The Ananova site brings us this little gem: Baseball star’s wife makes ultimate threat The wife of a top US baseball player has vowed to have sex with all of his team mates if he ever cheats on her. Anna Benson, a former model and stripper who was named Baseball’s Hottest Wife by FHM, is… Continue reading Where’s Tom Wolfe when you need him?
Author: esr
Hacking My Way To Stardom
This is storyboard art for a movie called Nightmask, with the interesting property that I will probably get a speaking part in it if it’s actually produced. “Whoa!” you may well ask. “How does a middle-aged geek with no showbiz history beyond a few singer/songwriter coffeehouse gigs in his college days land a part in,… Continue reading Hacking My Way To Stardom
The Revenge of the Nerds is Living Well
Grant McCracken has argued in his book Plenitude that one of the defining characteristics of the last fifty years is an explosion of subcultural variety — people creating new lifestyles and new identities around occupations, sexual tastes, hobbies, genres of art and music, religions, and just about any other investment of time human beings have… Continue reading The Revenge of the Nerds is Living Well
The Racist of Earthsea
In Slate magazine, SF author Ursula LeGuin complains that the producers of the new Earthsea miniseries have butchered her work. One form of butchery that she zeroes in on is by casting characters who she intended to be red, brown, or black as white people. I have mixed feelings. LeGuin has every right to be… Continue reading The Racist of Earthsea
Left2Right – a critical appraisal
I’ve been reading a new blog called Left2Right, founded in mid-November 2004 as an attempt by a group of left-wing intellectuals to reach out to intelligent people on the right of the American political spectrum. It is indeed a thought-provoking read, but the thoughts they are provoking are not necessarily of the sort they intend.… Continue reading Left2Right – a critical appraisal
Free Falling
My friend Howard Tayler, the cartoonist behind Schlock Mercenary, invited me to post this.
What happens if the Democrats collapse?
I’ve written several blog essays recently [1] [2] [3] [4] pondering the deep trouble the Democratic party is in. I believe, on current demographic and political trends, that their problems are going to get worse and might actually prove terminal — especially if the Republicans have the strategic sense to run Condi Rice for President… Continue reading What happens if the Democrats collapse?
Condoleeza Rice in 2008!
So Condi Rice is going to replace Colin Powell as Secretary of State. I have to think this means she’s being groomed for the Republican ticket in 2008. Well, I hope so anyway. I know very little about her, but I’ve discovered that I really want to have a ringside seat on the farcical hijinks… Continue reading Condoleeza Rice in 2008!
Hurray for Dollywood
Hot damn! I wonder if this here post by Iowahawk means I’m gonna git me someplace near here in Pensylvay-ni-ay that can serve up a decent mess of Texas barbeque? Put me down as a proud purple-stater. I like guns, but I hate country music. I love burnt-ends sandwiches, but I despise chewing tobacco. I… Continue reading Hurray for Dollywood
Islamofascism and the Rage of Augustine
In response to a long, thoughtful post on religion and democracy. a commenter on the Belmont Club wrote: A favorite criticism of Christianity is to point to the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and claim that these events are somehow proof that Christianity is by nature “just another violent religion”. This is both an intellectually… Continue reading Islamofascism and the Rage of Augustine
Mobilizing the Poor and Other Delusions
Yesterday a Democratic friend of mine emailed me in part: “There is a big constituency of poor people who are just not making it at all.” This is one of the American Left’s conventional dogmas — that there is some vast ocean of descamisados out there waiting to be mobilized into a political force that… Continue reading Mobilizing the Poor and Other Delusions
Are the Democrats becoming a regional party?
The 2004 elections are over. Bush won, of course, but I want to focus on an interesting question raised by the red-state/blue-state map of the outcome. It looks suspiciously as though the Democrats are on their way to becoming a regional party. Specifically, a regional party of the urban Northeast and the West Coast metroplexes.… Continue reading Are the Democrats becoming a regional party?
John Kerry — Communist agent of influence
Read this: John Kerry and the VVAW: Hanoi’s American Puppets?. They don’t mention that while John Kerry was operating as an agent of influence for the Vietnamese Communists, he was still an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve. There is a word for what a serving military officer does when he acts as an agent… Continue reading John Kerry — Communist agent of influence
Predictability, Computability, and Free Will
I’ve been reading some philosophical discussion of the free-will/determism question recently. Quite a number of years ago I discovered a resolution of this question, but never did anything with it because I assumed I had simply reinvented a well-known position and could not really contribute anything to the debate. However, the research I’ve done recently… Continue reading Predictability, Computability, and Free Will
The Far Side of Irony
Having seen Team America: World Police last Friday on its opening night, I’m amused by the mainstream-media spin that this movie is an anti-right-wing satire too subtle for the yokels to get. In fact, I think it’s it’s something much more peculiar and interesting — a movie that hides a strong fundamental patriotism and appeal… Continue reading The Far Side of Irony
Software vs. Art
Jamie Richards asks an intelligent question in response to my essay on deadly genius in the arts: I’m not programming-savvy at all, so maybe this is crap… what do you think about the idea that computer programming is a cultural area operating under the same conditions that set up the “Modernist disruption”? As I understand… Continue reading Software vs. Art
The Terror War Comes Home
For the first time in my life, I find that I am seriously considering voting Republican in a presidential election. What has pushed me to it is this report of shots being fired into a Bush-Cheney campaign HQ in Knoxville. TN. It’s not the first shot fired at the Republicans. And it comes on top… Continue reading The Terror War Comes Home
Deadly Genius and the Back-To-Zero Problem
There are entire genres of art that have self-destructed in the last hundred years — become drained of vitality, driven their audiences away to the point where they become nothing more than museum exhibits or hobby-horses for snobs and antiquarians. The three most obvious examples are painting, the literary novel and classical music. After about… Continue reading Deadly Genius and the Back-To-Zero Problem
The Art of Science
One of my earliest blog essays (Terror Becomes Bad Art) was about Luke Helder, the pipe-bombing “artist” who created a brief scare back in 2002. Arguably more disturbing than Helder’s “art” was the fact that he genuinely thought it was art, because none of the supposed artists or arts educators he was in contact with… Continue reading The Art of Science
What Did Dan Rather Know, And When Did He Know It?
Dan Rather’s just-released statement just begs to be fisked: Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question—and their source—vigorously. And we promised that we would… Continue reading What Did Dan Rather Know, And When Did He Know It?