Author: Eric Scheie

I’m a 56 year old man who sometimes enjoys contemplating the beauty of ruins. I don’t want to say that I “celebrate the beauty of decay” because that might sound decadent and distract from my purpose here, which is to stick to an activity considered normal and wholesome. Contemplating the beauty of ruins is certainly…

One of the hot topics of today is the DADT quagmire, which I don’t feel especially compelled to discuss right now — mainly because I don’t like joining in news-driven choruses in rote response to the appearance of news items. (Allahpundit noted that despite the hype over the poll that’s generating the current fuss, “there…

…mental illness? I have to say, Clayton Cramer dug up quite a gem here: It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown…

Via an email, I learned that the University of Michigan is hosting an event that I am going to miss. (Boo hoo!) Ted Rall [discussed infra] will be speaking, as well as hawking and signing copies of his latest book — “The Anti-American Manifesto.” Which means that if I weren’t busy that night, I might…

I don’t know whether to call it an improvement or not, but Detroit seems to be slipping in the rankings again. This time, it’s fallen to third place in the Most Dangerous Cities in America category: CQ Press has released its annual list of the most dangerous cities in America. According to the independent publishing…

I’m back from Illinois (which is west of Michigan and yet seems somehow more “East”) and looking through my pictures. Here’s me and M. Simon, right after eating dinner at the Irish Rose in Rockford. I ate pork imposingly, and M. Simon had an imposing cheeseburger. It’s not often that all the problems of the…

While I had thought I might be able to ignore the world for a few days, there is no getting away from my sense of duty to blow the whistle when I see dereliction in the press — especially when it involves non-reporting of major events. In what I hope is just another amazing coincidence,…

I’m on the road, and my blogging will be light in the next few days. I’ll probably eat turkey (the fowl, not the country). May PETA forgive me for this imposition. And hey, if you think slaughtering turkeys poses ethical issues, I suggest a post that Glenn linked which asks a seemingly simple question: Did…

It’s not every day that a news item reminds me of a Grateful Dead lyric, but this one does: (NewsCore) – Facebook is one step closer to trademarking the word “Face,” TechCrunch reported Tuesday. The U.S. Patent And Trademark Office has sent Facebook a Notice of Allowance, which means it will grant the “Face” trademark…

In a recent post in which I quoted a sour proposal of taking Amtrak as an alternative to flying, I asked a cynical rhetorical question: Take Amtrak? How long do you think it will be before the mindless, unelected, nameless “they” who run our lives do the same thing with Amtrak and every other public…

I keep reading about how New Jersey wants to pass new legislation against bullying. In the news today I read about an “Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights” but the articles were short on details, so I had to look for the text, which I found here. Most of the very long bill deals with restrictions on…

From the Wiki entry for John Coode (17th century Protestant rebel leader in Maryland) In April 1689, John Coode helped lead “An association in arms, for the defence of the Protestant religion, and for asserting the right of King Oscar and Queen Isabelle to the Province of Maryland and all the English dominions.” Nonsense. There…

Amazing as it may sound, the government is trying to get people to feel sorry for the TSA screeners. “Our concern is that the public not confuse the people implementing the policies with the people who developed the policies,” said Sharon Pinnock, the union’s director of membership and organization. I love it. “Don’t blame me!…

As part of my endless quest to understand the meaning of words that are commonly used but ill defined, I found myself trying to understand precisely how best to politically characterize opposition to big government. I am going to attempt to break this down because the more I think about it, the more confused I…

Watching the video of a small boy being strip-searched made me very angry this morning. I was already angry at the TSA, though, as I had just finished reading in the Sunday paper about the indignities meted out to a man suffering from bladder cancer whose urostomy bag was forced open by TSA man handlers,…

Dr. Helen links a post by ShrinkWrapped about the disturbing trend highlighted in a Drudge headline that read: ‘1 IN 5’ AMERICANS MENTALLY ILL Hey, if that’s true, that must mean that this blog has a lot of mentally ill readers. I won’t comment on the authors, but there are at least four of us…

Last night I ate barbecued pork for dinner in a nice Japanese restaurant here in Ann Arbor. Normally, it wouldn’t occur to me that by ordering and eating and paying for that meal I was using, exploiting, or imposing on anyone. After all, I got the meal, the restaurant got the $16.00 it cost, and…

Sharron Angle is being widely ridiculed for saying that “sometimes dictators have good ideas.” Seems she praised the wrong dictator: Angle invoked Pinochet’s name when discussing Social Security privatization: “She had previously used Chile’s Augusto Pinochet’s experiment as an example, but had not used it since her staff shut her down,” Ralston writes. “That day,…

I’m in a quandary. Again! There’s an issue I am tired of writing about that I feel obliged to write about. That alone wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that the last time I admitted I was tired of an issue, some commenters were mightily annoyed. One opined that if I am tired of…

As Arizona has been much demonized lately, and is being subjected to a boycott, news that doesn’t fit the “bigoted state” narrative is being under-reported. So there wasn’t much national attention paid to the fact that on November 2, Arizona’s “bigoted” voters approved Proposition 203, which made Arizona the 15th state to approve a medical…