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Revealed: the woman behind the Belle de Jour blog She’s real, all right, and I’m sitting on the bed next to her. Her name is Dr Brooke Magnanti. Her specialist areas are developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology. She has a PhD in informatics, epidemiology and forensic science and is now working at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health. She is part of a team researching the effects of exposure to the pesticide chlorpyrifos on foetuses and infants. From 2003 to late 2004, Brooke worked as a prostitute via a London escort agency; she started blogging as Belle de Jour — after the Buñuel film starring Catherine Deneuve as a well-to-do housewife who has sex for money because she’s bored — shortly into her career as a call girl, after an incident she thought funny enough to write down. - Seth Anderson

In an effort to increase my ability to do this kind of reporting, I’ve exchanged contact information with several Democratic Press Secretaries. I’ve explained that I am a progressive news service and that my goal is to quench a thirst for timely progressive news… that it’s not enough to complain about Fox, Nedra Pickler, John Solomen or an inability to get your message out… that growing a progressive media requires cooperation from the news-makers that want to see the progressive media grow… Perhaps I’m too impatient… But the truth is that I’m having a really difficult time getting my calls returned from most offices. That’s something I’d understand if my web videos hadn’t been viewed nearly 500,000 times. But hell, it’s clear my work is reaching people, so it’s difficult for me not to see a certain form of elitism in the Democratic communications establishment. - Seth Anderson

Are those Senators not insensitive to rape victims? It's quite obvious that they are. The good news is that the Republican senators have learned their lesson: Privately, GOP sources acknowledge that they failed to anticipate the political consequences of a “no” vote on the amendment. And several aides said that Republicans are engaged in an internal blame game about why they agreed to a roll-call vote on the measure, rather than a simple voice vote that would have allowed the opposing senators to duck criticism. Right, they forgot to hide their misogyny. (Man, you let your guard down for one minute and those bitchuz are all over you.) - Seth Anderson

For fans of Mad Men it will prove difficult to learn of the story behind 'Peace, Little Girl' - a brutal 60 second television spot which first aired on September 7, 1964 - and not imagine the offices of Sterling Cooper. The ad was conceived by agency Doyle Dane Bernbach on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson, in an effort to kill off Republican candidate Barry Goldwater's march to the White House. DDB, desperate for success with their first political client, threw 40 of their best men at the campaign and chose to aim for the jugular by capitalising on comments Goldwater had previously made concerning nuclear weapons. The following letter was written by DDB co-founder and legendary ad-man Bill Bernbach just months before the election, at a time when Goldwater had managed to regain the public's confidence and the DNC had started to drag their heels. - Seth Anderson

I got high last night on LSD My mind was beautiful, and I was free Warts loved my nipples because they are pink Vomit on me, baby Yeah Yeah Yeah. Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind It's erect because he's blind, it's erect because he's blind Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind It's erect because he is blind Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs You can fuck them Yeah Yeah Yeah. The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles Ramona's titties died in hell And the Nazis want to kill everyone. - Seth Anderson

"When Noah was drafted, [Rick ] Morrissey wrote a column called "You Must Be Joakim" predicting Noah would be a bust, and promising to eat his column, with salsa, if Noah turned into a good NBA player. When I finally saw the video, one thing stands out: Joakim Noah is not only there watching, but he's up out of his chair, cheering and dancing! After Morrissey's droning preamble, in which he doesn't really admit he was wrong, but instead asks Noah about how he got so dramatically better (as if nobody could have possibly foreseen this two-time NCAA champion succeeding -- let the record reflect that when Noah was selected, David Thorpe said the Bulls would win a championship with Noah), it gets to eating time. Noah claps his hands together, shouting "NOW WE'RE EATING THE SALSA! NOW THE GOOD PART!" Indeed, because of Noah's energy, this is the good part. " - Seth Anderson

Asimov was a mensch - Seth Anderson

Written by second guitarist Bryan MacLean in the early '60s in musical tribute to his mother, a flamenco dancer, "Alone Again Or" is lushly beautiful, but also achingly sad, thanks both to MacLean's distressed lost-love lyrics and Lee's high-register vocals, which give the song an off-kilter quality due to the fact (also revealed in the reissue's liner notes) that Lee's vocals were originally meant to be simply a high harmony to MacLean's gruffer lead, but Lee pushed his own vocals front and center, mixing MacLean out almost entirely, during the album's final mix. In both respects, then, it fits perfectly as the start of Forever Changes, a jaundiced "no thank you" to the supposed sunshine and good vibes of the Summer of Love as well as Arthur Lee's own Pet Sounds, the album he intended as his personal artistic summation. - Seth Anderson

