But do authors normally have to register? Allyson--ask Hec or Deb if they have. I guess, if they do, that the party issuing the 1099 might be the trigger.

Someone recently told me that the City of LA requires professional writers to have a business license. If you make less than a certain amount, you can file for an exemption, as long as you do it before the end of February.

Allyson, here's the page about the exemption.

Awesome quote:

"'Politics' is made up of two words. 'Poli,' which is Greek for 'many,' and 'tics,' which are bloodsucking insects." Gore Vidal

New favorite Giuliani-related article. The reporters call Chuck Grassley "butthead": [link]

My impression (which may be completely wrongheaded) is that a fair sized portion of the right wing knows that they're supposed to hate her, but are a little fuzzy on remembering exactly why.

I think Brenda summed it up very precisely.

Has Nilly finally gotten to see snow?

Nilly finally gotten to take a peek at b.org during working hours. And to be surprised and touched that Tom thought of her (and surprised to find out that ynet has an English version). But, no, no snow. It was in Jerusalem, the mountains up north (where Hil saw snow last year when she was in Israel) and some of the higher places in the south and around Jerusalem. Here we had only rain and hail.

In Jerusalem and up north they had snow days (yesterday and today), no school, the university canceled lessons, the whole thing. And it was funny to remember some of the descriptions from you guys regarding your snow days, and compare (um, you have much more of a winter than we do, in case it wasn't clear).

Hi Nilly! What have you been up to these days?

what kinda makes me crazy is that the extreme right WILL motivate against someone and vote for a candiate they don't really like just to oppose someone else, but many of the extreme left won't - they instead work against the centrist or left of center candidate for not being left ENOUGH.

who am I kidding with that "kinda" above, it makes me INSANE. I want to take all the people who were apathetic and said "doesn't matter who wins now, they both suck" in 04 out back and brand them with "It's my fault we had 8 years of W".

all the people who were apathetic and said "doesn't matter who wins now, they both suck" in 04

Huh. It seemed to me there were a lot fewer of these people in '04 than there were in '00....

What have you been up to these days?

Well, the semester finally started this week, after an almost 3-months strike [Edit: of the senior staff. So most of the non-senior staff couldn't teach, as well, because there were no lectures to give exercises on]. I was the only TA teaching in the entire department. You know how Louie 14 said "the country is me"? Well, for the freshmen, for several months, the physics department here was me. Poor things.

Can I heat up the branding irons for you, msbelle?

(I wish I could say the NPR story surprised me, but I hear so much of it that it hit my, "wait, this is supposed to be news?" button instead.)