Go USA

I know this photo made the rounds several years ago (in 2003, I suspect), turning up on blogs and webpages and in inboxes across the world. But I've never seen it accompanied by such trenchant sociopolitical analysis.

The marketplace of ideas has never been so bountiful.

Thanksgiving Wine Cider

Every year around this time many Americans perform the ritual, paroxysmal flailing that has come to be associated with the search for the ideal Thanksgiving wine. And here's a list of wines I've seen or heard recommended (mostly by experts) in response just this year:

• Beaujolais nouveau
• Beaujolais villages
• Pinot Noir
• Côtes du Rhône
• Barbera
• Rioja
• Zinfandel
• Rosé (sangiovese-based)
• Merlot
• Syrah/Shiraz
• Cabernet sauvignon
• Sauvignon blanc
• Riesling (dry)
• Riesling (sweet)
• Champagne/sparkling white
• Chenin blanc
• Chardonnay
• Viognier

Either Thanksgiving dinner is the most wine-flexible meal of all time, or there simply is no perfect pairing (other than the one that tastes good to you). I think it's the latter. Which is why I'll be serving this on Thursday:

Activity Theory Bibliography

As promised, here's the activity theory bibliography (.xml file) Jeremy Schnieder and I put together. It's a work-in-progress, so if you have any suggestions of sources to add, we'd appreciate hearing from you.

A few caveats:

• Jeremy and I did not set out to create a document for public consumption; rather, we are simply compiling a list of sources for a project we're working on. As a result, we didn't worry at this stage about things like consistent or proper formatting, and there are a few entries that have incomplete data or that are "meta" entries meant to hold the place of more specific sources.
  


• So, while you're welcome to use this bibliography however you see fit (within the guidelines of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License), please note that it's not a presentation quality document.
  
  
• Some of the sources are pretty far afield to be called "writing studies," even broadly defined, but we're leaving them on for now.

We'll update the document as the project progresses. I'm especially looking foward to having it annotated, which (we hope) will happen sometime early in the new year.

Fifth Sign of the Apocalypse (From the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Dept.)

Once again completely blurring the line between truth and fiction, the U.S. military gives us the best reason so far for why Arrested Development should still be on the air.

I can just imagine Carl Weathers telling the Iraqi "actors:" "Take this discarded MRE packet and boil it with some water, and you got yourself a stew."