It’s a funny thing, newspapering. Last Saturday, for example, the Washington Post carried a dour dispatch in its business pages announcing that the DC unemployment rate ticked up another half a percentage point in October. This was “its highest level in 34 years of record…

Here is the world’s worst holiday gift guide, from the Washington Post. Bubble bath! Mediocre wingtips! (Here’s a hint: if you’re going to spend more $550 on wingtips for men, then you can afford to go to John Lobb and get proper ones.) And? Says one gift-giver: “My female…

Here is how Frank Gehry designs a hat, which is pretty much like how he designs a building: “Gehry said that he had done the initial drawing on his iPhone, which an assistant then produced: a violet scribble with a black-and-blue iris at the center.” SCAM ARTIST.

The silent majority of Verlyn Klinkenborg enthusiasts must stand up and be counted! People love to make fun of the New York Times editorial board member but they are very wrong people who hate words and things that are different.

“The people who did this must be full of gingerbread dust. They will smell a long way.”
 -Norwegian police inspector Erik Sveaas discusses the vandals who destroyed the town of Bergen’s 650-house gingerbread cookie village. The plunderers attacked the village-supposedly the…

The New Yorker gets mail about its review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s vegetarian book. Including someone who said he was writing from the parking lot of a slaughterhouse: “I wonder if Foer has ever visited, or considered the impact of, a…

Has Science finally found a way to cure the addiction of smoking? There is a new vaccine!

NicVax causes the immune system to create antibodies that bond with the nicotine molecule if it enters the bloodstream. The result is a molecule too large to pass along to the…

“Daddy feels God was using her to wake America up.”
 -Franklin Graham conveys his father’s approval of Sarah Palin. Palin met Billy Graham and his son yesterday at a North Carolina stop on her book tour.

Continuing signs of the recession: “A nude photo of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy — identical to one sold last year for $91,000 — has been withdrawn from a Paris auction…

Waldo Hunt, the father of the modern pop-up book, has died: “A Chicago native who grew up in Northern California, Mr. Hunt joined the Army during World War II and fought in the Battle of the Bulge, his family said. He returned from the war to open an advertising agency in Los Angeles. When…

A historian of recent presidential Thanksgiving proclamations finds Barack Obama’s maiden effort wanting.

It’s the first new Tumblr in ages with photos about a certain kind of thing in a certain kind of way that hasn’t offended me! (I’m looking at you, Black People at Wal Mart on Facebook on Public Transit.) Thank God for Face Ahoy, where life is more gentle.

“The Prime Minister needs cuddles. I have seen a few things in my time but not this, twenty women for one man. At orgies there are more or less the same number of men and women, but here there was only one man with copulation rights — the Prime Minister.”
 -Patrizia D’Addario, the…

Congratulations to Silvio Berlusconi, who has been selected by the editors of Italian Rolling Stone as “rock star of the year” for being the person who best “distinguishes himself during the year for his decidedly rock and…

“South Park,” so much to answer for: “The beating of 12-year-old boy by a group of classmates at a Southern California middle school may be linked to a Facebook posting encouraging kids to target redheads, authorities say. The redheaded boy was beaten up by a group of seventh and eighth…

“South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford faces ethics charges he broke state laws more than three dozen times by violating rules on airplane travel and campaign money, according to details of the allegations released Monday.” The South Carolina House will begin holding impeachment…

Sad news from Britain: Bizarre identical-twin phenomenon Jedward have been voted off whatever program they were recently appearing on. And now, life resumes as before, if perhaps with a little less mirth to go around.