The Coolidge Effect .

Curious, George: Moving to Japan with cats? Am I lucky enough to have anyone here that is both in a military family and has moved pets with them on overseas tours? I have a few worries.

Curious George: Underrated talents Inspired by the interesting and voluminous responses to wendell's "overrated talent" thread I am curious to know who MoFites think are underrated artists, performers, personalities etc. more inside

Why are the airlines losing money? Because we are too fat, apparently. Bigger butts = more jet fuel = higher costs.

A friend told me about freeipods.com the other day, a site which could make you the next lucky owner of a free iPod or $250 gift certificate to iTunes. All it (supposedly) requires: you and five friends must each complete one of ten or so bearable commercial offers or free trials. For those of us (like me) who are both poor and iPodless, this is a miracle. Is it too good to be true? more inside

Feds claiming 337,000 jobs created since July. What do you make of this? Genuine improvement in the economy or bad metrics? It seems 98% of my household goods are now made in China. If these are indeed mostly service jobs, then by analogy, how can business be booming at hot dog stands outside an auto manufacturing plant that has been bleeding jobs?

Whatcha gonna do, do you wanna get down? This really makes me long for the days when even Ponch and John were getting down.

Seattle Monkey Business: Reminder: Saturday, 7p, the Elysian, Seattle's Capitol Hill. Monkeys, Mofites, and free-range bloggers. Air kisses, dahlings, air kisses.

You Are Here. And you thought that election dealy was something important. more inside

Mofites speak out in the press! (I'll let everyone guess who's who. Thanks again for your help!)

The WWI Document Archive I found this when I was looking for biographical information on the Serb nationalist who killed Kaiser Wilhelm. The archive also has great bits like the Constitution of the Black Hand and the Young Turk Proclamation. Also take a look at the thoroughly hilarious Zabern affair!. more inside

Move along...? There have been (very quiet) rumblings about Walden O'Dell's (chief executive of Diebold) involvement in the elections this year. Will the Black Box inquiries be disregarded as paranoid conspiracy theorists? Is there ANY way to verify that there was no tampering with the votes, or are we to blindly have faith in the "process" with NO oversight confirmation? There is attention shown to the Voting Machines, but little to the software running those machines and who had access to either during the elections.

Give Up The Dough, Working People. With federal deficits already running amok, it is unclear how President Bush will pay for his second-term agenda, a potentially multitrillion-dollar smorgasbord that includes overhauling Social Security and revamping the tax system. more inside

"The Sahara is not just the classic dunes of The English Patient. The majority of the running we did was over vast plains of sand, gravel and rocks the size of tennis balls... Blow a knee out on the overnight stage, and you’d have to pull your emergency flare to call the helicopter. Blow it in the middle of a plain, and you’d have to wait for a passing marshal’s Land Rover to pick you up...It was only the first day, and people were already being withdrawn by the doctors for foot trauma." more inside

personal_space. Tiny houses for the thrifty-chic. more inside

After You (Quicktime.) [Via Dong Resin's Screenhead.]

Speaking of assassination. The always edgy eXile has the scoop.

Ed Helms kills two birds with one stone... Thankfully, Helms and Stephen Colbert at the Daily Show display no signs of slowing down after the disaster of 11/2. [via MeFi]

Political Assasination: mathowie is as good as his word. BTW: Bush sucks.

Delicious Data: Pioneer Electronics has developed a polymer based on corn that can act as a removable media, or a cd. No decisions as to whether or not they will market it, or what exactly the purpose is in the first place.