Month: January 2004

An online test I found recently served as a reminder of the horrors of Communism, highlighting as it did the primary role of Vladimir Lenin in paving the way for the vast slaughters of Stalin and Mao. For the many years when the slaughter was ongoing, people who should have known better lived in a…

Ah, the paradoxes of politics! The most interesting recent example is this: the disgruntled right wing of the Republican Party, still smarting over the Schwarzenegger victory, want to show their strength lest anyone forget it. They are supporting right-wing challenger Pat Toomey in his bid to unseat fourth-term Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter in the Republican…

Did the early Christian war against “heresy” help trigger the Dark Ages? Might a little bit of Christian tolerance have even kept ancient Roman culture alive? These questions are still much on my mind, and while I can’t provide answers or lay things to rest, my wildest fantasy is that maybe one or more people…

Ridiculous! It’s two degrees here, I cannot run, and I cannot get online through normal means. So damned cold the DSL connection is down. So, I must resort to moblogging….. I am working on another long post with lots of links, and the one problem with moblogging is the link inefficiency issue. I cannot open…

All day researching, with nothing to show for my efforts. This can be very time-consuming. For reasons not entirely clear to me, the very psychic Justin Case reminded me of the distinction between packs, herds and hives. The coatimundi (Nasua narica) and the raccoon (Procyon lotor) belong to the same family, the Procyonidae. There are…

Mixed results on this weird Friday (Online Testing Day at Classical Values) — one of which is the punishment I was promised for cheating in a previous test. First, through Michael Demmons I found the “What Famous Leader Are You?” test. I turned out to be John F. Kennedy: What Famous Leader Are You? But…

You don’t feel. Therefore you are a liberal! The following turnaround in logic has to be the most novel definition of conservatism and liberalism I have seen — reaching new heights in twisted thinking: This attitude toward belief — that one should believe a proposition only if one has articulable reasons for it — represents…

The blogosphere is great, and the blogosphere is good. There is nothing like it where it comes to the settling of great questions which would otherwise degenerate into endless petty, vindictive debates. There’s quite a debate going on in the blogosphere over whether Bush is Hitler. MoveOn.org (and other left-wing sites) thinks Bush is Hitler,…

Hey, in that last post I didn’t mean to drag Caracalla into the American founding! As I keep saying, this blog engages in satire, and occasionally I like to take poetic/historic license…. But I guess, I ought to balance the klassical karma, by dragging the founding fathers of this country back to the classical era…

Take a serious look at these remarks: In parts of the country with lots of illegal immigrants?the 24 U.S. counties that border Mexico, plus much of the rest of California?the situation is becoming debilitating. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California estimates medical costs for illegal immigrants are running about $1 billion a year in her state;…

(Or, “Why I am not a conservative”?) This post was prompted by my just having received yet another mailer from Vernon Robinson — the same guy who interrupted me the one time I wanted to write a music review! Words like “conservative” and “liberal” are thrown around so much that it is very difficult to…

It is really amazing how links can travel! Walter in Denver (that’s Walter Schlomer, of course — a longtime favorite of mine, and one of my very first links) recently thought highly enough of my piece on Rosalie Bertell to link to it in his blog. The next thing that happened was that Dave Kopel…

In response to my post on Michael Demmons’ welfare remarks, I received a thoughtful email. I just replied to it, and it seems fair to share this with other readers. (The following is somewhat abbreviated.) EMAIL TO ME: Been looking at your blogs here and there. Re: the poor and stupid drain us all –…

Richard Cohen, after agonizing over whether he’s a “metrosexual,” has offered the gratuitous socio-labelers a new category: “RETROSEXUAL.” Howard Dean pronounced himself a metrosexual and then characteristically said he wasn’t sure what that was — but whatever it was, he wasn’t. Among politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger may be the most metrosexual of them all, since no…

In a long and thoughtful analysis, Arthur Silber reflects upon Angels in America. It is well worth the read, and I say this even though I am no fan of Tony Kushner. But despite my disagreements, Kushner is a fine playwrite and fair is fair. Arthur calls his review a labor of love, and it…

There’s something I want to add to this story: On Dec. 24, Air France canceled six flights between Paris and Los Angeles at the urging of American officials, who said they suspected that as many as a half-dozen passengers had “links to terrorism.” French officials said last week that they had found no terrorist links…

More local politics. A nearby community, Narberth, Pennsylvania, is seeming more and more like Berkeley, California, and it is tearing the place apart. Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer featured an article — “Narberth tempest pits old residents vs. new” — which focuses on a local man named Angus Love who was recently appointed to Narberth’s Civil Service…

I thought I was crazy last night. Visiting a friend who has a brand new LCD projection television coupled with a killer sound system, I asked for a demo, and my friend obliged by plopping in a DVD I had never seen before: “Finding Nemo.” As a demonstration, the machine worked so well that it…

There is an interesting debate between Eugene Volokh and Clayton Cramer focusing on NIH statistics on AIDS spending (versus other, less “guilty” diseases), and while there isn’t much I can add to the debate about “homosexual special interests,” I wanted to point out that there is more to the AIDS spending debate than homosexuality or…

I found myself unable to ignore Michael Demmons’ remarks about socialism and welfare: I have a problem with the government performing services for people who won’t fend for themselves. I make exceptions for people like children, who are the victims of cruel parents. But here’s where I stand on “social assistance.” I will also make…