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Walter Kirn's ode to Montana, which in November legalized medical marijuana, banned gay marriage, elected a Democratic legislature and governor, and helped keep George W. Bush in office. Montana is one of my favorite states to drive through, partly because of the unexpected.

Virginia is using statistics to base sentencing guidelines on the probability that an offender will offend again--say, because he is male (or single, or jobless... hey, wait a minute).

The New York Public Library: A safe place to view Internet pornography.

Nellie McKay sounds a little hyper.

The cover story is about Al Arabiya; I haven't read it yet.

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From rutemple, mostly, this much-modified meme: A 2004 recap in the form of my first LiveJournal line of each month.

• 01/04: I drove to Minnesota again.
• 02/01: Google vs. Microsoft.
• 03/01: Just ordered my Platinum Pass for Cinequest.
• 04/03: Oh, hey, I really liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
• 05/02: Jeremy Eichler's lovely article about Matt Haimovitz begins with this sentence: "Acclaimed cello soloists rarely come through Jackson, and when they do, they almost never perform at Soulshine Pizza."
• 06/04: From last week's New York Times Magazine, an article on the dating habits of contemporary teens, or rather non-dating habits.
• 07/04: John Flansburgh's Playlist: The Polyphonic Spree, the Zombies, the Beastie Boys, Franz Ferdinand, Velvet Revolver.
• 08/01: I didn't follow much of the convention coverage this week.
• 09/02: I've been taking some time on the road to write down what's going on, but I haven't had free Internet access or time to hunt it down until tonight.
• 10/05: Here begin the retroactive posts from my journey home.
• 11/02: So from my cursory reading, the big topics on blogs are:
  • High turnout, everywhere except tombking's precinct.
  • Problems with voting machines.
• 12/01: A couple of things I've been digging lately.

Not a bad summary, actually. Some travel, some politics, some recommendations, and a lot of the New York Times. Nothing about work, which is fine, and nothing about my music, which is typical but too bad.

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Santana Row 4

netflix friends

Looks like Netflix's "Friends" feature is out of beta. When two people have each other listed as friends, they can see each other's ratings as they browse the database. I'm not actually sure that's interesting, but if anyone wants to add me, my registered email address is eostrom@acm.org.