Friday's 12-days-to-Christmas Link-Oh-Rama

Welcome to this week's link-oh-rama, a day in history Saddam Hussein would just as soon forget, which, technically, I suppose he already has since he is worm food. But we shan't forget these notes of interest:

** Popular Mechanics is turning into one of my favorite websites. Here they have Valet Confessions: What They Really Think of Your Shiny Car.

** Megyn Kelly has taken cable news by storm. The Washington Post has an interesting profile on her.

** In case you missed it, my man Pope Francis was named Time magazine Person of the Year. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Miley Cyrus! Here's a great summary.

** This dude at the St. Paul paper offers: My semi-unorthodox tips for not getting cold in the cold. Where were you last week, buddy?

If you have nowhere to hike, move. But don’t just stomp around in a circle like a fool. Do jumping jacks, like a bigger fool. Or fling your arms alternately in big circles like Olympic swimmers before they take their marks.

Not only will these movements get your heart rate up (and boiler working), you’ll physically force blood to your fingers and, if you do jumping jacks, toes.
When camping in cold weather, this is my pre-bedtime routine.

** Vanity Fair tells us: How George W. Bush Evolved from the Uncoolest Person on the Planet to Bona Fide Hipster Icon like Mark Haugen.

** From freakonomics.com: The underlying point of everything we’ve ever written about baby names is that the name is essentially the parents’ signal to the world of what they think of their kid — whether it’s a signal of tradition, religion, aspiration, affiliation, or whatnot.

Here is a very pure example of that principle: a baby named Colt .45 Stratemeyer. It’s via Jim Romenesko, from a birth announcement in the Tillamook (Oregon) Headlight-Herald:

Colt .45 Stratemeyer was born Nov. 26, 2013 at Tillamook Regional Medical Center. He weighed seven pounds, two ounces. He joins his older brother, Hunter Allen Stratemeyer, 3. Baby Colt’s parents are Joshua and Rebekah Stratemeyer of Toledo.

I assume the announcement is legitimate, though I can’t say for certain. I am guessing there are fiction writers out there who could write a short story or maybe even a novel with no more inspiration than this birth announcement.

** The Intercollegiate Studies Institute emails to say: Last-minute holiday shopping? ISI has you covered. We've made EVERYTHING in our store available at a 50% discount! That includes ISI's Book of the Month, The Cost of Liberty, the gripping new biography of John Dickinson, whom historian Forrest McDonald calls "the most underrated of all the Founders."

** Heard this on the way back from Pierre on Wednesday. It'll stick in your head like glue - tequila-flavored glue.