All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away


Stephen Shore, Self-Portrait, New York, March 20, 1976

* From Harper's December 2007:

-- Rank of Ron Paul among Republican candidates who have received the most in contributions from U.S. service members: 1

-- Minumum number of edits to Wikipedia since June 2004 that have been traced back to the CIA: 310

-- Percentage change since 1990 in the number of pawn shops in New York City: +523

-- Average number of sexual partners a person in a wealthy country has in his or her lifetime: 10

-- Average number in a poor country: 6

-- Number of lap dancers whose tips and menstrual cycles were tracked by a recent University of New Mexico study: 18

-- Percentage by which a dancer's tips during fertile days exceeded those during menstruation: 92

-- Number of Christmas trees FedExed last year to U.S. troops: 11,854

-- Number of seconds it takes a synthetic Christmas tree to burn: 32

* Two new episodes of Soft Focus -- Kevin Shields and Mark E. Smith -- are now online.

* "With a lyric poem, you look, and meditate, and put the rock back. With fiction you poke things with a stick to see what will happen." --Margaret Atwood