playing tambourine for minimum wage


Joanne Greenbaum, Untitled, 2011

* From Harper's November 2012:

-- Percentage of Ohio Republicans who say Obama is more responsible than Romney for the death of Osama bin Laden: 38

-- Rank of "I don't know" among the most common answers Republicans give when asked why black voters support Democrats: 1

-- Number of states that restrict men who father children through rape from obtaining parental rights: 20

-- Average number of square miles by which Arctic Sea ice decreased each day this summer: 36,400

-- Portion of Americans who don't walk for at least ten continuous minutes at any point in an average week: 2/5

* Tidbits:

-- A designated area for booksellers existed in the central market in Athens as far back as in the fifth century BC.

-- Every passenger in the non-smoking section of a plane that crashed off Norway in 1948 was killed. Bertrand Russell had been smoking -- and was one of those able to swim to safety.

-- Albert Camus had already purchased a train ticket, between the Vaucluse and Paris, when he made a last minute decision to accept a ride with Michel Gallimard -- which would end in the crash that killed them both.

-- How miraculous it was, noted Diogenes, that whenever one felt that sort of urge, one could readily masterbate. But conversely how disheartening that one could not simply rub one's stomach when hungry.

* "Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become." -- Mary McGrory (1918 - 2004)