Dis and dat
The most dangerous professor to ever play wing, maximum leader and president for life of the We Are All Giant Nuclear Fireball Now Party, the blogtastic Michael Berube, has returned to the interweb tubes! When he shut down his popular blog back at the start of the year, was an occasion for much weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. The last thing he wrote there is one of the most eloquent and informed explanations of agnosticism you are likely to read. Now he is making his triumphant return at Crooked Timber, hopefully with Theory Tuesdays and Arbitrary but Fun Fridays and hockey blogging in tow. Welcome back Michael, but remember, the Rangers still suck.

Kevin is home. Hopefully, his parents will get to stay.

Hold the presses, Peter MacKay did something right, though it did take him a few weeks to get around to it.

A South Korean protester invaded the Japanese embassy grounds in Seoul yesterday, but for some reason the Japanese media stuck its fingers in its ears, chanted Kimigayo and pretended it didn't happen.

Finally, a question about the Canadian budget: Wasn't the rise of the Western populist movement of the 80's and 90's that gave birth to the Reform Party and its current incarnation as the Alberta-centric Conservative Party of Canada largely sparked by Western outrage over equalization payments and federal spending giving Quebec a disproportionately larger slice of the pie than the west. Wasn't this the greatest sin the Liberals could be accused of, that they were siphoning off money from the West and using it to buy votes in Quebec to stay in power?
Glad to see the Gnu Gummint of Kanada has put a stop to that.