Whose character are you?

I always wanted to be a Heinlein character when I grew up. Somebody thinks I succeeded… Robert Heinlein wrote you – your stranger in astrange land, you. Which Author’s Fiction are You? brought to you by Quizilla

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Categorized as General

The desexualization of the American (fe)male

There’s been quite a blogospheric flap lately about Kim DuToit’s essay The Pussification Of The Western Male. The single feature of the conversation that surprised me most is that nobody connected it to Steven den Beste’s equally searing essay Anglo Women are an endangered species. Steve’s point complements Kim’s and amplifies it in some useful… Continue reading The desexualization of the American (fe)male

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Categorized as Culture

Yee-ha! W00t! Excelsior!

I got email from Dr. Stanley Schmidt, the editor of Analog, about an hour ago. The bad news was, he turned down the short story. The good news was he accepted the fact article. I’m going to be published in Analog! /me does geeky victory dance OK, so this is one of those things where… Continue reading Yee-ha! W00t! Excelsior!

Possible outage today

The good folks at ibiblio.org are about to upgrade me from b2 to WordPress. There might be a short outage involved, and it’s possible the new CSS will garble my pages. Any problems should be transient and fixed within a few hours.

A rant — Why are CSS designers so utterly freaking clueless?

People who put absolute pixel sizes in CSS layouts should be lashed with knouts. I’ve tripped over this problem yet again while moving my blog; I’m using b2, and the default stylesheet shipped with it was obviously produced by some graphics designer who has failed to grasp the fact that there are lots of different… Continue reading A rant — Why are CSS designers so utterly freaking clueless?

The sleep of reason

I’ve had a copy of David Frum’s Dead Right sitting on my coffee table for months. I didn’t buy it, it was landed on my by an old friend who persists in imagining that I’m interested in reading conservative political theory. In fact, it’s been years since I found conservative theorizing other than wearily predictable.… Continue reading The sleep of reason

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Categorized as Politics

Dehumanization

A reader, responding to the suggestion that we call the Baathist holdouts in Iraq werewolves, asked rhetorically whether the intent was to dehumanize them. Lurking behind this question was the theory that war supporters like me need to make our enemies into un-persons in order to justify continuing to kill them. This question displays a… Continue reading Dehumanization

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Categorized as Terror

Call them Werewolves

The blogosphere has shown some ability to change the terms and terminology of the terror-war debate in the U.S. It’s time for a bit of meme-hacking. Let’s see if we can displace terms like “insurgent” or “Saddam loyalist” with one that conveys the true depth of evil we are facing. I have a candidate to… Continue reading Call them Werewolves

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Categorized as Terror

The Whig Maneuver

VodkaPundit asks: Is the Democratic Party becoming increasingly likely to pull a Whig Maneuver and disappear into history? If so, what replaces it? The Democrats certainly seem to be trying pretty hard to self-destruct. But this is not a new story; it’s been going on ever since the New Left captured the party apparat in… Continue reading The Whig Maneuver

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Categorized as Politics

Great War II

Donald Sensing has suggested that it may have been a bad thing that the Allies won the First World War, and sketched an alternate history. Stephen Green has replied. Donald, I buy your scenario in the West (Germans go home, keeping Alsace-Lorraine) but I think Steve is right that your take on German war aims… Continue reading Great War II

What Planet does Naomi Wolf Live On?

Naomi Wolf’s essay The Porn Myth strongly suggests that she lives on some other planet. It has been pretty well fisked over at Haight Speech and elsewhere. But so far, all of the people I’ve seen shredding it are women. Perhaps this is because it’s politically incorrect for us panting, grunting persons-of-testicle to trash-talk a… Continue reading What Planet does Naomi Wolf Live On?

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Categorized as Sex

Stupid Like A Fox

For the kind of articulate extrovert who tends to go into politics or the media, it can be very difficult to believe that a stumble-tongued, inarticulate man can be other than an idiot. As an articulate extrovert myself, I’ve had to struggle with this. Like most of our media and chattering classes, my instinct too… Continue reading Stupid Like A Fox

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Categorized as Politics

Attack of the Malaysian Moonbats

Today, a bunch of prominent warbloggers were hit by a denial-of-service attack apparently orchestrated by a bunch of comically incompetent al-Qaeda affiliates in Malaysia — and I wasn’t a target. I’d ask what I’ve been doing wrong with my life that I missed out on the honor of being personally targeted by Osama’s fuckwit brigade.… Continue reading Attack of the Malaysian Moonbats

Planets of Adventure

Bless Jim Baen, who at times seems determined to reprint the entire Golden Age midlist of SF. for he has given us a good thick anthology of some of the best stories of Murray Leinster — a writer once counted among science-fiction’s reliable best, but since unfairly forgotten. I come away from Planets of Adventure… Continue reading Planets of Adventure

Toxic Christianity, round two

In the October 15th Best of the Web, James Taranto asks: So let’s see if we have this straight: The head of the Anglican Church is telling us that the wanton murder of thousands of innocent people [by Palestinian terrorists] is a sign of “serious moral goals,” while the liberation of millions [of Iraqis] from… Continue reading Toxic Christianity, round two

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Categorized as Culture