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I want to Roast a Pig — Need Sources for Pig, Roasting Equipment: Question: I want to roast a pig — enough to feed 20-30 people — in about a week and a half. I live in Williamsburg Brooklyn. I am most interested in renting a Caja Chino, but I am open to other cooking methods. If you have attempted a project like this I would really appreciate any advice and potential sources for the pig itself and equipment. Reply:…

So apparently my namesake wrote a famous scroll that the Brits are loaning back to the Iranians. How thoughtful of them. This clay cylinder is inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform with an account by Cyrus, king of Persia (559-530 BC) of his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC and capture of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king. Cyrus claims to have achieved this with the aid of Marduk, the god of Babylon. He then describes measures of relief he brought to the…

Kerry: 8.5 Bush: 6.75 Bush gets a slight increase for not being *as* jumpy as he was before — oh and for this line in regard to the question about the draft: “I hear there’s rumors on the, uh, Internets.” Kerry was strong, clear, decisive, made his policies understandable. I’m glad he was straight on his taxes. And plus, it was really good that he went back over the question about why people don’t like us abroad. You can’t just…

Why didn’t anyone tell me that John Flansburgh had another band (Rich? Boyk? Frysinger?) ? They’ve got some neat stuff. I was perusing the TMBG site today and downloaded the TMBG Clock Radio — basically a downloadable program that acts as Internet radio station that only plays TMBG. On it, I discovered a song called “Hillbilly Drummer Girl,” which was really poppy and fun (turns out it’s a cover of a song written by the Young Fresh Fellows, but still).…

MIAMI (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney asserted on Thursday that a report by the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, who found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991, justifies rather than undermines President Bush’s decision to go to war. The report shows that “delay, defer, wasn’t an option,” Cheney told a town-hall style meeting. While Democrats seized on the new report by Charles Duelfer to bolster their case that invading Iraq was a mistake,…

Ed: This perfectly encapsulates how I feel about j-school assignments. (Courtesy JSchool05 blog.) by Brian Montopoli New York Observer October 11, 2004 A few weeks before graduating from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism two years ago, Shelley Preston was asked by the yearbook committee for a quote capturing her Columbia experience. “It was an easy choice,” said Ms. Preston, who now works for a Florida newspaper. “Being a student journalist covering big-city news, you feel like youÕre playing make-believe.…

Rotis are the Indian/Caribbean equivalent of burritos.

Cheney: 7 Edwards: 7 So contrary to what I had expected, Edwards didn’t totally mop the floor with Cheney, and he gave a great effort. There wasn’t a lot to cut in on or really take him down with. Edwards gave a better closing statement than Cheney did. Cheney didn’t really respond to the accusations that he said that electing Kerry would be more dangerous and seemed to deny that he had said there was a link between Al Qaeda…

ÒVoters with active passports prefer Kerry 58% to 35%, while those without a passport are for Bush 48% to 39%.” – John Zogby, Zogby International

Wow! Cal beats Oregon St. 49-7, the Dodgers come from a 3-0 deficit in the bottom of the ninth to snag their first division title in years by beating the Giants 7-3 — and I just got back from a concert of They Might Be Giants in New York City! What a day!