Steve Martin never ceases to amaze me—sometimes by his audacity, sometimes by what he chooses to do (any number of recent movie projects illustrates this point, although our culture's current resistance to good film-making is not his fault). I digress, however—this is powerful, honest writing and I feel better for simply having read it. You go, Mr. Martin.

We're talking two 500-cubic-inch V-8s, 1000 board-feet feet of mahogany (cut into 4183 pieces), five gallons of glue, 60 pounds of drywall screws, and four gallons of varnish.

From <I>The Guardian</I> comes "Fallout: the human cost of a nuclear catastrophe," a photo essay on Chernobyl that's difficult to look at&mdash;and impossible to look away from.

He was looking at me. I acknowledged, nodded politely, turned away.

John Atkinson just emailed this link asking, "Have you blogged this?" Well, no&mdash;although I do believe I emailed it to him back in ought-three. Disirregardless, it's a good'un.

A 1959 Walt Kelly <I>Pogo</I> page commemorating the best note ever. Nowadays you'd never get away with humor this wordy, but the language is intoxicating.