Barack Obama, like a raving rogue

This is just weird.

Let's see... guns, Reagan, Al Qaeda, Romney, illegal dads, the N word... sounds like the Tea Partiers on one of their better days.

And not only that, but it turns out that the real name of one of the songs in this clip is De Ganzenpas -- Goose Step!

An Arabic oddity

I just came across the word "aghlaf" in the Qur'an (Surat al-Baqarah, v. 88); it means "uncircumcised". What's interesting is that the form it takes is used for colors (ahmar, red; abyad, white; azraq, blue) or defects (asamm, deaf; abkam, dumb; a`ma, blind), which implies that being uncircumcised is a defect, even if all men are born that way.

ar-Ra`d wal-Barq

I just saw a flash of lightning out my living room window, and a few seconds later heard a great peal of thunder. It is a portent of change, I think, and a sign that our season of frozen death will pass, however slowly, in the warming sunlight of lengthening days.