Month: September 2004

I returned from New York tonight and while I am too exhausted for blogging, I went through my photos, and thought I’d share this one, taken on the Upper West Side’s waterfront. Not much left of the area’s oldtime industrial maritime heritage, I’m afraid. And speaking of heritage, on the subway I heard some very…

Dan Rather’s initial, furious street-side defense of an amateurish forgery ? smug, huffy, self-righteous ? brings to mind one of those bad movies about the Paris barricades, especially the grainy, black-and-white shots of powdered and wigged aristocrats on their way to the Guillotine, yelling out of their carriages at pitchfork-carrying peasants. Read the rest of…

While Eric’s away I thought I’d post this bit on “assault weapons”: N EW YORKERS are at least four times as likely to be punched to death than to be killed with an assault-style rifle, unpublished state crime statistics show. Read it all.

It turns out that old propaganda film Reefer Madness was true! BLANTYRE, Malawi (Reuters) – A Malawian man believed to be high on marijuana beheaded two women with an axe Friday, police in the southern African country said. The man, in his mid-20s, beheaded a 52-year-old woman while she worked in her garden with her…

Burned out at the library on a Friday night (the bar awaits) all I can muster is my answer to Eric’s latest poll results: Sci-fi Guy: Ah, good ol’ Jean-Luc. Strangely appropriate. Brit Lit: Which British Literary Period are you? Restoration 1660-1785–Pope, Swift, Johnson. Times they are a changing. You’re very cynical and you like…

Fridays are traditionally Online Test Day at Classical Values, but test offerings lately have been scarce, so the weekly routine has suffered. But this week, my old blogfriend Ghost of a flea has been busy! I filched THREE tests from Nick, and while I’m sorry to report that all of my results differed from his,…

This week’s Bonfire of the Vanities is hosted by Daly Thoughts. Dale is a fine blogger and does a superb job despite serious problems caused by recent flooding. (I don’t know how I have managed to miss his blog for so long.) A few were so good I had to reach in and grab them…

At the heart of the Kerry strategy is to draw a big line around Iraq while declaring simultaneously that Kerry is the best man to lead the war against terrorism — anywhere but in Iraq. I suppose that means Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the Phillipines. All these are hotbeds of terrorism where…

Paypal has become a national disaster. First, they messed with free speech by going after Bill Quick’s blog (I don’t know if they’re calling him a “hate site,” but I’ve already threatened to close my account — as if they’d care!). And now they’ve announced a Mutaween-style crackdown: Beginning Friday, PayPal will begin penalizing users…

It happened! The Philadelphia Inquirer has used the T-word! The pollsters now concur: The unspeakable slaughter of Russian schoolchildren by Chechen terrorists discernibly affected the American presidential campaign. George W. Bush rose in polls and John F. Kerry fell. Bush’s curious blend of doomsday warnings and chesty confidence apparently appeals more than Kerry’s wintry, tongue-tied…

Not only did he know, but he’s got his buddy Osama stashed somewhere, ready for a staged capture just in time for the election! So says the woman running for First Lady: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he appeared in the next month,” said Heinz Kerry, alluding to a possible capture by United States and…

I stumbled upon a piece in the New York Review of Books written by Anthony Grafton, a Princeton professor whom I coincidentally nominated today to speak at a future event (fingers crossed — there are a number of fine candidates). I guess he’d finally gotten round to reviewing Caldwell and Thomason’s The Rule of Four,…

Here’s the latest news on penis control: a Model Statute has been drafted which would criminalize sex without condoms between consenting adults. (Via Glenn Reynolds.) The crime is described as follows: Reckless Sexual Conduct (1). A person is guilty of reckless sexual conduct when the person intentionally engages in unprotected sexual activity with another person…

Be sure to visit this week’s Carnival of the Vanities at James DiBenedetto’s Eleven Day Empire. It’s a Star Wars theme, and the posts are grouped accordingly. Clever, cosmic, fun. A few of my favorites: Kevin at The Smallest Minority has a truly excellent essay on whether or not we’ll have a Civil War. (I…

STOP BLOGOSPHERE PLAGIARISM NOW! In the name of Allah (PBUH)! URGENT MESSAGE FROM BAGHDAD BOB! While he obviously cannot disagree with the following passage (because after all they are Baghdad Bob’s ideas and Baghdad Bob is right!), Bob is very unhappy today to see that his ideas have been plagiarized! Yes. Stolen and parroted by…

Commenting on Bush’s amazing lead in the polls yesterday, Glenn Reynolds expressed skepticism: It’s really hard for me to believe that Bush is doing as well, and Kerry as badly, as these state polls seem to suggest. According to Zogby, such skepticism is more than justified. Here’s the latest Zogby chart: ZOGBY’S RACE SO FAR:…

I am having conceptual difficulties understanding last week’s news report about the shutdown of air communications: Los Angeles ? Failure to perform a routine maintenance check caused the shutdown of an air traffic communications system serving a large swath of the West, resulting in several close calls in the skies, the FAA and a union…

The UN food-for-oil scandal is not being forgotten! Here’s Claudia Rosett: When U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan opined last week to the BBC that the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein had been “illegal,” two words came instantly to my mind: baby food. No, I’m not comparing Mr. Annan’s thoughts to pabulum. He is a smart man,…

Sometimes, big stories like Rathergate cause me to neglect the Classical Values theme. When this happens, something will usually come along to catapult me back a millenium or two. In a previous post, I speculated that a major motivation for the Dan Rather/CBS coverup was to prevent the network from being embarrassed once it was…

What I wrote earlier generated some comments accusing me of saying that Kos wrote this post himself. I did not say that! However, it does appear at Kos’s web site and he has not disagreed with it. It is therefore reasonable for me to at least pose the question whether his site is bigoted against…