Counting Dwarfs

During the 1988 campaign season, the major Democratic candidates were derisively referred to as "Gary and the Seven Dwarfs". "Gary", of course, was Gary Hart of Colorado. Try as I might, I can only come up with six of the "dwarfs": Michael Dukakis, Paul Simon, Jesse Jackson, Dick Gephardt, Tom Harkin, and Al Gore Jr. Does anyone remember who number seven was? (Joe Biden?)

Amazon Raid

Last Sunday, I put in an order at Amazon; it arrived in three separate packages over the last two days.

The contents included two CDs - Dinah Washington, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, and Steppenwolf, All Time Greatest Hits - and six books: Laura Joh Rowland, Assassin's Touch (another in the Sano Ichiro series); Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys; George Macdonald Fraser, Flashman's Lady; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (look, you know what a procrastinator I am!); Nicholas Ostler, Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World; and James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds.

I'm especially looking forward to reading Empires of the Word; I've heard a lot of good things about it.