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Attempted Assassination in Arizona

Our country got uglier today. A Congresswoman was shot in the head, apparently point-blank, today, many reports said she was dead, but now apparently she isn't as of 1:11pm Pacific. Other people apparently were killed. Dish is covering it .

Finnish "Hitler dog" became Nazi obsession

In addition to their other faults, the Nazis were apparently rather thin-skinned : BERLIN – Newly discovered documents have revealed a bizarre footnote to the history of the Second World War: a Finnish mutt whose imitation of the Hitler salute enraged the Nazis so deeply that they started an obsessive campaign against the dog's owner. Absurdly, a totalitarian state that dominated most of Europe was unable to do much about Jackie and his paw-raising parody of Germany's Fuehrer. In the middle of World War II — months before Hitler ordered some 4.5 million troops to invade the Soviet Union — the Foreign Office in Berlin commanded its diplomats in the Nazi-friendly Nordic country to gather evidence on the dog, and even came up with plans to destroy the pharmaceutical wholesale company of its owner. HT: Mad Latinist via Facebook . You'd think they would have had more important things to think about. But I guess that's what totali

"Settlers is the new Monopoly" watch

Internal Monlogue has been following the " Settlers of Catan is the new Monopoly " idea for a few years now. Here's another recent blog post on mental_floss touting that idea: The boardgaming world was, however, been pretty stolid for the bulk of the 20th century, with very little innovation from within; the mainstream board gaming companies’ idea of creativity is coming up with themed versions of existing stalwart games. But in 1995, the game Wired magazine dubbed the “Monopoly killer” (although Monopoly isn’t dead … yet) entered the market, and after a long, slow incubation period, is moving into the mainstream and threatening the established order of board games.

Mad Men, but with nerds

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Here are some photos from Bell Labs in the 1960's : HT: Gregg Favalora on Facebook .

Yay filibuster reform

Looks like it might happen . If you want to gum up the Senate, you shouldn't be able to just phone it in. You should have to show up. And lets get rid of things like anonymous individual holds on nominations, too.

Pat Robertson comes out for pot decriminalization

Yes, that Pat Robertson . Let sanity prevail. End the drug war. It won't be perfect. But it will be so much better than the status quo.

Oh Christmas Tree

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from xkcd , of course. Stockings are LIFO .