Author: Eric Scheie

I am glad to see that one of my worst political fears appears to have been misplaced. If present trends continue, Newt Gingrich will go nowhere. When hard core socon Stacy McCain, liberal David von Drehle of Time, and conservative stalwart John Podhoretz all agree, then I’m thinking maybe I can breathe a sigh of…

In my endless quest to understand the nexus between morality and immorality, I found myself returning to an observation I made the other day in the context of 1920s speakeasies: Not a SWAT team in sight! In the days when morality reigned, the police could be paid off. Now that there’s no right and wrong,…

One of the advantages of living in a student neighborhood is that when students move, they often leave things behind. Just yesterday I found this Weber grill left on a nearby curb, so I wheeled it home. The “flavorizers” are rusted out, the burners need overhauling, but it still fires up, and with a little…

Dr. Helen links John Hawkins’ interview with Warren Farrell (author of Why Men Are the Way They Are.) I haven’t read the book, but I felt sorry for a woman he quoted in the interview. Basically what I’m saying in The Myth of Male Power is that power is about control over one’s life. I…

Burglars are criminals and they can be very dangerous, but they tend to be rational people who in general simply want to get in, get your stuff, and get out as fast as they can.  Home invasion burglaries are of course the type of burglary people dread the most, but they are quite rare, because…

I am disgusted with Firefox, and thinking of dumping it. A few days ago I downloaded Firefox 4, and ever since, it has been a nightmare of constant freezes and endless glitches. “Support” says that Google is making it freeze.  Others say Firefox needs to be uninstalled and redownloaded and reinstalled. (I did the latter…

No I am not dead. Just almost. I have been burning the candle at both ends doing campaign work which has a deadline of today. So until later today, I can’t blog. I don’t even have time to be writing this post! But a friend reminded me that I missed out on Berkeley’s Pagan Festival,…

Havelock insists that there be total understandings if not peace with Coco, who is acknowledged to be limping towards godhead. Pay no attention to the asbestos content of the flooring! What is dropped on it will be EATEN! Signed,

Thanks to modern embalming methods, most people don’t have to worry about one of the most dreaded fates since ancient times: being buried alive. That’s simply because no one can survive embalming.  Draining all the blood from your body and replacing it with perfumed formaldehyde offers 100% insurance against living burial. However, mistakes are occasionally…

Back in the 20s, horses couldn’t have dragged me away… …from crying my blues away! A cheerful thought, actually. Click the pic for a feel! The Krazy Kat, btw, was a popular artists’ speakeasy in DC back in the day. Not a SWAT team in sight! In the days when morality reigned, the police could…

After much agonizing and stalling, I finally decided to switch to WordPress. This is the official unveiling! The old MovableType installation was left in place so that there won’t be any dead links, and all clicked links should work. Hope you enjoy it. The blog had to be dragged klcking and screaming into the modern…

Earlier I saw a car which had the back windshield emblazoned with a slogan that Coco takes as an insult. In case you can’t make it out easily, it says the following: O GOD WHAT SHOULD I DO THERE’S A DOG CHASING ME While I would like to tell Coco that some people think in…

I may be slow on the uptake, but I am genuinely having trouble processing all of the anger that the killing of Osama bin Laden seems to have generated on the right. And I do mean anger; in certain teeth-gnashing right wing circles, people seem actually angrier over the death of bin Laden than they…

Since 1994, I have been resolutely, unalterably, vehemently, opposed to the left. No matter what the right wing does, I will always vote for them over the left, even if I have to hold my nose. Even if I have to throw up.  But seeing a comment like the second one to this post by…

At PJM, Michael Ledeen consults the spirit of James Jesus Angleton and asks a good question: “What if the Killing of Bin Laden Is the Beginning of The Great American Retreat?” Interesting theory and speculation, and if the killing turns out to be an excuse for retreat, I will oppose the retreat. However, the possibility…

Rarely have I seen the blogosphere so alive with commentary as it is right now about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Just to make my position clear, I don’t care what anyone thinks of President Obama’s overall performance, but it is undeniable that this is a decided plus. M. Simon and I both said…

There’s a blog for greedy lawyers, which is nice to see, because I believe that deviants and other misfits need to stick together. Hey, maybe I misspoke. I mean, is it really fair of me to describe greedy lawyers as “deviants” and “misfits”? To most people, “greedy lawyers” is a redundancy. Still, even if they…

Here’s a very San Francisco story about the problems which can be posed by carpet removal: When Jack Hagerty closed on his new condo three weeks ago, he thought it had everything he wanted: a quiet, safe Glen Park location, easy access to BART and a backyard for his 10-year-old son. Turns out it came…

In a Washington Examiner piece about Washington’s job killing machine, Hugh Hewitt gives an example of how the Endangered Species Act is being manipulated to thwart oil exploration: …in Texas, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service presides over the dunes sagebrush lizard’s crawl toward protected status under the Endangered Species Act, which will quickly affect…

Last night I was furious about noisy fireworks (which included visible mortars) which erupted in the neighborhood at midnight. Coco is extremely sensitive to that noise and it is one of the few things that gets her really freaked out. What irritated me to no end was that there was absolutely no occasion which might…