Continuing my intermittent series of recommendation posts, today we’ll put aside more intellectual topics and focus on entertainment, albeit with a bit of a serious side. A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of taking a young fan to Otakon at the Baltimore Convention Center. Like Comic-Con in San Diego, Otakon features lots of people dressing up in unusual costumes (the technical term is “cosplay”); however unlike Comic-Con, which at this point is dominated by the promotion of high-profile Hollywood blockbusters, Otakon and its sister conventions (including CHS Otaku Fest, right here at Centennial High School in Ellicott City) focus on the less well-known parallel world of anime (Japanese animated movies and TV series) and manga (Japanese comics).1 ...

This week brings another in my series on people whose blogs and other writings are worth reading. (The first post was on the libertarian economist Arnold Kling.) I try to highlight people who aren’t household names but have something worth saying, enough so that I keep track of what they’re up to ib regular. This week’s person, the Russian ecologist turned American historian Peter Turchin, was name-checked in a Paul Krugman column recently, and he’s attracting more attention. However there’s still time to get in on the ground floor (as it were) by following his blogging at the Social Evolution Forum (a group blog, but Turchin does most of the posts). ...

I subscribe to almost two hundred blogs, covering a wide range of topics. I thought it would be fun to highlight some of the more interesting ones, in case anyone else finds any of them interesting and also to provide some insight into the particular things I tend to blog about. First up is Arnold Kling and his “Askblog,” the tagline of which is “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree.”1 ...

To get back in the blogging habit, a quick note on what’s going on food-wise in my part of Howard County, namely Route 40 in Ellicott City and the historic downtown: The exit: Cooks N’ Cakes closed its shop next to Starbucks on Route 40 just over a month ago. The web site has an “open letter” noting that the owner “has been presented with some opportunities she feels she can NOT pass up.” (The web site also still lists hours as if the shop is open, which I think is odd.) Their Facebook page goes on to note that they’re “talking with a local yogurt shop interested in carrying Cooks N Cakes cupcakes.” I didn’t go that often (eating cupcakes is not something I should make a daily or even weekly habit), but it was nice to have a shop nearby (even if I agreed with many reviewers that their cupcake batter was a tad dry). I’ll have to try one of the other cupcake shops in Howard County. ...

We conclude our tour of campaign signs from the 2010 Howard County elections by looking at some of my favorites. (For more signs see part 1 and part 2.) Frank Aquino for Board of Education (2010) I like this mainly for the obvious but nice “A+” design element. The slogan is too small to read, and the domain name could be ditched in favor of increasing the size of “Board of Education.” ...

Continue down memory lane with me as we look back at the campaign signs for Howard County local elections in 2010. (For more signs see part 1 and part 3, and note that I didn’t make a complete record of all signs.) Frank Mirabile for US Congress (2010) Based on the sign it appears that Frank Mirabile’s campaign website had (has?) a very long domain name; was frankmirabile.com taken? The stars are an interesting design element, but the middle and largest star looks somewhat chopped off. ...

Now that the local Howard County political campaigns are starting to heat up, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the last local elections in 2010. Don’t worry, this won’t be a boring statistical analysis or a deep philosophical rumination. Instead I thought it would be fun to comment on the candidates’ 2010 campaign signs—or at least the ones that I saw and managed to take pictures of. (I had meant to do this post in 2010 but never got around to it. For more on this topic see part 2 and part 3.) ...

Last Tuesday Tom Coale announced that he’s running for the open House of Delegates seat in the newly-created District 9B in (parts of) Ellicott City. Unfortunately I was not able to attend the fundraiser in which Tom announced his campaign. Equally unfortunately I won’t be able to vote for Tom; I live just north of the boundary line of District 9B, in “Bates-Miller” territory. However the least I can do is to publish a blog post commenting on Tom’s platform and campaign. ...

Congratulations to the Howard County Library System for being selected the 2013 library of the year by Gale and Library Journal magazine. Note that the cover story in the June 15 issue of Library Journal, as well as pretty much any other story about the library system these days, highlights the new Miller Branch and Historical Center in Ellicott City. That’s fine by me, since I live in Ellicott City less than a mile from the Miller Branch; it’s my main library and I visit it frequently. However let’s not forget that the former flagship library in Howard County, namely the Central Branch in Columbia, is not nearly so cover story worthy these days. A while ago I imagined how the Howard County Library System might work with the county government to re-imagine the Central Branch for the 21st century, building a new and larger facility next to Symphony Woods and adding a startup incubator and co-working space to the existing library functions. ...

As you’ll know if you read my last post, I decided to stop blogging for a while to save wear and tear on my shoulder. However as it happened I got a phone call from Nuance, the makers of Dragon Dictate for Mac, who were trying to get me to upgrade to the new version of the product that I purchased a few years ago. It was a reasonably good deal and I thought it was worth trying out, so I took advantage of the offer. ...