Thanks to Daniel Radosh, last night I got to go to a debate on the existence of God between Christopher Hitchens and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at the 92nd Street Y, not far north of me, and Hitchens was generally perceived to mop the floor with Boteach (henceforth pronounced “bee-atch”) — and if you […]
VS.
Yesterday’s Florida results were big news, but one week from today, it will be Wednesday, Feb. 6, which means that “Super Duper Tuesday” — when nearly half the states vote — will be behind us. Come vent, query, and argue about what it all means and where both the Democrats and Republicans […]
The Democrats: Slate’s smart and moderate Mickey Kaus says the best thing for Obama’s campaign would be for him to become the (black) anti-affirmative action candidate, not so unlike the suggestion I made recently. It would certainly be a neat way of underscoring the idea that Hillary is both the establishment candidate and the […]
A few musical notes, so to speak:
•A friend asks what exactly “The Sweetest Taboo” that Sade Adu (one of the three most attractive women in the world, as I’ve noted before) sings about is, and I have to admit I don’t know. It sounds like it’s just love (or, vaguely, sex), but that’s not […]
Four quick movie thoughts:
•I love to read Kyle’s movie reviews, but he is once more profoundly on crack with his negative review of Cloverfield. Yes, it’s basically just Blairzilla 911, just over an hour of shaky-cam footage of good-looking young people running through the streets of Manhattan during a giant monster attack. And? […]
National Review sent me to Woodstock ’94 — and my old friend Paul Taylor came along (at his own expense). We weren’t the only Republicans present, since I later learned that my favorite MTV VJ, Kennedy, was wandering around interviewing people in their tents, asking them if they wanted to engage in “free love.”
The […]
Just as two people in an argument who are each screaming “You’re a jerk!” are often both right, so too do a lot of philosophers do a very convincing job of eviscerating other thinkers shortly before getting gutted themselves.
Along those lines, some enjoyable video clips:
•Why, look, it’s the annoying TV host who did so much […]
As corrected in my Terminator post, Lisa Loeb plays at the Columbus Circle Borders, not the Park Avenue one, this Tuesday (7pm), the day after Martin Luther King Day is observed.
And an afterthought on the important post before that, about utilitarianism: I did not have Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in mind when […]
Romney and Clinton took Nevada as I write this, but the important thing is that I don’t want the dreaded Huckabee to win South Carolina (or the GOP nomination, or the presidency, or the position in the history books of “guy who put the last nail in the coffin of free-market sentiment in the Republican […]
Remember, for one week, perhaps ending today, I’ve been rooting for Fred Thompson — as is Sgt. Mark Seavey, who is probably a distant relative of mine since he hails from Maine, while my father, like many Seaveys, hails from New Hampshire. Sgt. Seavey is a hawkish American Legion official, Afghan war vet, and […]
At work, we had a “death pool” in the first half of 1994 — that is, my co-workers and I would be awarded points depending on how many celebrity deaths we correctly predicted that season (with bonus points the younger they were). The points I got for predicting one death were little […]
I have no problem with the fact that the Terminator TV series appears to take place in a different timeline than the events of Terminator 3 (and if you don’t want to know why — in great detail — stop reading now). I mean, hey, it’s time travel, so why not?
By my count (ignoring […]
Given all my recent posts about presidential candidates, it might be worth taking a step back to remind ourselves “why we fight”: in truth, because I just want everyone to be happy.
That is, I’m a utilitarian, seeing increases in general happiness (on balance, long-term) as synonymous with good and decreases in […]
If you’re sick of reading about the primaries and your motto is “Wake me in November,” I understand (indeed, I was starting to think that was Fred Thompson’s motto). Otherwise, you may enjoy watching me struggle to come up with a new favorite candidate in the presidential primaries.
First of all, I am familiar with […]
Forgive me for writing one more Ron Paul entry (though I will otherwise stick to my plan to ignore him henceforth). Count the layers of my confusion (probably shared by many libertarians to some extent but perhaps interesting to people haven’t already obsessively catalogued all their own mixed feelings about Paul):
•I was rooting for […]
