Author: Eric Scheie

Via Ann Althouse, I just learned about a vicious attack by a killer whale: The Orange County Sheriff’s Office said deputies responded to the theme park after receiving a call that an employee had been attacked and injured in the “killer whale tank.” The woman who was killed was a 40-year-old senior trainer at the…

From José Guardia, I learned about a new anti-smoking campaign in France, which obviously hopes to shock young people into not smoking by means of disturbing images. The slogan is this: “To smoke is to be a slave of tobacco” I agree with José that the message is powerful. All the more so because of…

I had a disturbing thought earlier when Veeshir left a comment pointing out that a commenter (who calls himself “Steve”) appeared to be soliciting links. I remembered that in an earlier post, the same commenter had solicited a link from another blogger, even though that blogger had not even left a comment. So I did…

One of the things I learned during my brief experience in sales years ago was never to attack a competing product. Not, that is, if you want to sell your product. I was skeptical, so at one point I actually tried what I was warned not to do, and sure enough, the guy started defending…

I first heard about Twitter back in 2007 — back when I attempted to “live-blog” the September 2007 Republican debate at Morgan State University, and I believe it was Robert Cox of the Media Bloggers Association who told me about the new phenomenon. I’m all for communication, but at the time it didn’t make much…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I just watched “The Failure of Anti-Money Laundering Laws” — a very disturbing video about money laundering. The facts and figures are appalling. As Dan Mitchell of the CATO Institute shows, over 18 million “suspicious transactions” are monitored annually, yet this yields only 900 or so actual money-laundering convictions. Not only are…

This morning I was treated to a marvelous new conspiracy theory, which is being promoted by Spain’s socialist government: “Spain Blames Economic Crisis on ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Conspiracy.” I try to be thorough and fair-minded about these things, so I thought that the best place to start would be by taking a look at some actual Anglo-Saxons.…

I really don’t understand how Stephen Green managed to drunk-blog this morning’s Tiger Woods apologia, but he did. There is not enough alcohol in the world to get me through such a thing. But alcohol is a funny, perhaps cosmic, thing. After drinking a few glasses of wine, I remembered Stephen’s bravery, and I thought…

As Allahpundit noted in his post about CPAC booing the speaker who condemned the gay conservative group, there was another issue that caused tension. Gambling. The tensions didn’t end [with the gay issue]. Along the back wall 2004 World Poker Champion Greg Raymer stood waiting for a talk radio interview. “Focus on the Family considers…

I realize that I should have called this post “Words that cause confusion,” except blog posts are supposed to have eye-catching titles, aren’t they? Anyway, a couple of things I read today reminded me of two dishonest words that especially offend me, because of their inherently argumentative nature as well as their tendency to distort…

While it hadn’t occurred to me that the Tea Parties were racist, the fact that Keith Olbermann brought it up made me think back to the local Tea Party I attended in Northville, Michigan. At the time, I didn’t pay any attention to the race of the protesters, because, well, taxation is not about race.…

Under what I think is a highly questionable category of “CELEBRITY FEUDS,” TMZ has an article titled “Mitt Romney’s Alleged Attacker — Major Rap Star” which claims that the guy involved in a violent airplane altercation with presidential aspirant Mitt Romney was rapper Sky Blu of the group LMFAO. In a video interview (called a…

Bill Quick has a very thoughtful essay with which I generally agree, although I was a bit confused by the essay’s title — which characterized the “Tea Party Principles” as “the call for fiscal conservatism and respect for traditional values.” Because I write this blog, the above puts me in the position of having to…

Damn! There are so many things I can’t write about that it just kills me. Really, this not-wanting-to-hurt-anyone’s-feelings thing gets to be too much, but that’s the way it is in the blogosphere, especially on the right side of the blogosphere these days. People who take themselves seriously do not take kindly to not being…

Ann Althouse reminded me that I don’t like figure skating. Never have, never will. I also don’t like Barbra Streisand. Neither musically, nor politically. While there’s no accounting for taste (and thus no accounting for those who like “Barbra”), I wish people wouldn’t make tasteless demands like this: Call me a stereotype if you will…

My apologies to those who came here looking for one of my usual eccentric or silly posts. I’ll try to come up with something later, but I think this is important, so I’m changing the time on this post so it will stay at the top all day. As most of you know, I don’t…

Anyone familiar with Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón will remember that he’s an activist who sought to bring criminal charges against a number of Americans, including Henry Kissinger and the so-called “Bush Six.” (Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General; John Yoo, of the Office of Legal Counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; William Haynes…

In a post about the latest attempt to medicalize political opinion, I interjected a gratuitous, unelaborated thought: I often suspect that the culture war is intended to keep us bickering over penises in the hope we won’t notice the country is going bankrupt, but that’s another rant. I’ve talked about this before. It’s the old…

I’ve read that conservative is the new gay, but might there actually be a “conservative gene”? What if conservatives are “born that way” as activists maintain gays are? Wouldn’t that make conservatives the members of a legitimate identity group worthy of the full range of legal protections? Lest anyone laugh at the absurdity, the New…