Fun Map

According to this map produced by the geographers at Kansas State, Western Illinois is one of the saintliest areas in the country.

The southeastern U.S., Arizona, and southern California are where the devils reside.

Silly but enjoyable. For a closer, county-by-county look, try here.

Milton, We Hardly Knew Ye

. . . but as a lifelong Cardinals fan, I certainly appreciated your tantrums, mental mistakes, and failure to perform in the clutch.

Scales, on the other hand, has been fun to watch for the opposite reason. He appreciates being in the big leagues and tries hard to win at every moment. I actually felt bad for him when the ball popped out of his glove for a homer.

Bradley would have blamed the fence, blamed the fans, blamed his teammates, blamed the warning track, and on and on.

This year's 20 under 40

... is a group much, much more deserving of recognition than last year's. It's almost as if last year's edition was a clearing of the throat, coughing out the usual suspects of the well connected, the old names, and the favors due to advertisers, in order to clear the way for this year's group of some really energetic, dedicated people who are making the Quincy area a better place to live.

It takes a lot of moxie . . .

. . . to hire a lawyer to defend you on bad check charges and then bounce a check to him.

That Dangerous Socialist

"...the President will talk directly to students across the country on the importance of taking responsibility for their education, challenging them to set goals and do everything they can to succeed."

Can't have him spreading his radical ideas to the impressionable minds of our children, now can we?

First 9/11 creepmuffin

It's DDB Brazil, a branch of the worldwide ad agency....here's the story:

See for yourself.

Worrying in Advance

OK, maybe I'm off the deep end a little bit, but there are a few things that really make my blood boil.

One is when national symbols are used in advertising. I cringe whenever I see the Statue of Liberty in an ad. I hate seeing those stupid cartoons of Washington and Lincoln in February, placed in the newspaper or on TV by people trying to sell furniture or soap or whatever. I even dislike it when the newspaper prints those paper flags in July, because I know a lot of them are going to get used improperly.

Add to that the creeping use of 9-11 for rhetorical advantage. Didn't mind when Rudy Giuliani brought it up all the time -- he was there. But I am starting to hear more and more use of it in the generic sense of any sort of national catastrophe. "This [name your controversial act] is our nine-eleven," that sort of thing.

There was only one 9-11, and God willing there will only be one. No piece of legislation, no act by some partisan, no policy decision, no nothing, should ever be compared to 9-11. Using mention of 9-11 to make a rhetorical point is sacrilege.

So as the somber date approaches, I will be watching for what I consider to be misappropriations of that event, and I will be pointing my finger in shame. I hope I don't have to do it.

Andy Borowitz's latest funny

Watch your newspaper and see if Andy's prediction comes true....

Pointless 'Filler' Columns Abound
Lazy Columnists Pad Out Stories by Quoting Experts, Experts Say

In a phenomenon that occurs every year in the week before Labor Day, national columnists across America file pointless, content-free "filler" columns, enabling the lazy scribes to hit the beach earlier, according to observers who have been following this trend.


The "filler" columns are churned out in a matter of minutes with no loftier goal than meeting a deadline and filling up space -- meaning that columnists will often resort to using the same words or phrase again and again and again and again and again.

And rather than doing any original writing, the slothful columnists will rely on so-called "experts" to supply them with quotes to fill up space, experts say.

"They'll often quote people you've never heard of," says Harold Crimmins, an expert in the field of filler columns. "It's pretty shameless."

The typical "filler" column is often a reprint of a previously published column, but the writer will later plug in one cursory reference to current events, such as the health care reform controversy, to disguise this fact.

And in order to fill up space even faster, Crimmins says, the lazy beach-bound columnist will compose his summer "filler" columns with short paragraphs.

Many of these paragraphs will be as short as one sentence, he says.

"Or shorter," he adds.

There are other telltale signs a reader can look for in order to determine whether a writer has, in fact, filed a so-called "filler" column, according to Crimmins.

One of these is a tendency to repeat information that the reader has already read earlier in the article, with columnists even stooping to using the same quote twice.

"They'll often quote people you've never heard of," Crimmins says.

Another tip-off is if the column ends abruptly.