Month: March 2006

Jeff Soyer does a better job of reading the Philadelphia Daily News letters to the editor than I do (I tend to skip letters to the editor, which I shouldn’t), and he reprints an especially good one: THE NOTION that Philadelphia can control or reduce its burgeoning murder rate by enacting gun-control legislation is nothing…

There’s a growing anti-videogame mentality in this country. While it’s typically directed against “violent” video games (like this Tennessee effort Glenn Reynolds highlighted recently) people forget that (as Glenn reminds elsewhere, that video games can “save your life.” I think it’s worth noting that familiarity with video games (and the video game mentality) might make…

Both long time readers and new acquaintences who’ve delved into our archives may be familiar with James Kunstler. I’ve taken him to task more than once, and thoroughly enjoyed doing so. What the sane well-adjusted reader, fully engaged in his or her life, may not realize is that Mr. Kunstler is merely the tip of…

After that last post, I need some cheering up. Oddly enough, a memory involving my gallows humor supplied just the prompt. As it happens, on the occasion of one of my friend’s deaths, I “inherited” his last pack of cigarettes. But what do you do with a pack of cigarettes if you don’t smoke? Being…

I was looking at an old picture last night, showing me at my 1982 law school graduation. Three of my closest friends are there — two in front of me, one behind me. One was to die in 1986, another in 1988, the other in 1995. I went to law school because of them, and…

You may have already seen this on Instapundit, but on the off chance that you missed it, check out this pack mule robot from Boston Dynamics. It’s one of four different models, and though it creeps me out just a bit, it also makes me laugh. Check out the video. I swear, the thing appears…

Attention South Park conservatives! (And this probably applies to South Park liberals as well….) The Chef has quit. Well, his voice, that is. Isaac Hayes refuses to continue doing the Chef voiceover any longer, because of what he considers the show’s disrespect for religion: Hayes, who has played the ladies’ man/school cook in the animated…

I don’t write about the gay issue as much as I should. The reason, I am sorry to say, is that people feel so strongly about the issue on both sides that it really isn’t capable of rational discussion. A perfect example can be found in the comments to this post by Dr. Helen Smith…

In a fascinating local “news leak” case, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office has seized hard drives from a Lancaster newspaper’s computer — to determine whether reporters were allowed improper access to the local coroner’s web site. Pennsylvania’s supreme court has refused to intervene: “This is horrifying, an editor’s worst nightmare,” said Lucy Dalglish, executive director…

I feel the need to return to an issue which might be confusing to readers who don’t spend their time worrying about applying human conceptions of rights to animals, and that is sterilization. While I have previously discussed my personal squeamishness over the idea of sterilizing my dogs, in no way did I mean to…

Because of my tendency to satirize things that strike me as ridiculous, I’m sometimes afraid that people might think I’m minimizing the importance of major assaults on freedom, or on our way of life. Far from it. I use satire because I am at a loss to understand how such idiocy prevails, and my resort…

While I don’t subscribe to the animal rights philosophy, I do try to put my own philosophy of animal rights into practice with the animals I come into contact. I don’t hunt, and I wouldn’t kill or harm animals unless they threatened me or invaded my home. I’m not much of a meat eater, but…

What do words mean? What is ownership? What is property? If you have a dog or a cat, are you the owner? Maybe not. There’s a growing movement to remove words like “pet” and “owner” and replace them with the legal term “guardian.” Before you laugh at what might appear to be mere semantics of…

Considering that we’re living in times when everyone will eventually have his fifteen minutes of fuhrerdom, if you want to insult someone who has achieved success, you have to do better than make the usual tired and strained Hitler comparisons. Success by centrist libertarians must be punished especially severely, and no simple Hitler comparison will…

I don’t know which is more overdue; this review or my copy of An Army of Davids. According to Amazon’s “Where’s My Stuff” feature, I ordered Glenn’s book on October 17, 2005. Over the next few months, I kept getting emails from Amazon telling me I had to update my order or else it would…

Looking ahead to the gubernatorial election (in which his seat is at stake), Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is worried about geography: One day after announcing he was running in the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, former U.S. Rep. Joseph Hoeffel was out, a victim of a hard reality of winning in a large state with…

Orac at Respectful Insolence has alerted the blogosphere to a very disturbing incident: arsonists recently targeted the offices of the Holocaust History Project: In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project…

Not to dwell unduly on my own problems, but so far I’m very lucky with this frozen shoulder/adhesive capsulitis. After just one day with the (admittedly painful) exercises, the movement of my arm is greatly increased, and the nature of pain has changed to severe soreness on movement instead of an inability to move. It…

One of my pet peeves is the appalling state of education in this country, and I’ve tended to focus on misguided educational theories, as well as teachers who can’t teach. Patrick Welsh, an English teacher from Alexandria, Virginia, argues that in a rush to blame teachers, too many people are forgetting that American students just…

The politicking behind South Dakota’s ban on all abortions (except to save a mother’s life) fascinates me. I think this is part of a concerted effort to force the hand of the new Supreme Court in time for the next election. Whether newly appointed justices Roberts and Alito will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade…