11/27 Morning Communiqué

CITY PAGES BLOGS AND NEWS

Diablo Cody has a movie update and schmutz in her eye at Pussy Ranch.

We remember David W. Hermance, the mastermind behind the Toyota Prius, at Corpus Obscura.

Guest blogger Stephen Litel discusses Saturday's Clippers/Timberwolves game at Balls!

THESE DAYS

The upscale menswear and accessory store Jack Spade in Manhattan's trendy SoHo district has stopped selling $40 frog dissection kits (complete with a vacuum-sealed formaldehyde-treated frogs) due to customer outrage.

The number of "spam" messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini.

A Florida woman who claimed she was abducted was arrested on charges of filing a false police report after it was learned she was really meeting a man at Busch Gardens.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Winona Daily News reporter Brian Voerding blogs about the Myers-Briggs test, poetry, dead lap-tops, totaled cars, and the scourge of small town boosters at Erehwon.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

The Ten Worst Internet Acquisitions Ever

Via Robot Chicken: The Real World Metropolis

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"The date of the Boston Tea Party does not matter. I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class."

— actor Will Smith, on why he and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, homeschool their children