What does a person actually do with an autograph once he has it? Frame it? Look, the same thing so-and-so writes in the checkout line at Target is on my wall, where a painting or a photo might be! Fondle it? Oh, that downward stroke is so sensual, like we would be together if only we had the chance. Tuck it away in hopes of someday selling it to one of the folks who would frame or fondle it? That may be as realistic as any answer, but it's pretty cynical. I absolutely do not get autographs, especially in the broader sense of the term. Seeing them sought and signed strikes me as one of the most absurd rituals we have, a time waster on the magnitude of airport security or "The Price Is Right." - Seth Anderson

"I’ve read PG-13 fan discussions pertaining to whether Don and Peggy would ever bang. As Weiner states, it’s more of a brother-sister relationship, though one couldn’t help notice the similarities between Don promising to “spend the rest of my life trying to hire you,” and Henry Francis forever offering Betty everything she ever wanted in life. When Don tells Peggy, after visiting her at her semi-new apartment, that he doesn’t know if he can make it without her, the similarity to Henry’s line about eternity is obvious. If Draper really cared about saving his marriage, this is the type of selfless confession he’d have to make to Betty. Whether she would accept it (probably not) is beside the point." - Seth Anderson

When they showed the shot of a Farmer Whitman arguing with the farm co-operative it looked like it could transposed over the 1885 Potato Eaters painting by Van Gogh. - Seth Anderson

"Shut the Door. Have a Seat" felt very much like a caper movie: the jazzy piano music, the intrigue, the plan unfolding perfectly as Lane walked in, got fired by St. John, and walked out happily, leaving a dumbfounded Moneypenny in his wake. Specifically, though, the episode felt like my favorite part of any caper (or other kind of ensemble adventure) movie: the gathering of the team. I have been, and always will be, a sucker for those sequences in movies like "Ocean's Eleven," "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Magnificent Seven" where the two leaders (there are always two guys at first, aren't there?) travel around to assemble the perfect team of experts, explaining their value and using various tricks of persuasion along the way to get them on board. - Seth Anderson

I think [Conrad Hilton is] a zealot, and his zeal was focused on one particular area -- his business. They don't get into it on the show but Conrad Hilton's private life was just about as rocky as Don's. He left behind women, he worked all the time. But his zeal for what he's doing relates to his business and his belief in God and America and what it can bring to the world. He feels that's his mission -- to bring America to the world, and he has bought into it 100 percent. - Seth Anderson

It’s so unambiguous to me that this marriage is over, but the audience seems to cling to the idea that they should be together because we want to believe in those things. The marriage was not good. It was built on a lie and the lie was exposed. In the end, Don coming clean really damaged his relationship with her, more than the lying, her seeing who he actually was. I do believe when he says his mother was a 22-year-old prostitute that Betty is looking at something that is very far from what she had planned for herself... That was the whole story of the season. When Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) came on to her… a switch went off in her head of what was missing in her life, which was a true, romantic attachment. In the end, that combination with her gut feeling that something wasn’t right in her marriage and finding out the truth, they don’t belong together anymore, kids or not. You’ve got to take it pretty seriously when someone’s flying to Reno to get a divorce. - Seth Anderson

Although this episode began with ominous echoes of The Godfather…it pedaled into an inspirational tale--an entrepreneurial vision of A Christmas Carol, where everyone comes together under one roof not out of love or family ties or sentimental obligation but out of mutual economic self-interest and buccaneer solidarity, sink or swim, eat or be eaten. “Well, it’s official,” toasts Roger after he, Don, Bert, and Pryce form their rebel alliance. “Friday, December 13, 1963: Four guys shot their own legs off.” The shark cunning entailed in starting up this new agency may seem cold, bloodless, and mercenary—an Ayn Rand mission minus the rhetorical bombast--but the collaborative enthusiasm of this breakout operation was brisk, invigorating: it gave you a lift being in an adult universe where talent and initiative were on the move and mediocrity left behind to fend for itself. - Seth Anderson

