a nation of workaholics

I had no idea Americans were second only to Singapore in the number of hours worked weekly. And what's the deal with Singapore anyway?

We can't be too clinical about the effects of vacations though. In a recent study described in the article, "nearly three quarters [of respondents] thought that doctors should be able to write prescriptions for vacations." How reasonable could the rest of their answers have been?

city life at its best

Barcelona isn't even in the top 10 most livable cities according to a survey by Mercer. And that's one of the top three places in the world I'd be happiest living in so far.

There's a lot more traveling for me to do. And I really have been meaning to visit Zurich.

London lags quite a bit behind San Fran? Clearly I'm more spoiled than I think. Either that, or living in crime-ridden communities has desensitized me to the effect of that factor on city living.

camel cavalry

From a history of Confederate president Jefferson Davis' camel cavalry:

In 1863, a camel-express service was tried between New San Pedro and Tucson, Arizona, but with only limited success. Around that same time a group of Mexicans loaded up some camels on wagons with the intention of making beasts of burden out of them, but abused them so severely that most of the animals died.

There are so many nonsensical things about that. Not to mention that anything concerning dromedaries or Jefferson Davis may be considered comical.

another reason SUVs are evil

Even the police can't drive them without running over people's heads.

Damn motorists. You gotta do Critical Mass naked just to get their attention, and not just in Mexico City.

blue and gold, blue and...

When the University of California was deciding its colors in the 1860s-70s, it was decided that gold would represent the state's principal natural resource and blue would honor Yale, the alma mater of most of the new university's founders.
Source: calbears.ocsn.com.
Joe McMillan, 19 November 2003

Sweet! Even the California Governor's (Arnold's) flag is on a Yale Blue field. But was Yale blue chosen after Oxford blue? Cuz whether I'm in Oxford or Cali, I feel right at home with the university colors.

what happened to rights?

Ok, so nobody would actually wear a burka in the US because the reaction would be so bad... but at the same time, there's no way in hell anyone would even think to try to make it illegal.

doh

When you've installed so many programs of questionable attainment that you've forgotten some of the most powerful software on your machine, you know you're an addict. All this time I've been trying to run beat-up old Adobe Pagemaker 7 on my Virtual PC for Mac (running Windows XP Pro) when I had Adobe InDesign CS installed on OS X the whole damn time!

I still haven't paid Adobe a cent in my life, but I feel as if I owe the company my first-born child. Has a single week gone by in my college and post-collegiate life that I haven't used their software?