Today's small-town newspaper of the day is the Washington County Observer, hailing from two hours east of Tulsa, serving the greater Greenland, Arkansas area. Spring has arrived, and so has the West Fork ice cream truck man, who hopes that "this is the year his small business will turn a profit." This is a terrific story about a guy who had a crappy job who found a busted old truck, fixed it up and starting making his own snow cones and lemonade. And pickle snow cones! Which apparently kids love! American hero! Also, in the (very funny) weekly video from the publisher above, he discusses web metrics, [...]

We're going to talk about math and finance here, so take a deep breath. I'll go slow for you! The big headline today is that, from 2009's third quarter to the fourth quarter, the gross domestic product increased at an annualized rate of 5.7%. This sounds really big! So many big headlines about it. But may we put it in perspective? One of the short versions is that people had more cash, and spent more, in the final three months of the year, that they did in the previous three months. So when the Times trumpets that the "U.S. Economy Grew at Fastest Pace in 6 Years Last Quarter," [...]

Just a little programming note: a certain very ill and somewhat frightening monster has captivated the television stations and radios and many of the papers. If you're feeling a bit too heartily pursued by this particular monster, feeling a bit too caught in the crossfires of the media streams, we have a solution for you! Join us in turning your very important gaze elsewhere. It's your mind, after all—literally your only resource. Free it and your ass will follow, and there'll be no monsters on your tail.

The Washington Post announced today the winner of its America's Next Top Pundit reality blog contest thing. (Yes, that really happened.) Here's a spoiler: the people of color lost. (Again.) RIG. (Or maybe they won by losing?) Further spoiling: the winner is a Teach for America (ACORN?) executive named Kevin Huffman. We look forward to his appearances on all those chat shows that we don't watch because we treasure our sanity.

At least half the mysterious but immense number of people who attended Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear didn’t see or hear one iota of the stage show, because there were way too many people crowding round a woefully insufficient number of speakers and Jumbotrons. But nobody seemed to mind too much about missing the show, because they were having so much fun comparing costumes and signs, and giggling together over how weird “this whole thing” was. The atmosphere as I roamed about the massive crowd was uniformly giddy all day long.