" I was just transfixed by Sally's watchful brown eyes. She just kept looking from parent to parent, waiting for someone to tell her the truth. More effectively than anyone else has ever done, she called Don on his b.s. "You say things and you don't mean them! You can't just do that!" Later, we see Sally once again in front of the TV, her comforter, her friend. Carla and the TV are the most stable forces in Sally's life. Truth be told, Carla being the biggest influence on Sally's life would not be a bad thing at all. Later when Bobby was clinging to Don's body like a little monkey, unwilling to let go, holding on tight with every limb -- that was heartbreaking." - Seth Anderson

Don’s revulsion at being sold off has to do both with his free-pony-roaming the-silvery-plains sense of individualism (DREAMY) and also McCann Erickson’s noxious reputation in the 1960s. ‘Giantism’ was their business ethos. Beginning in the early 1960s, McCann-Erickson, then known as Intergroup McCann-Erickson, gobbled up a mid-sized shops and retained them under one umbrella, but still forced them the compete for clients. This had an upside: two agencies could be under the McCann Erickson parent with one shop servicing American Airlines and the other shop servicing TWA. And a downside: the fear, at the time, was there would be leaks and betrayals between agencies. In 1964, Nestle left McCann-Erickson because they also serviced Carnation. Continental also withdrew their business because McCann was in bed with other airlines. “Bigness is an evil,” a Nestle executive explained, “that strains relationships that ten years ago were very warm and close.” - Seth Anderson

"As is occasionally pointed out when journalists and news business people complain that Google is stealing their content, if they don't want Google to index their pages they can simply... tell Google not to index their pages by inserting a bit of code into them. What they really want Google to do is pay them for the privilege of making money from a derivative of their product, the way book reviewers always pay novelists, for example." - Seth Anderson

"For white men ages 25 to 44 with a college degree": 3.9% unemployment. Oh, well that makes a less compelling headline now, doesn't it. - Seth Anderson

The dead may breathe new life into the Three Arts Club in the Gold Coast. Once a 110-room dormitory for women artists, the landmark building could become a permanent home to the cremated remains of as many as 15,000 people. That plan, put forth by a group of investors led by Chicago architect Bill Bickford, is a novel one for a property revered by preservationists - Seth Anderson

"Two groups are planning museums in the legendary neighborhood to capture memories of the 1960s hippie movement before they fade with age. If the museums launch, they would be the latest in a recent push by San Francisco groups to better document the city’s history" - Seth Anderson

Harper’s Magazine, November 1964, pp. 77-86. It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it—and its targets have ranged from “the international bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers. - Seth Anderson

A random assortment of my photos (via Chicago Sage) - Seth Anderson

How is it that Bush and Cheney could take us to war in Iraq with constantly shifting rationales, unleash the NSA to spy on the country at large, and with the aid of foot soldiers like John Yoo cobble together shoddy legal findings as flimsy justification for torture and other abuses of executive power? - Seth Anderson

"I'm also self employed, so no one provides any kind of insurance for me, I have to buy it. Health insurance costs vary from state to state, but here in NYC, the cheapest I can find for my wife and I, with a large deductible, is over $1000 a month. That's another mortgage payment each month, into the pockets of super wealthy insurance execs, in all likelihood for nothing. Statistics show that if I ever want to use that insurance there is an excellent chance they'll find a way to deny me. That's how they make their profits" - Seth Anderson

"Create a font from your own handwriting At fontcapture.com you can create a font from your very own handwriting. There's no software to download and install, all you need is a printer and a scanner" wonder if my handwriting has changed much since the 1990s when I last did something similar - Seth Anderson

23 Random Photos for your viewing pleasure Set automatically created by dopiaza's set generator on 3rd November 2009 at 6:56am GMT - Seth Anderson

You can redeem a code at the iTunes Store by following these instructions: Open iTunes. Click iTunes Store in the pane on the left-hand side of the window. Click the Redeem link in the QUICK LINKS box on the right-hand side of page. Enter your code. Click the Redeem button. - Seth Anderson

Staring at your two bare hands For hours. Just like a young, Sexually frustrated male On a Friday night With nothing better To do. - Seth Anderson

Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has sacked Professor David Nutt as senior drugs adviser after the scientist renewed his criticism of the government's decision to toughen the law on cannabis. Johnson wrote to Nutt saying he no longer had confidence in him as chairman of the Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) and asking him to consider his position. Nutt had accused ministers of "devaluing and distorting" the scientific evidence over illicit drugs by their decision last year to reclassify cannabis from class C to class B against the advice of the ACMD - Seth Anderson