This has nothing to do with, well, anything, but I can’t resist showing people my new favorite comic strip.

Garfield Minus Garfield is a site dedicated to removing Garfield from the Garfield comic strips in order to reveal the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb.

Garfield Minus Garfield site

An article in The Fayetteville Observer highlights the danger of trying to walk in the city. The examples the article highlights are grim. But on a less dramatic level, I think quality of life would be improved if Fayetteville tried harder to be pedestrian-friendly and bicycle-friendly. With a few exceptions, for the most part, it’s not really laid out for that.

Now free after 18 months in prison for her role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, Lynndie England says she can’t get a job, or even leave her house out of fear she’ll be judged.

England, whose biography just came out, has apologized for her actions many times … but with a catch:

“They think that I was like this evil torturer. … I wasn’t,” she says. “People don’t realize I was just in a photo for a split second in time.”

I’ll buy that, personally, for what it’s worth – more a tale of weakness and poor judgment than of pure evil.

Her biographer isn’t so sure:

“Some days I liked her. Some days I hated her,” he says. “Some days I thought she should be in prison still, and some days I felt sorry for her.”

I didn’t meet England but I did see her up close a number of times while I was covering her military hearings in 2004. She was pregnant at the time (an uncharitable colleague said “she looks like a pregnant boy”). Now she has to take care of a four-year-old son with no job, limited mobility … and wonder what the kid’s friends at school will be saying in a few years.

The Associated Press article on a West Virginia newspaper site

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek uses that term to describe Sarah Palin, comparing her speech Friday to the Checkers speech:

“Nixon famously said, “I’m not a quitter” (before quitting). Palin said people who “plod along” on “the worthless path” have taken “the quitters way out.” She actually quit while attacking quitters. For a certain kind of numbskull, that counts as smooth. Now she’s free to be feted by conservatives in every state. She didn’t really quit, you see. She just quit holding back in her search for liberal prey.”

Nixon, you may recall, lost the presidency to JFK in 1960, then lost the California governor’s race to Edmund Brown in 1962, and announced his retirement from politics. Despite any negative connotations, being “the Nixon of our times” would indicate a high probability of a comeback.

Alter’s article