Julie, the title character, is a frustrated temp who “embarks on a yearlong culinary quest to cook all 524 recipes in Julia’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking

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“.

Annabel Crabb’s head will explode from the mountain of material she has to work with.

Sunlight is streaming through the living room window and I want to be outside. 10 days to go.The Poet on dvd

“Nostalgia” is actually from the Greek meaning the pain from returning home, or the pain of memories.

This kind of scenario

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has happened to me dozens of times, and I am sure it’s a highly relatable tale. That “what if” feeling tugs at your heart’s core, something akin to but not quite regret. I would not ordinarily think about this too deeply, as I’m of the opinion that past is past, and dwelling on it is unhelpful, because it can’t be changed. Still, self-reflexion can be enlightening, revealing our thought processes, purpose, and nature.

I distinguish it from regret, because “what if” is forward-looking. It is about what might be, not what could have been. It is hopeful rather than wistful. Today, I caught my regular 8.10 express to the City; fell asleep in Competition Law; was gifted an ice cream; had a chat with Mr. Japanese McGrumpypants in L & E that gave me a giddy little thrill; and discussed the not so fine points of Farah v Say-Dee

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. I wouldn’t have changed it for all the trains in the world.

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This seems like a fairly mundane thing to write about, but the New York Times’ Die, Mommie, Die! rip Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery ipod

articles are finally readable without affecting your (my) sanity. I tend to have trouble focussing, so I highlight text as I read it. I also tend to click randomly and incessantly. Previously, on the NYT website, double-clicking (and thus highlighting) a word would pop up an unwanted window with a definition of the word (how much faith do they have in their readers?). It’s unnecessary because Mac OS X has a system-wide built-in dictionary panel thingie.

Anyway, that blight is gone. What happens now is a tasteful question mark icon appears, which can then be clicked to reveal that frustrating pop up window (or ignored if you prefer).

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, an interesting view of the U.S. financial bailout emerged.

One of the follies leading to the credit crunch was the habit of taking otherwise bad debts, and repackaging them into supposedly AAA securities. The vast number of these securities floating around the financial markets, and the inability of investors to a priori

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know the true value and quality of them (other than trusting the ratings agencies), has contributed to the freezing up of lending markets.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s bailout package plans to buy up these bad securities to mainline some liquidity back into the markets. The government has to finance this measure out of general revenue. The federal budget is already deeply in deficit, and both presidential candidates are offering large tax cut proposals. The bailout package is thus really being financed through more borrowing, i.e., issuing U.S. Treasury bonds — basically the safest kind of financial security there is.

So, the government is buying up bad securities and placing them under the façade of safe securities. Isn’t this precisely the kind of behaviour that they have been admonishing?