Could you pass the U.S. citizenship test? - Being an American - MSNBC.com

I have to be an honest Abe here: I only got 75%. The INS looks for 80%

Found this on Gizmodo: an LCD monitor framed entirely in bamboo! At £323 for a 19″ model, it’s not too bad a deal if the glass is decent.

If you play guitar and know who Richard Thompson is, you’ll probably find his Gear and Tunings Q&A an interesting read. If you don’t play guitar, there’s an assortment of
mp3’s available from his site, both serious and otherwise. His 1000 Years of Popular Music album is a brilliant idea, well worth checking out.

In writing songs, you ought to pull things into a sharper focus, so you draw characters who are larger than life, and you write about experiences that perhaps most people don’t have from day to day. People are not really interested in the story of a soccer dad, necessarily. Unless it’s the story of a soccer dad who can’t take any more and shoots his family. There’s a ballad. There’s your contemporary “Tom Dooley.”

It’s World Cup Soccer time again. Like most Americans, my favorite thing about World Cup Soccer is saying the word soccer to people in countries that really care about soccer. Well, that and the incidents of hooliganism. But with the threat of terrorism added into the mix, this year’s Cup has an almost unlimited potential for mayhem! And WFMU is celebrating with a World Cup Death Watch Contest. Even if you’re not into contests, they have an excellent collection of World Cup related links, including riot footage!!!!

Stephen Colbert spoke at Knox College’s 2006 Commencement on Saturday, and they’ve been kind enough to post a transcript of his speech.

But the best reason for me to come to speak at Knox College is that I attended Knox College. This is part of my personal history that you will rarely see reported. Partly because the press doesn’t do the proper research. But mostly because…it is not true! I just made it up, so this moment would be more poignant for all of us. How great would it be if I could actually come back here—if I was coming back to my alma mater to be honored like this. I could share with you all my happy memories that I spent here in…Galesburg, Illinois. Hanging out at the Seymour Hall, right? Seymour Hall? You know, all of us alumni, we remember being at Seymour Hall, playing those drinking games. We played a drinking game called Lincoln-Douglas. Great game. What you do is, you act out the Lincoln-Douglas debate and any time one of the guys mentions the Dred Scott decision you have to chug a beer. Well, technically 3/5 of a beer.