Leonard loves the crankiness of Losing the Race by John McWhorter. I love the anecdotes. I'd be fine with a book that just contained the anecdotes from all of McWhorter's other books, and lectures, if possible.

Hey, now that India and Pakistan are eyeball-to-nuclear-eyeball -- no, I don't want to think about it -- are we back to calling General Musharraf "leader" or "dictator" or are we still calling him "President" even though he's not? Just checking.

And you've heard of "a recipe for disaster" and "a disaster waiting to happen," but only recently have I heard "a prescription for disaster." Metaphor-wise, who writes the prescription? And where do you cash it in? With a recipe, at least there's the possibility that it's been passed down through the ages, and that you have all the ingredients at hand. A prescription presupposes much more infrastructure than does a recipe. I'll take the simpler one.