For about five centuries now, the “enlightened” humanists have been railing against religion (fine), tradition (perhaps that’s hasty), and capitalism (dead wrong), lumping far too many issues into one basket and making it difficult even for an atheist-anarchist like me to give them more than one cheer.
As I’ll likely note in my introductory comments at [...]
We live in Bizarro Socialist World when Continental Europeans are telling the U.S. and UK to stop pushing big-government spending on the world (maybe the day will come when they’re more religious than us as well — but we can discuss that on Wednesday at Lolita). It’s crucial to remember that a proper pro-market [...]
About a week and a half ago, the Ayn Rand Institute proudly noted that different editions of Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged have lately filled multiple spots on Amazon’s top ten classics list and top ten U.S. Literature and Fiction list. Despite my subtle philosophical differences with Rand, I think this is great news (and as [...]
Something I always thought would signal the economic end of the world has come to pass: We are on the verge of seeing the abandonment of the very idea of insurance.
I always thought one of the most alarming things about the Clintons was their belief that insurance companies should stop charging people higher premiums if [...]
While I have no strong feelings one way or the other about the bonuses paid to AIG employees — a drop in the bucket compared to the larger crime of the government bailing out AIG and other firms in general (not to mention every other thing government pays for) — I was pleased to see [...]
Gov. Bobby Jindal, in turning down “stimulus” spending for Louisiana, noted with some fear the fact that the strings attached to stimulus money put big-spending programs in place permanently in the states that accept the money, mandating that the states pay for it after the initial influx of federal cash. Obama may be using [...]
Wed., April 1 (8pm):
Rabbi Simcha Weinstein (author of Up, Up, and Oy Vey! and Shtick Shift, about Jewish comics and Jewish comics, respectively) arguing yes
vs.
Skeptic Austin Dacey (Center for Inquiry rep, Skeptical Inquirer contributor, and author of The Secular Conscience) arguing no.
A (real) April Fool’s Day social-philosophical smackdown, hosted by Todd Seavey and moderated [...]
Is it hopelessly populist of me to say that I think we could use a lot more of this — defiant, lawbreaking moonshine-makers — and a lot fewer regulators and central economic planners?
And don’t get me wrong — I’m not knocking material prosperity when I praise this guy’s backwoods lifestyle. On the contrary, I think [...]
Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary Indoctrinate U is showing tomorrow (Tue. the 24th) at 6pm at Village East Cinema at 2nd Ave. and 12th St. It’s a rare case of media looking critically at left-wing political correctness on campus — including the double standards routinely used to silence right-wing groups while giving left-wing groups the [...]
Ah, springtime at last, when (perhaps due to time travel problems like the ones mentioned in my Wednesday entry) snow flurries hit NYC, neopagans celebrate the renewal of life, a man plans an 80sa 50s costume to complement his lady’s 50s costume for a “decades”-themed party hosted by a Brown alum, and a copy of [...]
The universally-praised — and particularly wonk-beloved — Battlestar Galactica ends tonight. Please don’t give anything away, because I’ve only seen an episode or two, as with Heroes, Arrested Development, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, The Sopranos, Lost, Alias, David Tenant as Doctor Who, Dollhouse, and Robot Chicken. I’ve been busy for a decade [...]
We didn’t quite get around to it, but Helen and I considered seeing Taken on St. Patrick’s Day, which would have seemed somehow fitting, since the Irish star of the film, Liam Neeson, apparently lost his wife, Natasha Richardson, to a skiing accident that day, with reports of her finally being taken off life support [...]
One of Scott Nybakken’s complaints in our last Debate at Lolita Bar was overuse of time travel, with all the absurdity it tends to introduce.
It’s hard enough keeping track of geek things that are aiming for some sort of tidiness and logic, like Terminator, but when time travel is depicted by people so interested in [...]
Ah, lassie, ’tis St. Patrick’s Day (a perfect day for my girlfriend, Helen Rittelmeyer, to have a piece about the Boston Irish on NationalReview.com), and much as I admire tradition, ’tis a day that makes me wonder about the eternally-ambiguous dividing line between (a) raucous activities made better — almost sanctified — by the surrounding [...]
= ???
On The Simpsons, Sideshow Mel once popped up to second a comment by Thomas Pynchon, referring to him as “my fellow Cornell alumnus!”
I don’t know if Mel believes the theory, propounded three decades ago by a writer named John Calvin Batchelor, that “Pynchon” was simply a pseudonym for J.D. Salinger.
But in [...]