Kelly Westhoff from Plymouth, MN is the winner of our 2nd $500 Travel Grant.  

Last night we drove out to Great Barrington and had chicken mole on the porch of a Mexican restaurant with an unpronounceable name as the rain pelted down all around us. Then it was on to business: Kent, Lisa, Cindy and I were meeting to read and judge another stack […]

Jim Hoagland writes in his syndicated column today about why France lost the bid to host the Olympics to London. “The well prepared systematic French bid to persuade delegates to award the games to Paris after Beijing hosts them in 2008 was thwarted by a politically motivated last minute swing […]

Boing Boing.net showed two photos of people waist deep in water, one was a black person the other two whites. In each, a person appears to be dragging a bag or box or two of food or beverages. The images were shot by different photographers, and captioned by different photo […]

Nicholas Negroponte has a mission. It’s to outfit the third world with $100 laptops to get everybody surfing and to put the power of the internet into the hands of the poor. Men’s Journal included a story by Paul Hochman about this endeavor. “Despite its low price, the computer is […]

Reading through Men’s Journal on the way to Boston in the car. Came across an amazing photo of a boat with the engine facing the wrong way. Volvo-Penta has come up with a revolutionary way to improve fuel efficiency, by facing the prop ‘backwards.” Accelleration is increased 15%, top speed […]

Lewis Lazare wrote scathingly last week in the Chicago Sun-Times about the New Yorker’s recent all Target ad issue. “But make no mistake. Target advertising executives must be laughing all the way to the image bank because of the ad placement coup they have pulled off, while New Yorker staffers, […]

The Newest Hartshorne, model 2005. 

Stepping past the entertainers in downtown Northampton, MA on Friday night. 

Joshua Clover writes in opposition to Thomas Friedman’s thesis that the world is flat in the Village Voice. “If Friedman’s no global economist, one might expect him to check in with one who works his beat: Fernand Braudel, say, or Giovanni Arrighi, highly regarded “world systems” scholars who study interlocking […]

Peter R made the case against handwashing on errtravel.com. “Let’s assume you wash up before leaving your hotel room. Consider the germs, dirt, cleaning product residues, and other contaminants you probably picked up on your way out of the hotel, getting into and out of the taxi, paying the driver […]

Most are familiar with Hurricane Andrew, which slammed into the Florida coast in 1992. Andrew is the costliest hurricane on record. CBS News reported on this in Sept 2004. “John Gurney of the National Weather Service says, “Hurricane Andrew dwarfs all other storms we’ve had: $26 billion in damage by […]