Month: May 2004

  • Fashionably ignorant?

    “I’ve never been on InstaPundit. I don’t even know what that is.” So claims my old favorite, Jodi Wilgoren. (Via InstaPundit.) The first part of the statement — “never been on” — may in the strictest and most literal sense be true, but “not knowing what that is?” Come on, Jodi! This latest display of…

  • Dying to volunteer?

    The Center for Islamic Suicide? If that sounds too ridiculous, read the link. Not that people in the West don’t commit suicide, but it’s nothing to be proud of. We don’t tend to brag about it. Suicide is simply a bad thing. If done at all, it’s an admission that life has no meaning. If…

  • Calling Off Your Old, Tired, Ethics * ?

    Have high class call girls been manipulating the new media? Is it blogging, or is it a real scandal? Come again? This is par for the course in Washington, and nothing new. Why, it didn’t even start with Watergate! (It’s just that Watergate hasn’t been outed yet.) The world’s oldest profession (and it is a…

  • New York sights

    No blogging today because I spent it in New York. Here are a few photos. For starters, a graffiti-covered building which appears to have last housed a bread company near the turn of the century: NOTE: As graffiti has now been linked to “mob violence,” that’s what I titled the picture. Next, some red-eared slider…

  • The week isn’t over!

    Not until you’ve read the 47th Bonfire of the Vanities, that is…. This week it’s hosted at Laurence Simon’s luscious new blog, This Blog is Full of Crap. Some highlights: Susie warns of impending doom in the blogosphere — from which only she can save us! Mind of Mog lets us in on the latest…

  • Nick Berg update

    Because the stories continue, an update on Nick Berg’s decapitation is overdue, whether I like it or not. Tim Blair fisks the theory that because the white plastic chair Berg was seated on looks like the chairs at Abu Ghraib prison, that this proves Nick Berg was beheaded by Americans in a false flag operation.…

  • Al Qaida in Iraq? Not in an election year!

    Al Qaida in Iraq? Those are fighting words to anyone who opposes the war in Iraq, because it seems to be an article of faith with them that there has never been a connection between al Qaida and Iraq. How did Al Gore put it the other day? THE PRESIDENT CONVINCED the country with a…

  • Test results keep bugging me

    Well, it’s Friday, and as usual, I am bugging myself to death by taking more silly online tests. It’s the price I must pay to support the War Against Seriousness — a war I take most seriously! But, to paraphrase Drayton Sawyer, just because there’s some things I gotta do, that doesn’t mean I gotta…

  • Who asked me, anyway?

    I really shouldn’t call myself a “war blogger” because I don’t write much about the war. I don’t like to write extensively about things I don’t know about, and I just don’t have access to anything except publicly available information on the war in Iraq. It bothers the hell out of me to see a…

  • Nothing’s abuzz?

    Well, I finally found the time for a post, but things are looking kind of sleepy in the blogosphere right now, and I’m on the verge of sleep myself. Not much earth-shaking news (you know it’s bad when the front page shows a cicada buzzing President Bush’s head!), and it seems the media is taking…

  • A libertarian is a liberal who’s just been called a conservative, or a conserative who’s just been called a liberal!

    Time for blogging is in very short supply today, but every once in a while I find something that really captures my imagination…. I seriously suggest that everyone interested in the First Amendment read this post by Jeff Jarvis. It’s about The Week‘s conference on indecency, in which a variety of big name journalists —…

  • Oh brother!

    One of the most irritating things I’ve had to put up with as a blogger is not disagreement, which I can handle. It’s when people put words in my mouth, then attack and refute their own words as if I had said them. This is an ancient rhetorical trick, and it really shouldn’t require much…

  • Berkeley is in the United States….

    When I lived in Berkeley full time, I used to read the East Bay Express regularly. Perhaps I still should, because this article shocked me to my cynical core. An excerpt: “….I came to Berkeley — because of its strong romantic aura of the Free Speech Movement and Mario Savio,” he recalls. “Then I got…

  • Scorching elegance

    Earlier today I drove to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where I saw some nice old Victorian houses. I thought I’d share a few which typify the area. Here’s one which was surrounded by trees: And here’s one which wasn’t: The temperature was well into the nineties. Here’s one which reflects the heat: Unlike most of the Victorians…

  • All in favor, say “BUSH KNEW!”

    While it is not the purpose of this blog to refute or debunk the innumerable 9/11 conspiracy theories, I just can’t ignore them anymore, because they are rapidly becoming mainstream. Once again, if you don’t believe me, try google. I’m inclined generally to agree with Nick Packwood (the one and only Ghost of a flea)…

  • Bearing an extraordinary strain!

    I know yesterday was Friday (which is normally online test day at Classical Values), and I didn’t offer any tests. I have been too swamped to keep up with things. And, to make matters worse, I am increasingly dissatisfied with the results of these tests! I don’t know who writes these tests, but I offer…

  • Only the Neocons are powerful enough to destroy tall buildings!

    Does the “theory” of the destruction of the World Trade Center by “Muslim pilots” who crashed hijacked planes into the towers defy the laws of physics? I don’t see why it is incumbent on me to do the debunking, but the kind of people who subscribe to these and other such theories tend to think…

  • How to lose at hardball

    I spoke to a Bush hating friend about the latest fast-growth industry I’ve recently posted about here (the paranoid Osama-Bush 9-11 stuff), and he opined that Bush is so bad that the people who hate him feel helpless, and have nowhere to go. Thus, they vent their anger and frustration by believing in irrational claims…

  • On the road, so go to the Carnival!

    Another road trip today, so no posts until later. But anyone who has come here looking for a new post should go immediately to Ed Brayton’s Dispatches from the Culture Wars, and read the 87th Carnival of the Vanities. I wish I had time to review my favorites, but I don’t. Ed’s blog is outstanding,…

  • If you disagree, you are EVIL!

    It’s getting tougher and tougher to “agree to disagree.” There’s a growing movement in this country which I have ignored for too long, and I don’t know how to address it except in this blog. Basically, a meme which sounded kooky a year or two ago has now evolved into an ever-larger, constantly growing movement…