A prose magician, Mr. Wallace was capable of writing — in his fiction and nonfiction — about subjects from tennis to politics to lobsters, from the horrors of drug withdrawal to the small terrors of life aboard a luxury cruise ship, with humor and fervor and verve. At his best he could write funny, write sad, write sardonic and write serious. He could map the infinite and infinitesimal, the mythic and mundane. He could conjure up an absurd future — an America in which herds of feral hamsters roam the land — while conveying the inroads the absurd has already made in a country where old television shows are a national touchstone and asinine advertisements wallpaper our lives.

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

When you mouse over a subject heading, it gives you a popup window describing what you might expect to find there. Here’s the mouseover view for Lifehacks:

Clicking on a subject category will take you to a page of prominent sites in that subject area, with their most recent posts:



Mousing over a headline will give you the opening paragraph of that post:

I really like how this displays information. The only thing that would make it better is if you could add feeds to the display. (It will let you hide displays you’re not interested.)