Month: July 2006

There’s something I’ve been trying to figure out for over a week now, and I’ve just been coming up dry. I think I’m pretty close to being a First Amendment absolutist, and while the New York Times’ publication of a classified national secret (to our detriment, and to the benefit of our enemies) bothers me…

This was pretty much done Saturday, but I didn’t have a scanner over the weekend. Now that I’ve drawn a donkey and an elephant I think I’ve covered all of the basics of drawing political cartoons.

I was most amused to learn of James Wolcott’s concerns about Ann Coulter’s “shampoo with its special conditioning agents.” While I almost never agree with Wolcott, I do, I confess, enjoy his writing. But in this instance I have to question his hair expertise. And not just because of the picture in Pajamas Media. There’s…

The Fourth of July Edition of the RINO Sightings Carnival is being hosted by Barry Campbell at enrevanche. The RINOs epitomize political dissent (trust me, you really have to be a dissenter to embrace terms of derision), and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the Fourth of July. There’s good stuff there…

I don’t like to correct people, and it isn’t my job to do it here, but I hate it when the plain meaning of expressions is changed simply because the historical source of the expression has been forgotten. Recently I was startled to hear the term “whipping boy” applied to an overworked employee whose boss…

While the Fourth isn’t till Tuesday, Philadelphia had its big fireworks show at Penn’s Landing last night. The way digital cameras photograph the trails left in the air by exploding fireworks is like nothing I ever saw in the days when I used conventional film. The first photo shows the crowd watching the display, which…

I stumbled onto a disturbing transhumanist idea I’d rather leave alone. But if I left it alone, it might gain momentum in the transhumanist, singulatarian, um, “community.” While I doubt I’m much of a member of this community, I am certainly more sympathetic to it than I am to its polar opposite — the Luddites…

Some additional thoughts triggered by my earlier post about the so-called “dog overpopulation crisis.” Suppose there was a surplus of cattle (let’s say that fears of mad cow disease had led to a glut in the beef market), and that stray livestock were causing accidents. Would there be a clamor to declare a “cattle overpopulation”…

While I always keep my eyes open when I’m walking around, spotting snakes is not easy, because they’re such adept hiders. This is even more true with the more secretive, tinier snakes, like the Ringneck snake, Diadophis punctatus. I’ve seen them in captivity, but it’s rare to find them in the wild. The picture will…

One of my pet peeves (if you’ll forgive the pun) is that there’s a chorus of angry and emotional people out there hell-bent on invading my personal life by forcing me to cut out my dog’s ovaries. It’s tyranny, plain and simple. I know this will sound anthropomorphic, but I love my dog, and I…