Month: October 2005

A Nevada prostitution ordinance is being challenged as overbroad: Under the ordinance, police can arrest someone who “repeatedly beckons to, stops, attempts to stop or engage persons passing by in conversation, or repeatedly stops or attempts to stop motor vehicle operators by hailing, waiving of arms or other bodily gestures.” Attorneys for a woman charged…

Robert Novak’s column has raised some troubling issues about the Miers nomination — as well as about the security of Bush’s presidency: GEORGE W. BUSH’S agents have convinced conservative Republican senators who were heartsick over his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court that they must support her to save his Presidency. But that…

Coco celebrated her first birthday yesterday, and here’s her, um, well, what was passed off as a cake, but which was really doggie gourmet food: The gourmet dog food pictured with the candle happens to be Cesar? brand “Sophisticated Food For Sophisticated Dogs.” Whether it’s appropriate for blogs to get involved in things like product…

I wouldn’t normally write a post about basketball, but this report about dress codes in the workplace intrigued me: The NBA has announced that a dress code will go into effect at the start of the season. Players will be required to wear business-casual attire when involved in team or league business. They can’t wear…

I found an interesting thought today expressed on the editorial page of the Philadelphia Inquirer: Growing up a shy gay kid in Marcus Hook in the ’60s, I found that my only hope of any validating identity was the boob tube. The gay subculture was invisible in Delaware County then, so my refuge was television.…

This story supplies an excellent argument against the United States signing on to the International Criminal Court: MADRID, Spain – A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman, a court official said…

Michelle Malkin, Mark Tapscott, The Jawa Report, John Hinderaker and others are continuing to ask questions about the Hinrichs bombing mystery — and that’s in the face of recent attempts to smear and scold the blogosphere as the source of conspiracy theories about which most bloggers (including me) have been very skeptical. Most remarkable is…

I think it’s fair to say that as the term is ordinarily used by leftists, I’m very far from being “politically correct.” (Most people who know me — especially liberals — considered me to be a rather extreme and irreverent specimen of politically incorrectness.) But I am starting to see clear evidence that even these…

On his talk radio show earlier today, G. Gordon Liddy read a Wall Street Journal editorial about Harriet Miers. Except it wasn’t just any editorial about Harriet Miers. The author was described as “Glenn Harlan Reynolds, the famed InstaPundit, the number one blogger.” Via InstaPundit, the link to the WSJ piece can be found here.…

I want to thank Justin for writing some wonderful posts during my long weekend. I especially liked the post on solipsism. (Probably because I am Me, so that’s all there is to My Reality!) Prove I’m not my reality, and then maybe I’ll agree with your reality! Otherwise, my reality rules! Are debates about realities…

I returned from the culturally backward Midwest just in time to see a dramatic breakthrough for the forces of progress in Philadelphia public schools. Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, reports the renaming of a school from the name of a famed colonial era botanist to the name of a Stalinist actor: Bartram High School for Human Services…

Via Andrew Sullivan, my attention was directed to a sober, considered assessment of the whole “Iraq = Vietnam” meme by former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird. Unlike many of today’s critics, he was right there in the middle of it, and he doesn’t think the Vietnam was “lost” — at least, not in the way the…

Are Americans ruder than they used to be? A large majority think so, at least according to this article I saw just before I left for the Midwest: the harried single parent has replaced the traditional nuclear family and there’s little time to teach the basics of polite living, let alone how to hold a…

(Via The Speculist) A long interview with Dr. Bradley Edwards, the man who is perhaps most responsible for the recent interest in space elevators. Many thanks to Keith Curtis for going out and getting the story. This interview is depressing. We haven?t broken ground and it isn?t clear if NASA could be helpful. From the…

September 19, 2005 Take a good look at America around you now, because when we emerge from the winter of 2005 – 6, we’re going to be another country. The reality-oblivious nation of mall hounds, bargain shoppers, happy motorists, Nascar fans, Red State war hawks, and born-again Krispy Kremers is headed into a werewolf-like transformation…

That would be Tony Blair’s love for fission power. But he’s comfortable enough to hint… Blair has privately disclosed that he is in favour of more nuclear reactors and that he expects the findings of the inquiry to make a case that can be supported by an all-party consensus. His position on nuclear energy has…

I’ve had no time to spend online, which means almost no time for posting, but that does not mean I’ve been missing out on the important issues of the day. In Freeport, yesterday, I visited the site of one of the famous Lincoln Douglas debates — a public square in which they’ve erected a bronze…

SpaceX has announced that the maiden flight of their Falcon I launcher is scheduled for October 31st. Here’s wishing them a Happy Halloween. Less momentously, November 8th should see the release of George R.R. Martin‘s latest novel, A Feast for Crows. Finally. But if you lived in London, you could buy it next week. Grrr.…

This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior. — Leon Kass (Photo taken at the Union Dairy Fountain, Freeport, IL.)

Solipsism is one of those fetid intellectual dark alleys that some people just can’t resist walking down. I never saw the appeal myself, I enjoy having friends too much. Eventually most people turn around and head back toward the light. Nevertheless, there are still too many who think it’s pretty deep stuff. If you find…