Month: February 2007

  • Why hypocrisy shouldn’t — but does — matter

    As I have repeatedly been unable to ignore the following quote from Glenn Reynolds, I’m going to fail to restrain myself once again: If Gore were less moralistic in his approach — as he gains weight, he’s even starting to look a bit like a younger Jerry Falwell — the charges of hypocrisy would have…

  • New Vistas

    Reader Paul has sent me a couple of links on what Microsoft’s Vista will mean to computer users. This link is for non technical folks. Let me excerpt a bit: …reviews have focused chiefly on Vista’s new functionality, for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista’s “fine print.” Those…

  • Basta La Vista?

    I haven’t been in too much of a hurry to install Windows Vista, because everything I have works in all four computers (including the upstairs computer, the downstairs computer, the newer laptop, and the recently resurrected old laptop). There have been so many horror stories about Windows Vista incompatibilities that I just think, why would…

  • I try not to take personal wars personally….

    America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. — Oscar Wilde Taking into account that Wilde may have been ahead of his times, here’s a video of the Grateful Dead (a personal favorite of Ann Coulter), attempting in 1967 to explain their lifestyle in a documentary by CBS’s…

  • Come celebrate America’s traditional values!

    Tourists who come to Philadelphia to see the birthplace of freedom will soon be in for a rude awakening. Access to the Liberty Bell (which is the heart of Independence Mall) will require passing through what’s been dubbed “Slavery Mall”: When completed, probably next year, the memorial will constitute the first national commemoration of slaves.…

  • Gang Rape of Israeli Girls by Arabs

    I couldn’t blog this myself. Too horrible. Carl in Jerusalem

  • No outfoxing nature here!

    Coco is in heat. Yes, it happens twice a year, and it requires me to pay a bit more attention to potential, um, situations, than I normally do. It certainly isn’t like the old days, when male dogs roamed about, and having a bitch in heat would cause untold commotion, stalking, and desperate howling late…

  • Avoiding an unfair comparison

    Darren at Right on the Left Coast has what I think is a sensible energy conservation policy: Most of the light bulbs in my house are compact fluorescent bulbs. I own an electric weedeater and, at a cost approaching $200, just purchased an electric lawn mower. I’m looking into a solar system on my roof,…

  • Latest Medal of Honor Recipient

    The latest Medal of Honor recipient was a chopper pilot in ‘Nam at the Battle of Ia Drang. President Bush awarded him the Medal. Let me quote a little from the President: On the morning of November 14, 1965, Major Crandall’s unit was transporting a battalion of soldiers to a remote spot in the Ia…

  • Conflating Nazism with Islam?

    I’m trying to make sense of the [allegedly] murderous Nashville cab driver who ran over his passenger, because it’s been coming out in bits and pieces. A lot of people are objecting to what seem clear attempts to hide the driver’s status as a Muslim from Somalia. Nothing new there; hiding such details goes on…

  • red-and-blue divided by guns-and-race = new collusion?

    Huge front page headline in today’s Inquirer: “Homicides surge past 2006 rate.” Hmmm…. “Surge” is becoming a popular word; it’s used repeatedly in the article: For the moment, police administrators say they can’t be sure what is driving the latest surge. “At this point we characterize ’07 as out of character” compared to last year…

  • Sandmonkey On Jailed Egyptian Blogger

    My favorite Egyptian blogger The Sandmonkey has been blogging about jailed blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman. CAIRO — An Egyptian court’s imprisonment of a blogger last week is another official blow to free speech, according to fellow bloggers and human-rights activists. “It affects the only space of free speech left in Egypt, which is the…

  • The Teh offensive

    I don’t know how I manage to get dragged into these things, and I don’t know who is to blame. (It’s not as if anyone makes me click these links.) But anyway, there I was, minding my own business and trying to read this piece about Muqtada al Sadr which Glenn Reynolds had linked. What…

  • Obsession at NYU

    KesherTalk’s Judith Weiss has a great post about the screening of the film “Obsession” at NYU — and cowardly reactions like this: “The question about radical Islam and how do we fight it is unproductive,” said Yehuda Sarna, the New York University rabbi on the panel. “The question is how to break down the stereotypes…

  • Number one cause?

    I moan and groan about Global Warming, and I’m a double skeptic, in the following two ways: 1) I’m not convinced that the CO2 produced by man is capable of warming the planet to any appreciable degree. I don’t think that has been shown. 2) Even if I were convinced that anthopogenic gases were heating…

  • Lets You And Him Fight

    I was reading Michael Totten’s blog and came across this interview of him by the Jerusalem Post. One part of the interview caught my eye. (Question by the Post in bold) Are Syria and Iran still supplying Hizbullah? Have they recovered from the war last summer? Absolutely. Hizbullah is as strong, or at least nearly…

  • My merciless attack on untreated hoplophobes

    the NRA has trained members to attack their perceived enemies without mercy. So says Pat Wray, who’s with the American Hunters and Shooters Association (AHSA). The latter is a group of hunters who claim they’re “reasonable” and the NRA is unreasonable. Personally, I suspect the AHSA consists of a group of agents provocateur (gun grabbers…

  • Dead blogging the Oscars II

    Yes, I’m afraid it’s now an annual tradition. I just turned on the Oscars in time to see Al Gore with a sycophantic young admirer (a future cabinet member who starred in “Titanic”), and Gore then made what sounded like a tantalizing major announcement, is if he was going to say he was gay or…

  • Baby talk survives word police!

    While it wasn’t my intention, it must look like baby day at Classical Values, because first there was fetal alcohol syndrome…. And then, before that had had time to clear my system, I stumbled onto a favorite song from Jan and Dean. Second only to the Beach Boys as a surfer group (and probably best…

  • Is “social science” becoming an oxymoron?

    I stumbled onto a fascinating paper about “fetal alcohol syndrome” (“FAS”) which raises some good questions about whether what we call “social science” deserves to be called “science” at all. The essential criterion for any social problem is its universalization (Wagner, 1997Go). As long as a problem is orphaned, especially if it is identified as…