Which is scariest:
(a) This Doctor Doom jack-o-lantern pointed out to me by Jacob Levy (which may be more alarming than that electricity-shooting costume I mentioned in a previous entry).
(b) The fact I’m headed to see the vampire movie (second in less than a week) 30 Days of Night (Kip’s Bay 7:15 show) dressed as V [...]
I think Ron Paul did a fine job on Tuesday night’s Leno broadcast — calmly, jovially explaining his intention to end income taxes altogether and end military involvement not just in Iraq but around the world, with the audience cheering. He humbly added that regardless of whether he has flaws, the philosophical message of liberty [...]
VS.
YES: Sander Hicks, founder of Soft Skull Press, Vox Pop, and Drench Kiss Media and author of The Big Wedding: 9/11, the Whistle-Blowers, and the Cover-Up.
NO: Karol Sheinin, blogger at AlarmingNews.com (at one point guest blogger for Michelle Malkin) and founder of the counter-protest group Actual Truth About 9/11.
This [...]
Tomorrow, when the three guests listed above are supposed to be on the Tonight show (in that order, if all goes as scheduled), is a big night for Scientology, libertarianism, and punk rock — and somewhere out there, someone who’s into all three is even more excited than I am.
Despite the very [...]
As I headed back to Brown in early 1988 to finish my freshman year, I took inspiration from a winter vacation that included reading Allan Bloom’s Leo Strauss-influenced book The Closing of the American Mind (recommended to me by my high school friend Paul Taylor’s conservative dad, one of the numerous suggestions he gave [...]
Two data points do not constitute a trend — my whole day job is built around that insight — but I’m still pleased to encounter two very different public figures, two days in a row, who may have grown more sympathetic to libertarianism.
The literary journal Opium celebrated the release of its fifth issue Tuesday, [...]
Imagine you’re Giuliani and you get the GOP nomination — and that you don’t care much about philosophy, just winning the general election.
Do you pick Thompson as your running mate to keep the social right (which distrusts you) happy or McCain to win over more moderates (note that Thompson does not fare that well in [...]
How different the approaches to religion are at the event I attended last week and the one I’m headed to tomorrow.
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Last week, an awards dinner hosted by Templeton Foundation-funded magazine In Character — which devotes the entirety of each issue to thoughtful essays on a single virtue, such as generosity or self-reliance — bestowed honors [...]
A depressive friend of mine in college (she should be cropping up in one of my Retro-Journal entries in about four weeks) once disturbed me by saying she didn’t think there was anything particularly unhappy-sounding about one of her then-favorite bands, Joy Division. I think most people would agree that Joy Division sounds exactly [...]
Flashback! Shocking Origin Saga Begins Here! Now It Can Be Told!
As I entered Brown in the fall of 1987, I didn’t expect to be the sort of person who takes an interest in politics (just literature). The only way in which America had seriously disappointed me up to that point was by [...]
It’s fitting that I hear news that reminds me of time travel on the eve of my inaugural “Retro-Journal” blog entry describing events of twenty years ago: DarkHorizons.com says there will be a remake of the Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Timecop, only thirteen years after the original’s release (and just the other day I was [...]
So my own personal checklist of who stands where on global warming now goes something like this:
•My current employers, the American Council on Science and Health, have no official position, partly because it’s out of our personal-health bailiwick but also because our hundreds of scientist advisors are probably divided on the issue, and we tend [...]
As I was collecting my twenty-year-old notes for this coming Friday’s inaugural (and henceforth weekly) Retro-Journal entry, I saw something that made me painfully conscious of how quickly things change: the cover of Joe Jackson’s 2000 album, Night and Day II, to which I was listening.
It’s not just that the beautiful black and white cover [...]
ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (October 2007): Prince of Darkness by Robert Novak and Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher (and more)
David Brooks wrote in the New York Times last week that the Republican Party has been faltering because it has gotten too ideological, giving up Burkean restraint for extremist religious, free-market (go, team!), [...]
So, Fred Thompson (who’s a bit like my two favorite candidates, Giuliani and Paul, averaged together, though I can’t decide if that’s a good thing) made his debate debut today, and I must say, from what little I saw, he sort of sounds like an actor searching for the right “conservative running for president” line [...]