A wise and cynical friend of mine once described the motivation behind puritanism as “the fear that someone might be fucking and getting away with it”. I think the subtext of the periodic public panics about teen sex has always been resentment that sexy young things just might be getting away with it — enjoying… Continue reading Teen Sex vs. Adult Resentment
Arm and Assimilate
A current Weekly Standard article, Crime Without Punishment, observes that European crime rates are soaring to levels that match or exceed the U.S.’s even while U.S crime rates decline for the tenth consecutive year. Schadenfreude is not a pretty emotion, but it’s hard not to feel a twinge of it after so many years of… Continue reading Arm and Assimilate
Women With Guns
James Rummel
Women With Guns
James Rummel asks why men keep teaching women to shoot, despite the fact that they tend to outdo us at this manly pursuit. As a man who makes something of a hobby of teaching woman to shoot, I can answer in two ways: One: Women need to learn to shoot more than men do. Men… Continue reading Women With Guns
Sexual Competence
Most of the participants in the recent blogospheric mini-flap about a Yale Press Daily article on the fine points of fellatio either make crude jokes, dismiss the article as either a sophomoric exercise in tweak-the-fogies or shocking evidence of the depravity of today’s youth. I think both are missing the real point. Well, OK, the… Continue reading Sexual Competence
Closed Source — Who Dares Call It Treason?
The cat is out of the bag. During testimony before a federal judge, Microsoft executive Jim Allchin has admitted that some code critical to the security of Microsoft products is so flawed it could not be safely disclosed to other developers or the public. Allchin was arguing against efforts by nine states and the District… Continue reading Closed Source — Who Dares Call It Treason?
That’s Why They Call It ‘Sex Education’
I’m on the road in Thailand, speaking at a U.N. conference on sustainable A development in the Third World. Earlier today I listened to a presentation on the effects of sex education for women. The presentation mentioned some cultural value conflicts about sex education, but it occurred to me that it didn’t touch the biggest… Continue reading That’s Why They Call It ‘Sex Education’
Socialists to the Stars
Science fiction, because it deals in extrapolated futures, has a long tradition of employment as a vehicle for political argument. More than that, science fiction encourages politically-minded writers to narratize their beliefs in ways that can sometime reveal more than the writers intended about the problems and contradictions in their own theories. I was powerfully… Continue reading Socialists to the Stars
Foo on you, Asparagirl!
Asparagirl has committed a base calumny against me. While it’s true she had something to do with me entering the blogosphere, this business about threatening her with a Glock is totally off-base. I would never do anything like that. My carry weapon is a Colt Officer’s Model 45 ACP. It’s my wife who carries the… Continue reading Foo on you, Asparagirl!
Terrorism Becomes Bad Art
Minnesota art student Luke Helder has been charged with the recent string of Midwestern mailbox bombings. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that he’s the perpetrator. An art student. Yeah. That fits; the tone of the portentious twaddle in pipe-bomb-boy’s manifesto was exactly that of the artist manque, big ideas being handled stupidly by… Continue reading Terrorism Becomes Bad Art
Firearms and the dominant media culture
A recent flurry of nearly identical editorials in American newspapers conveys the degree of fluttering endemic in dovecotes everywhere in the wake of the Justice Department’s new statement of position on the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The New York Times and Washington Post have viewed with alarm, displaying an almost pathetic degree of… Continue reading Firearms and the dominant media culture
Acting White
Eugene Volokh comments that many of the leading promoters of racial identity politics in the U.S. have begun to lump Asians in with white people, but declines to attempt an interpretation. Actually this development is very easy to understand. All you need to break the code is to know that “white” = “assimilated”. Asians tend… Continue reading Acting White
Testing
Welcome to Armed And Dangerous, an experiment in weblogging. This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, this post would be immediately followed by a pointer to some old-media channel that would tell you what to think.