Germany is already back on coal. [www.dw.de]

I live in Germany, and I have kept my mouth shut about the whole thing. But: I find it galling and frustrating that my office overlooks the Rhine river, and every day I see multiple (3-4) barges of imported coal going from Rotterdam to the south. This was not the case 2 years ago. Also, my friends in Hannover were…

Thank you thank you thank you for posting this. I loove Betsey's jewlery, and was terribly upset at the thought of not being able to get any more fun earrings. I'm also outside the US at the moment, so I can't exactly stock up at the liquidation sales. It's nice to know that they'll still be around when I'm back.

Sodium Hydroxide's common household name is lye, and in Germany, everything that we refer to as "pretzels" are called "lye breads," because of the lye coating. This mildly upset me when I first figured it out. However, they are all delicious.

Thanks for this. It's nice to hear the actual statistics instead of a bunch of hysteria. (Not that vCJD isn't a nasty, terrible way to go)

Not in the US. Anyone who has lived a total of six months or more in Europe since 1980 is ineligible.

I have a theory that HBO allows a show's creators/writers/etc. a huge amount of leeway with plot, character development, etc., (and a huge budget, generally) provided that a show has a certain amount of female nudity. Thus Tony Soprano's office (one of them, anyway) was in a strip club.

Seriously. Also, I've never understood why people are horrified by aspic but perfectly happy to eat Jell-o.

I used to say "if you can't buy it at Target, you probably don't need it," before I moved to a larger urban area and the target near me was a parking-less seething pile of humanity's worst.

There are also property and inheritance (outside of a will) rights implicit in marriage, not to mention the fact that it makes potential immigration or international living quite a bit easier.

not to mention property and inheritance rights.

This is exactly what I was going to say.

Most lipsticks are actually made by one company: Faber-Castell (my aunt works in their marketing). Yup, the same people who make those awesome high-end pens and the standard colored pencils.

omg. It's like a real-life, non-cannibalistic version of bugs bunny!

According to the LA times, that's exactly the pool they're drawing from. [latimesblogs.latimes.com]

Actually, the parents are pretty vocally pissed about it. [latimesblogs.latimes.com]

The LA Times article says that the replacment faculty and staff were all district employees who were on a "rehire list" (I guess that means furlough?) and that they expect most of the old faculty and staff to be back soon.

I have a philip's blue light, and it is a lovely thing. They regularly go on sale at costco.com, if any of you are costco members.

Awww, no love for the cabinet of secrets? A "secret" (all you have to to do is ask the docent) room in the Archaeological Museum in Naples where they put all the Penis and sex-related artwork from Pompeii? I think that qualifies as being pretty phallic. [en.wikipedia.org]

It's been about 90 minutes, here. I'm glad to hear you're having the same problem.