via @southern_bread

Greg Howard (no relation):

The vote to close schools felt predetermined. Once the human element was removed, it was the most rational thing to do. Of the eight voting trustees, the first five voted to pass the proposal. Upon hearing the fifth, there was an audible groan in the main chamber. Fighting back tears, parents began to pick up their weeping children and exit the room … parents, teachers and children left 3700 Ross either in silence, deflated or in the same tears they’ve been shedding for months.

The question just came up at work, do you use one “l” or two when you spell the past tense of cancel (canceled or cancelled)? It turns out both are valid, but which one is preferred?

Maeve Maddox at DailyWritingTips says:

The double l in cancelled is British usage; the single l is American usage… In American usage, the final l is doubled only when the stress falls on a syllable other than the first.

Where British usage calls for levelled, libelled, quarrelled, and travelled, American usage has leveled, libeled, quarreled, and traveled.

American usage agrees with British on annulled, controlled, patrolled, and extolled because the stress falls on the second syllable of these words.

Confused yet?

Maria Halkias:

Gone are the dollar and percent-off coupons, morning only sales, additional markdowns at the register and all the “gimmicks,” Johnson said. It will get rid of signs with promotional prices above the racks telling shoppers how much of the artificially inflated “full” prices they’re getting. To make things even more simple, prices will no longer end in 99 cents.

Now that sounds refreshing.

Megan Howard:

Henry has adjusted quite well to life on this earth — it’s his parents who are having difficulty adjusting to life with him. We love this little guy to bits, but we’re not always sure what to do with him. Henry is healthy, eating well, pooping up a storn, and only cries when he needs a diaper change or something to munch on.

I didn’t believe at love at first sight until January 10 at 2:25am when I first set eyes on my son.

Dave Winer:

It was all about corporations. On the one side is Hollywood and on the other side is Silicon Valley. That’s how news people think. They look for big rich entities that are facing off and make it an epic battle.

Spot on analysis. News has become entertainment. It’s almost like writing historical fiction where you take some facts and build a story around them. In order to sell the ads, you need to attract the people, so you create something that will get the people to watch. Find the facts and build a story around them.

The fact is that new legislation will give the federal government the power to take over your website at the first complaint of a copyright holder. No investigation, no due process, no proof. Just a compliant.

This isn’t tech startups vs movie studios, it’s the federal government vs our right to free speech. But that’s not the story news people want to tell.

Joe Bunting:

Through my college and post-college years, I experimented with cigars, pipes, and menthol cigarettes. (They’re not real cigarettes, right? They smell like mint.) But whenever someone offers me a real cigarette?

“Ewwwwww. Gross, no. I don’t smoke those things. Are you even a Christian?”

Rachel Held Evans:

Over the past few years, however, I’ve worked up the courage to re-approach the Bible, this time with a different set of expectations, and I get the feeling that I’m in the early stages of learning how to relate to it the way that an adult child relates to her parents, a way that honors and respects the Bible for what it is, not what I want it to be.

Robert Wilonsky:

We all knew it when we saw it, with 24 seconds to go in the first half and the Dallas Cowboys down 21-0 to the New York Giants: That Sunday Night Football shot of owner and general manager Jerry Jones, his head buried in his hands, would become the defining shot of an 8-8 season that felt much, much worse from the very first game.

Jon Acuff:

Again, not talking same underwear. I’m talking same jeans, same sweater, same shoes…

As I read this, I chuckled first. Then I realized I’m wearing exactly what I wore yesterday morning at church.