Do you think parsnip is a mendoucheous felcher? 1) Agree strongly 2) Mostly agree 3) Meh 4) Mostly disagree 5) Disagree strongly One vote for each IP address every 24 hours. Voting ends Sunday at midnight EST.

Believed abducted: Investigators were treating the disappearance of a 5-year-old north Florida girl as an abduction and continued searching for the child Thursday. The Putnam County Sheriff’s Office said investigators assume Haleigh Cummings was abducted because house-to-house searches of the neighborhood Wednesday found no evidence that she wandered away. Haleigh’s father Ronald Cummings also said he didn’t believe she had left their home in the middle of the night.

I wrote about it earlier today, and urthshu brought the funny with this: “BRAAAIIIINS!!!” “I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a zombie. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible.

As a wine aficionado, I’m always looking for entertaining ways to educate the public about various aspects of winemaking.   Here is a little-known step in the winemaking process.  As always, this is for educational purposes only.  Please, no wagering.  It’s also an opportunity for me to write the words “farging corksoakers” at a major blog.

Moe Lane brings important news: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies is going to be a real book, and possibly a real movie! And once Joss Whedon gets ahold of it, possibly a new series!* At this moment, one can only wish that Susan Sontag were here to tell us what it’s truly about. *sigh* *Will somebody eat Mr. Collins’s brain? Please? Speaking of brain eating, this gets headlines at NPR,

Hopey in our changeyness! Happy Birthday, Abe! Fortunately for us, we’ve got that other Illinus from Hawaii, Honest O! the Hairsplitter. Contact your Shannen Doherties about the transparency thingie. From Jonathan Wilton: How To Write a Screed—

Trial lawyers hardest hit. By popular request.

Post-partisan Messiah and advocate of new politics President Obama doesn’t stop at politicizing the national census: I am talking here about Obama’s new job for his dirt digger in residence, the newly minted job of “White House counsel research director.” It’s a grand title for dirt digger, but there you have it. As the Washington Times reported on February 9, President Obama invented a new position into which he slipped

As for my being obnoxious, if the truth is obnoxious, then I am guilty as charged.

From Maggie’s Farm via Theo Spark, this Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works piece: This latest warning about global warming alarmism follows the declaration that “the political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing” by University of Colorado Professor Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. on February 7, 2009. Pielke, Jr., accepts the UN IPCC view of global warming, bluntly called the current carbon trading based policy proposals to address man-made global