I have found one excellent use for my iPad - reading books. PDFs can be directly imported into iTunes and read by the iPad. The ability to turn the screen makes it much easier to read them there than in Adobe Reader on my laptop. For months, John Samples' "The Struggle to Limit Government" had been sitting in my downloads folder; in the last four or five nights, I've covered more than 200 pages of it.
Via The Daily Beast comes Lake Superior State University's "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness." Outstanding. Among the words included in the 2011 edition are "viral," "fail" (used as a noun), and "the American people." Also there is "refudiate," but I'm pretty sure that's not English - just Alaskan. And not to worry - "app" was on last year's list.
All my grades for Fall 2010 are in. Six A's and one B+ for a semester GPA of 3.88, holding the cumulative figure at the same number. Not a surprise, but most certainly a source of satisfaction.
Sanitation workers slow-rolling blizzard cleanup? In my New York City? It's more likely than you think. Let's be clear that these allegations have not yet been proved - but if they are, they would not surprise me in the least.
Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of the loss of two Sailors during an outbound transit by USS Minneapolis-Saint Paul. One of the crew produced this stirring video tribute, which brought back memories of a very similar event two years ago on Memphis. Thankfully, we didn't lose anyone.
Finally, my single favorite blog post of the year 2010. Reason Magazine's Hit & Run, March 16: "People Who Need To Be Punched: Baltimore Edition."
Happy New Year, everybody. Regardless of how good your 2010 was, I hope 2011 is bigger and better.