Elsewhere in what I misleadingly call the news:

* A somewhat surprising comparison of the achievements of the 2007 "New Direction" Democratic congress and the 1995 "Contract with America" Republican congress, at Cogitamus. They fare a lot better than I would have expected, though not nearly as well as they ought to have given the mood of the country.



* Austin Kleon has a great post on attempts to fashion "The Bible According to Jesus," with a fantastic illustration.



* How poker, the "cheater's game," has become younger and more intense as high-stakes games become increasingly mainstream, in The Economist.

Random links before I get back to work:

* How America Lost the War on Drugs. In Rolling Stone.

* An astoundingly complete timeline of the Planets of the Apes universe. Via Cynical-C.

* A man who walked into a police station five years after he was presumed dead in a canoeing accident has told officers he has no memory of what happened to him. Either this guy is a zombie, Jesus, a clone, or he was kidnapped by aliens. There are no other possibilities. Via MeFi.

* Rudy Giuliani: The Security Candidate.