Month: July 2007

From The Lion of Comarre by Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1949 First, some background… One thousand years in the future, Richard Peyton has located the fabled city of Comarre, constructed by a social movement called the Decadents, and lost to humanity for five hundred years. It’s located in a huge continental…

From A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes Dym and Barnholt had gone one day for a long tramp–train to Barnet, thence to St. Albans, and back by Potters Bar. From the outset everything went wrong. They missed the train and had a long wait to begin with. They left their parcel of…

“Coexistence with religious fanatics isn’t possible.” So says Christopher Hitchens (author of God Is Not Great) in a great Pajamas Media interview titled “Citizen Hitchens Celebrates July 4th.” Hitchens, a new U.S. citizen, is quite taken with Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (which Jefferson saw as one of his three principal accomplishments in life),…

I did a 4th of July Bikini edition last year. It was so popular (with me) that I’m doing it again. I love doing the research. BTW not work safe. Probably not wife safe. Unless you have a forgiving mate such as I do.

Amazing as it will sound, Hillary Clinton has taken advantage of Bush’s commutation of the Libby sentence to defend the Clinton pardon scandal: As she campaigns with her husband for Iowa’s leadoff precinct caucuses, Clinton has joined other Democrats in ripping Bush’s decision. In the interview, she said it was “one more example” of the…

I don’t know. I complain a lot about assorted government bureaucrats, social workers, educrats, the Imagine people, the government people, academicians and self appointed activists who work hand in hand with those who manipulate public opinion, highly educated people who believe that their credentials qualify them to run people’s lives, but there is an enormous…

After the bad review I gave American Airlines and US Airways yesterday, I now see that even in our free country where the First Amendment protects the right to utter opinions, a bad review can nonetheless lead to government intervention — in the form of a libel suit. I kid you not. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s…

I’m back a day late thanks to the inability of American Airlines to hold my connecting flight a measly five minutes last night. I would have liked to write a post this morning, but I was en route from O’Hare to Philadelphia, and I guess I should consider myself lucky to arrive today instead of…

From A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes Adventures of a kind that were not forbidden mainly because mother didn’t know about them were plentiful enough, and usually carried out in the back garden. One boy would dare another to some perilous act, while I was a delighted looker-on, half dreading and half…

From The Next 200 Years, by Herman Kahn In the transition to the postindustrial society, a vast group of intellectuals will be created as the need for expertise increases (and for self-serving reasons as well). These intellectuals may suffer from the most intense anomie of all social groups. In becoming a mass profession, they open…

From A London Child Of The 1870s, by M.V. Hughes Whether by design or not, we were allowed almost unlimited freedom, to imperil our lives without any sense of fear, and to invent our own amusements. We never had a nurse, or a nursery, or anyone to supervise us. Instead of this we were given…

A long time ago I read a science fiction story called Mars Inc. It was about a man who paid some scientists to develop all this micro-miniaturized stuff to induce humans to work together. You know “the Martians are coming and how can we compete”? I was fascinated by the idea of storing a jukebox…

From 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, By Charles C. Mann This book came highly recommended. I second the motion. Adriaen van der Donck was a lawyer who in 1641 transplanted himself to the Hudson River Valley, then part of the Dutch colony of Nieuw Nederland. He became a kind of prosecutor and…

From 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, By Charles C. Mann Striking to the contemporary eye, the 117 codicils of the Great Law were concerned as much with establishing the limits on the great council’s power as on granting them.Its jurisdiction was strictly limited to relations among the nations and outside groups; internal…