Month: March 2005

Here’s a must-read piece on progress in the Middle East (link via ALDaily): The slogan for this nascent people’s revolt has become “Kifaya,” which means “enough.” It’s a word that is both emphatic and vague enough to be all-encompassing yet effective: enough of autocrats, enough corruption, enough occupation, enough repression. It has acquired magical and…

For those who are tired of the usual stuff, here’s a fascinating video of some sort of very colorful event in Japan. (Fun to watch and hear!) To the accompaniment of cymbals, medieval looking wagons full of soldiers crash into each other over and over again while the crowd cheers. If you don’t want to…

Garry Kasparov has retired his men to take on Vladimir Putin: Garry Kasparov, the world’s top chess player for two decades and considered by many the greatest player in history, has announced his retirement from professional chess in an ambitious gambit and vowed to devote his energy to battling what he called the “dictatorship” of…

At least, that’s how the petite (5’1″) woman assigned to guard former linebacker and martial artist Brian Nichols was described. Which brings to mind Dennis’s last post about bullshit. Why does bullshit seem to always get smeared across the headlines? I can think of many characterizations which might manage to find their way into a…

During the latest Classical Values Summit (Justin, unfortunately, was tied up with Karl haggling over the definition of ‘hit’ — Rove wants to pay us a dollar per hit as registered by SiteMeter, while we favor server statistics — muy lucrativo[*]) the term ‘bullshit’ came up (as it often does, particulalry when discussing our own…

There’s been a lot of talk about transparency in the blogosphere, but until today I had no idea that anyone was extending the concept to blog advertising. That’s right; in the same way that readers might leave a comment relating to a blog post, consumers can leave comments relating to blog advertisements. For example, this…

What part of “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech” don’t they understand? The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dick Polman is claiming that “ideological extremism” reigns on the Internet, while seeming (in my view, at least) to manage an unconcealed wink at the proposed blog crackdown: ….there are also new storm signals about the…

This may come as a shock to many who proclaim Jeff Gannon to be a “fraud,” but after inquiring into the hiring practices of executive editors, Confederate Yankee examined the journalistic credentials of Jeff Gannon, and concluded that he’s more qualified than many of his critics: ….would Jeff Gannon be hired as a ?real? reporter…

I’ve received several emails from religious activists upset about the treatment by gay rights activists (and Philadelphia’s criminal justice system) of anti-gay crusader and former Clinton White House intern Michael Marcavage. WorldNetDaily and many other sites have watched this case closely, and the charges were recently dismissed. Marcavage, whose talent I spotted some time ago…

Via Arthur Silber, I found a fascinating story which, if true, doesn’t seem to have gotten the attention it deserves. Apparently, the Washington Post has run a story accusing Glenn Reynolds of condoning the nuking of Rome! U.S. troops near Baghdad fired on a car Friday night carrying an Italian journalist who had just been…

Via Charles Johnson, I see that Swedish giant IKEA refuses to depict women in its instruction manuals — to avoid offending fundamentalist Islamic sensibilities. Norway’s Prime Minister is justifiably incensed: OSLO, Norway (Reuters) – Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals,…

As if it’s not enough to read about such idiotic new words as “heteronormative,” via Rand Simberg I learn that gay men don’t read maps the same way as heterosexual men, nor do lesbians read maps the same way as heterosexual women. Gay men employ the same strategies for navigating as women – using landmarks…

Dean Esmay has caused me to think some more (since my previous post) about why women support (even encourage) violence and even murder of other women, especially in the form of Muslim “honor killings.” Typically, women in these cases are killed for the crime of being “sluts.” (Precisely what Hatin Surucu was called.) There’s also…

Things are happening faster than I thought. As if any further evidence was needed that the 2008 election campaign is now in full swing, here’s photographic proof: Via the New York Times, which was forced to note (but not question) the timing: The timing of Mrs. Clinton’s remarks is noteworthy: She has recently struck moderate…

I never thought I’d see anything like it, but here it is. On the front page of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, there’s a column by the anti-Bush Dick Polman which dares to admit the possibility that the laughable Bush doctrine might be working: Mideast moves give Bush critics pause By Dick Polman Inquirer Political Analyst It…

Yes, indeed. I was treated to an amazingly tasty dessert earlier this week and thought I would share it with you. It’s not complex, but it’s still quite pleasing. Vanilla ice cream, lightly drizzled with red balsamic vinegar. That’s it. Sweet meets sour, creating the sublime. So simple.

This just in from Virginia Postrel, via The Speculist… The WaPost reports that Leon Kass and friends are promoting what they call an “offensive bioethics agenda….it looks like they want to separate their anti-research agenda from the convictions of Sam Brownback and other religious pro-lifers. They seem to think they’ll be stronger politically without their…

It’s up at Solomonia’s great blog “A View New.” How Sol managed to handle so many posts I don’t know. But he’s an old blog friend and a long time favorite, which makes this a very special Carnival. Justin is working on a great post (which should be up later tonight) so in the meantime…

Via Michael McNeil of Impearls (a genuine scholar whose blog should be read by everyone who likes Classical Values), I see that the Dutch blog Zacht Ei (an excellent blog I’ve linked before) offers a fascinating insight into the inner machinations of Giuliana Sgrena’s school of journalism: Mr. Harald Doornbos is a veteran war reporter.…

E at the Dave points us toward a new group blog by conservative (and possibly libertarian) philosophers, Right Reason, growing from the ashes of The Conservative Philosopher, which had apparently been mired in a controversy over the founder’s non-philosophical argumentation and deletion of critical comments. (I see that The Conservative Philosopher is still going, but…