Author: Eric Scheie

A tornado ripped through the Ann Arbor suburb of Dexter earlier tonight, doing substantial damage. In Ann Arbor, the floodwater was deep (my street was flooded), firefighters were injured, and apartments had to be evacuated. Here’s the video showing the twister: I was not at home when it happened, but I could hear the hail…

Contradictions fascinate me, and last night I was reminded of a longstanding moral/cultural contradiction which will not go away. Local homeless rights activists are championing a tent city and asking for donations. No surprise there, nor is the usual rhetoric (that there are no jobs in this economy) surprising. Homeless people (mostly men) are seen…

It often seems to me that the routine use of hyperbole and overwrought language is rendering ordinary communication ever more difficult. The word “decimate” once meant killing one in ten. Now it is used to denote massive destruction. “Notorious” once had a negative connotation. More and more I see it used as a synonym for “famous.”…

Did the “Greek homos” steal philosophy and mathematics from Al Sharpton or from whomever he claims to “represent”? I didn’t know that the Greeks (much less the “homos” among them) stole philosophy or math from anyone, but Al Sharpt0n does. And he said so in an audio clip with which I’m having trouble. The trouble started…

I’m having some conceptual difficulty over the abortion debate. Some friends are saying that abortionists should be criminally prosecuted as murderers, but not women who have abortions. My question is this. If a woman takes an abortifacient drug, then isn’t she the abortionist? It seems like a pretty straightforward question, but the answers to straightforward…

Via Radley Balko, I learned about another SWAT Team raid in which an unarmed man was shot to death. The reason for the use of deadly military force? A search for marijuana. Ostensibly to “find” the pot, the cops simply break in and open fire. Jacob Sullum contrasts this behavior with what would happen if…

Feminist super lefties Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem don’t like Rush Limbaugh. No surprise there. But in a scarier development, now they (and I’m sure others on the left) are calling call for actual government censorship. They want the FCC to take Limbaugh off the air. While I think the demand is laughable…

I’ve been busy today.  So busy that I had no time for any serious blogging. But now that I see that America is in a “sex war“, I’m thinking maybe it wasn’t a good time for me to be busy with other things. OTOH, maybe it was. What are we supposed to do in a…

As I’ve said before, I’m a real ignoramus where it comes to science fiction. But via Ace, I just learned about an amazing and astounding Sci Fi achievement called “Space Traders,” and I’m aghast! The critics all agree – Professor Derrick Bell’s criminally overlooked film “Space Raiders” is a smash hit! Boy is it ever! Why didn’t…

Sometimes I have morbid thoughts — too morbid for this blog. Yes, I am constrained by an inexplicable form of self censorship I cannot define, but which often prevents me from spewing forth public utterances I might come to regret. But the morbid thoughts which have been plaguing me lately were very pleasantly distracted by…

I must be getting old, but this morning I learned about an entirely new concept called “inauthentic text.” An old post was pinged by a blog which linked what I said, and when I went there to read the post and possibly thank the blogger, I saw that the link had absolutely nothing to do…

Those are words I never thought I would utter, much less here. But the fact is that Pat Robertson has come out against locking up marijuana offenders. Reason‘s Mike Riggs has more, and calls Robertson’s remarks “heartening” even though he thinks they don’t go far enough. Personally, I wish Robertson had also pointed out that there…

While I can’t help watching it unfold on TV, I nonetheless don’t want to watch the very close Ohio primary. That’e because even though I’m anti-Santorum, I’m not for Romney. So I have been amusing myself by flipping back and forth between CNN and Fox, and I have noticed a pattern that neither would admit,…

I recently learned that while “Facebook can tell you if a person is worth hiring,” taking into account a potential employee’s religious views may be problematic: Employers can discriminate against potential employees who seem like bummers based on their Wall postings and interests, but will get into trouble if what the Facebook user has said…

Laura Ingraham is waiting for Obama: Ed Schultz called me a slut last May…still waiting for Obama’s call. Apparently, the president only cares about women being called sluts when lefty activists are called sluts by right wing commentators. If the roles are reversed, then it’s just fine. How very presidential of him. Such gravitas. MORE:…

That’s what the article says. And to prove their point, they have a painful picture. Assuming that they’re both female, the image is enough to turn many a gay man straight, which is a pretty painful idea in itself.  Is it gay, though? I don’t honestly know. If it is, then what are the consequences…

I’ve touched on this before, but I have a stubborn math question. What does “1%” mean? I thought it was a question of math (meaning those in the top 1% of American income levels), but I became a little suspicious when I saw that the OWS people liked Steve Jobs even though he was in…

Everybody talks about how the 1970s sucked. Including me. I thought it was a generally sleazy decade, and I lived through it. Fashion and art seemed to be on the decline, and we had Vietnam, Nixon (who was IMO unjustly maligned), then Ford, then Carter, and I guess the Ayatollah Khomeini. Ugh. Except I saw…

Today is the 165th birthday of Alexander Graham Bell. Considering that “Bell has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history,” you might think that he might rate a Google Doodle as Rossini did a a few days ago. But you’d be wrong. Perhaps Bell was too American for comfort. Anyway, I’m…

The other day I mentioned sluttiness in a post, and I supplied no context. I’m still struggling over the context of sluttiness, and I don’t want to get into moral judgments, not so much because I am against moral judgments, but simply because I don’t want to get into moral judgments. However, words do have…