Month: December 2006

A friend emailed me a link to a very disturbing report that your astrological sign predicts how well you drive: TORONTO, Dec 13 (Reuters Life!) – Never mind how careful you are behind the wheel or how long you’ve been driving, the signs of the zodiac may be bigger factors behind your ability to avoid…

Is “passionate love” detrimental to freedom? Michel de Montaigne (who abhorred quoting in place of thinking, so I won’t quote him) thought it was. This strikes me as a yin/yang situation. It would seem that the right to engage in passionate love (or be passionately in love) would go to the essence of freedom. Yet…

The debate is over. That’s what I keep hearing (despite stubborn views to the contrary) about Global Warming. I’m much too late, so I guess I can never be a part of the debate itself. But now that we’re in the post-debate era, I think it’s fair to ask: what was the debate about? Whether…

The Rev. Paul F. Morrissey is a prison chaplain who believes in a religious solution to the war in Iraq. This solution should take the form of a national confession, followed by penance: Like so many people around the world, I want the killing of our own soldiers and the crucifixion of Iraq to stop.…

Something seemed to be wrong with this report linked by Ann Althouse: “Two Borat-inspired British animal rights activists clad in lettuce bikinis braved the winter chill in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty” The goal is to make the Kazakhs stop eating horses, and while there’s no way for me to know how inspired they were…

For whatever reason (perhaps because of an infuriating association with Glenn “Republican” Reynolds), Ann Althouse and Dr. Helen are both under seige for their libertarianism, and their opponents think that the best way to get under their skin is by hurling the word “Republican” as an insult. This does not bother Dr. Helen, who explains…

I’m sitting at a WiFi spot at Georgetown University, having a wonderful time with my new but used computer, a Dell Inspiron 700M. Yes, my old trusty and reliable (if slower) Dell Latitude C600 has a problem which renders it too inconvenient to use for any length of time; the power input jack is caput,…

I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you! Via M. Simon, I see evidence — from no less than UN sources — that Global Warming is not as hot as previously thought. To which Simon adds: …water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas and that the models used for prediction do not handle cloud cover very…

Are political thought crimes occupying the same ecological niche once reserved for pornography? It certainly seems that way to me. Perhaps it’s because I’m old enough to remember when people used to freak out about things that were “DIRTY!” and “SHAMEFUL!” — but now they do it in response to mere opinions voiced publicly. Ann…

When I’m in an insane hurry to hit the road (as I am right now), there’s nothing more disconcerting than the feeling that there’s an obligation to get a post up ASAP, but there’s no time to think about what to write, much less write it. Fortunately, Clayton Cramer reminded me of a favorite topic…

I can’t imagine why on earth the Clinton adminstration would have been spying on Lady Diana. I can’t connect the dots, as there don’t appear to be any dots to connect. Really, it doesn’t make sense, certainly not in light of the close friendship between Hillary and Diana. Seriously. Read Salon vintage piece “DIANA’S BIG…

Walter Williams has a great piece on the contrast between the views of this country’s founders and the views of government today: Most of what Congress does fits the description of forcing one American to serve the purposes of another American. That description differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery. At least…

Now that Pinochet has died, comparisons between him and various tyrants are being made — this USA Today editorial being typical: Saddam Hussein and Chile’s Augusto Pinochet have long been members of the club of tyrants who killed thousands of their citizens. The difference between them emerged Sunday when Pinochet died after suffering a heart…

A simple statement issued yesterday by the “Reynolds-Althouse Axis” makes me feel incredibly liberated. you don’t have to blog about the news. So said Ann Althouse, and at the risk of sounding like another axis minion, God bless her for saying it. While many of my posts originate with something I saw in the news,…

There was a pro-Mumia abu-Jamal demonstration in Philadelphia yesterday, and it attracted some 300 people. Unlike other cities, here in Philadelphia, there remains considerable sympathy for slain police officer Danny Faulkner, so there were counter-demonstrators. The Mumia issue is sensitive enough that it’s affecting the Philadelphia Mayor’s race. One of the leading candidates is Congressman…

Here’s something for the conspiracy theorists (or just those like me with uncontrollable imaginations). I just received an email about an interesting plan to take small towns off the map: CHATTOOGAVILLE, Ga. (Dec. 9) — Poetry Tulip has vanished. So have Due West and Po Biddy Crossroads. Cloudland and Roosterville are gone, too. A total…

the maxim should be “don’t annoy the customer.” So says Glenn Reynolds, in his impassioned plea to product designers, as he note an ominous trend of machines that talk back to you, and even scold you. And the scolding can’t be turned off. Quite incidentally, in this regard I’m probably less tolerant than Glenn. If…

I bought a used laptop, and while I was configuring the drivers and trying to get the ethernet card working, I suddenly discovered that I was online, without the computer being plugged into my network. I have no wireless router or network here, and everything is wired. What that means is that I must be…

What is “gun violence”? I wanted to ask this as very brief question, but I’m afraid “gun violence” is just another one of those ill-defined terms, which is used not to illuminate an argument, but to manipulate people by hiding the argument in the hope they’ll go along. Unfortunately, the term is gaining in strength…

December 7 ought to be a day that no American should ever forget. Pajamas Media has a great roundup, beginning with what I consider the quote of the day (from SWAC Girl): “How on God’s green earth do we expect people to remember Pearl Harbor, an event that happened 65 years ago… when many have…