives:

1. Learn how to peel and slice an orange like they do in Japanese restaurants.

2. Get used to saying: “Mmmm, this ice cream is good,” everytime we eat cottage cheese.

Slate asks the question: “What the hell is Barry Manilow doing at No. 1 on the Billboard album charts?”

Well, as the old saying goes, if you gotta ask…

I am (other than a brief respite when team Manilow refused to make a cameo at my Bar Mitzvah reception) a life-long member of the BMIFC – you might know if better as The Barry Manilow International Fan Club.

What can I say, I needed something to go along with my Frodo Lives posters.

Abbas Raza in 3QuarksDaily:

but I still wonder if they wrote to their black friends during the Rodney King riots, asking them to explain why black people behave so irrationally? No, they didn’t. Why didn’t they? Because while they do not give sanction to criminal and violent acts of looting and vandalism, they can understand how a collection of historically oppressed people can be driven to irrational rage by repeated acts of injustice and caricature.

Read it all. You may be surprised by your own reaction.

Life lessons by way of a few cans of beer courtesy of John Gruber over the new (and delightfully designed) Joyent blog called Joyeur.

Drink up.

I have a recurring dream in which my wife meets a guy who is pretty much like me and has the same basic value propostion, but who is built in Ajax.