Upgrade in progress

My WordPress instance was just upgraded from 1.2 to 1.5. The visual presentation may have a glitch or two until I edit the template. UPDATE: Aaargh. It looks like the special magic in the templates has been changed enough that I will have to rebuild my look and feel from scratch. This may take a… Continue reading Upgrade in progress

Eric writes about the shoes

Aa a finger exercise in writing, I decided to submit a piece to Manolo’s Essay Contest. The constraints — low word count, a subject that really doesn’t interest me much — appealed to me. I figured if I could produce something interesting under those circumstances, it would be an accomplishment. Here it is. You be… Continue reading Eric writes about the shoes

Published
Categorized as Culture

Impotent radicals

A minor SF writer of radical Marxist political convictions recently uttered a rather incoherent rant in which, among other things, she accused me of “simple-minded right-wing” views. I’m not going to name her because I don’t dislike the woman enough to want to add to her troubles. But I’ve heard this song before from other… Continue reading Impotent radicals

Published
Categorized as Politics

The first good thing to come of Hurricane Katrina

Oh, my stars and garters. A pro-firearms story in the New York Times? Yes, children, it has actually happened: Police and Owners Begin to Challenge Looters (link via InstaPundit). Property owners with guns maintaining civil order in their neighborhood are cited approvingly. There’s even a picture of a handsome armed couple “on the lookout for… Continue reading The first good thing to come of Hurricane Katrina

Published
Categorized as Firearms

Getting Orwell Wrong

The interpretation of George Orwell could be a paradigm for how dead literary figures get knocked from pillar to post by the winds of political interpretation. During his lifetime, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm went from darling of the left to exile for having been willing to write the truth about Communist totalitarianism… Continue reading Getting Orwell Wrong

Pretty People Behaving Stupidly

I’ve been learning about the romance genre recently. I have no intrinsic interest in it at all, but I have an intelligent friend who plows through romances the way I read SF, and we’ve been discussing the conventions and structural features of the genre. Along the way I’ve learned that romance fans use an acronym… Continue reading Pretty People Behaving Stupidly

Katrina and the Kos

About twelve hours ago I toyed with the idea of writing a satire in which the Bush-haters blame W. for the magnitude of the disaster bearing down on New Orleans. I discarded the idea on the grounds that it’s (a) not funny, and (b) not believable enough. I mean, who could really imagine that theory… Continue reading Katrina and the Kos

Published
Categorized as Politics

Out like Flynn

Renowned pychometrician Charles Murray has given us, in The Inequality Taboo, a concise summary of the most current science on group differences in IQ and other measures of capability. Most of it is not surprising to anybody who has been following the actual science rather than press accounts severely distorted by the demands of political… Continue reading Out like Flynn

Published
Categorized as Science

Blame The Audience

In Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle, a writer for the New York Times explores the theory that movie attendance is tanking because the quality of all too many mega-hyped “major movies” has plunged into the crapper. Well, no shit, Sherlock — what was your first clue? Pearl Harbor? Alexander? Mission Impossible II? What’s really news… Continue reading Blame The Audience

Published
Categorized as Culture

Libertarian realism

I hate war. Even when the results of defeat would be worse than the results of war, I hate war. It kills people and makes government stronger. But when the results of defeat would be worse, I face reality and support war. Our Islamist enemies want to kill us all — starting with Jews and… Continue reading Libertarian realism

The “Bush Lied” lie

Today’s entry in the Belgravia Dispatch does an excellent job of demolishing the “Bush lied, people died!” canard so popular among the anti-war left — Greg Djerejian echoes my own conclusions when he writes: “But if you dig into the weeds of the investigations that have taken place — one must judiciously conclude that he… Continue reading The “Bush Lied” lie

Published
Categorized as Politics

Kurds in the Coal Mine

How will we know if the attempt to reconstruct Iraq is failing? This is a serious question. With as much hysterical anti-Iraq-war, anti-Bush-Administration fabrication going in the media as there has been, it’s tempting for a rational person to dismiss every negative report as just another load of Michael Mooronism and dismiss it. That would… Continue reading Kurds in the Coal Mine

Love and Severus Snape

OK, I’ve read “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and enjoyed it I have a theory about what will happen in Book 7. Potential spoilers about Book 6 follow!.

Published
Categorized as General

Sowing Dragon’s Teeth

David Lucas’s op-ed in the Knoxville News-Sentinel combines with this story about active-duty military personnel criticizing Edward Kennedy and Dick Durbin’s “gulag” rhetoric about Guantanamo Bay to suggest something interesting about the long-term political impact of the Iraq War. Historically, one of the major byproducts of American wars is politicians. While it’s rare for a… Continue reading Sowing Dragon’s Teeth

American Empire Redux

A respondent to my previous post on American Empire said “For non-Americans, the concern is not necessarily “does America behave like an empire?”, but “can we trust it not to act like one when the chips are down?” (e.g. if oil supplies dwindle to the point where the US economy is at real risk). The answer… Continue reading American Empire Redux

Published
Categorized as Politics

American Empire

The American Left, and some of the Buchananite/isolationist elements of the American Right, have spent a lot of time and rhetorical energy fretting about the “American Empire”, and/or the “global system of American hegemony”. Lee Harris has written a very informative essay on Hegemony vs. Empire in which he points out that these two words… Continue reading American Empire

Published
Categorized as Politics