Month: July 2007

Michael Totten has a fascinating interview up with historian Michael Oren. PORTLAND, OREGON – Renowned American-Israeli historian and best-selling author Michael Oren is touring the United States promoting his new book Power, Faith, and Fantasy a sweeping history of America’s involvement in the Middle East from 1776 to the present. It’s the first and only…

Ridiculous as it may sound, that seems to what angry Pagans are saying about the image of a gigantic Homer Simpson painted on a field adjoining the famous Cerne Abbas giant: PAGANS have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away cartoon character Homer Simpson who was painted next to their famous fertility symbol –…

Clayton Cramer notes that there were plenty of abortions before Roe v. Wade — and that there may have been more than there are now. ….even before Roe v. Wade (1973), Oregon theoretically made abortion unlawful except to save the life or health of the mother–and yet still had 199 abortions per 1000 live births…

Dr. Helen links a fascinating psychological study which found that high school age girls who “co-ruminate” (defined as “talk[ing] very excessively about their problems”) are “greater risk of developing anxiety and depression“: The research was conducted by Amanda Rose, associate professor of psychological sciences in the College of Arts and Science. The six-month study, which…

This post by Glenn Reynolds discusses two of the most whiny-looking books I’ve seen. Apparently, the “choice” presented in Daniel Brook’s The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America is between “selling out” (meaning working for evil corporations which make the world a worse place), and starving as an unpaid or underpaid activist.…

I see Eric has done a post this morning on scientist making policy prescriptions outside their field of expertise. I have a good example from some physicists. I think it is syncronicity. == I was visiting a physics blog (well the Duke case has lost my interest so I have to do something) and came…

While I often complain in long posts about the way political arguments are dressed up as science, Virginia Postrel has articulated it very succinctly: Scientists have gotten way too fond of invoking their authority to claim that “science” dictates their preferred policy solutions and claiming that any disagreement constitutes an attack on science. But, even…

Commentary Magazine has an interesting article by Charles Murray discussing the origins of Jewish Genius. Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic. But there is a lacuna, and not one involving some…

Dean is 41 today and he reports that he doesn’t feel 41. (In all honesty, I can’t remember how 41 felt, but it would be fun to time travel back 12 years and find out whether 41 felt any differently than 53 does now. I’ll try to feel 41 today if I can in Dean’s…

Did God put Glenn Greenwald in charge of gender? Or does Glenn Greenwald imagine himself the God/Goddess/Godz of Gender? It might be James Taranto’s fault, because in a total violation of the Karl Rove Rule On Glenn Greenwald, he actually linked Greenwald’s thoughts on gender (which I think deserves to be titled “I’m the Gender…

It looks like Global Warming Scares have reached their sell by date and are now being discounted. People are starting to fall away from the old time religion. Here is a video from CNN. Not exactly your most conservative station. Especially check out Bjorn Lumborg at about 9 1/2 minutes into the program. He says…

For this outburst I blame M. Simon, who wrote his post because Ann Althouse wrote a post about Augustus Owsley Stanley, III (aka “Bear”), sound and chemical engineer extraordinaire. It’s the Grateful Dead playing another Pigpen classic, “Easy wind.” It’s tough to call Pigpen the “leader” of the Grateful Dead, as the band was so…

There’s a theoretical concept that has become such a hot button issue that it’s not a safe subject for public discussion. Not, that is, unless you’re among trusted friends. That’s the idea of using war for political advantage. Because it is seen as so immoral and so despicable by the people accused of doing it,…

The battery that is being held by the bronze medieval alchemist is nearly as useless as my knowledge of battery technology. A lithium ion Motorola BT50, it worked great in my cell phone when it was new, but over the past year or so, it deteriorated to the point where it will only hold a…

Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine takes a look at Timothy Leary. Never too comfortable with politics (he dismissed student activists as “young men with menopausal minds” and proclaimed that LSD stood for “Let the State Disintegrate”), he nevertheless hosted a Los Angeles fundraiser in 1988 for the very buttoned-down Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron Paul…

Like Roger L. Simon, when I initially saw the story about the Queen of England losing her temper at an American photographer, my sympathies were with the Queen. But as it turns out, the story was falsified by the BBC. Not only had the sequence of events been misrepresented and manipulated, but looking at the…

Here is a report from 2005 that may explain recent climate changes or not. This web page documents the increase in severe weather throughout our entire solar system and relates it to the obvious cause, increased solar activity. The increase in severe weather suddenly appeared in 2002, too suddendly to be caused by greenhouse gasses…

Zee News reports on a Russian scientist who wants Russia to export fusion power plants. Tokyo, July 13: Russia is eyeing on designing thermonuclear plants for domestic and international market in the next 20 to 25 years, nuclear physicist Yevgeny Velikhov said. He expressed confidence that Russia will be able to begin commercial production of…

From the Economist: Snow fell in Buenos Aires, for the first time in 89 years. They even have a picture to go with it. Initially, this struck me as odd, because I hadn’t read that Al Gore visited there lately. (A phenomenon known as the Al Gore coldening effect, which has been documented by Tim…

I stumbled onto a fascinating YouTube video of Hillary Clinton being scolded by Code Pink in March of 2003. Caption: Hillary Clinton talks about her vote to go to war, Saddam, and WMDs 2 weeks before war in a meeting with Code Pink in March 2003. Warning: do not click on this if leftists make…