I saw Tommy last night at Lincoln Center, for the first time in about two decades, and for the first time since Pete Townshend dismissed the accusations that he was looking for child pornography by saying he was investigating the subject, inspired partly by a fear he was himself molested in childhood.
And I must say, [...]
So, aside from the past few days, for the past two months I’ve theme-blogged about nerd culture and rock music. That means I’ve barely mentioned politics (by Todd standards). Did I miss anything during those two months?
Back at the beginning of May, Iran was seemingly united beneath its mullahs and authoritarian president, Obama hadn’t sided [...]
I promised economist John Bellettiere that I’d respond to his concerns, fairly common and understandable ones, about possible perverse consequences of utilitarianism, and I hope he won’t mind if I try to be even more sweeping, addressing many concerns about utilitarianism.
First, in hopes of dispensing with many objections of the sort he raises — should [...]
I shouldn’t write about anything that’s been on Drudge, really, because it will already have been picked apart by millions of people, but yesterday’s headlines struck several chords for me:
•The New York Post reported my ex-boss John Stossel’s complaint on his blog that ABC delayed his piece criticizing socialized medicine in order to run more [...]
To compensate for picking on Canada and near-Canadians yesterday, a question about Honduras. Despite all the attention on entities that are potential nuclear threats like North Korea, Iran, and al Qaeda/Taliban, and on Iraq (all of which some far-seeing president focused on the world’s real problems should have rhetorically lumped together with some catchphrase, maybe [...]
After picking on Canada all day, I should concede two things:
1. “Progressive Conservative,” to use the term for a basically-defunct Canadian political coalition, is actually a mushy oxymoron after my own heart (once more: see “Conservatism for Punks” slogan atop blog).
2. It’s not just left-liberal mushiness I fear — even though something in my gut [...]
One of the Canada-linked writers I mentioned this morning, David Brooks, wrote a column dismissing evolutionary psychology for over-explaining every facet of human nature (an overreaching of which some evolutionary psychologists are no doubt guilty, but then, every discipline tends to overreach at times). Though Brooks has said a lot of things I disagree [...]
I was only able to attend a few minutes of the Tea Party protest in Times Square yesterday before heading downtown to host last night’s debate, but the U2-ish opening band seemed good — and while this rare burst of libertarianism and conservatism may be gone from Times Square now (attendance apparently having been in [...]
Well, yesterday we learned that America is in fact economically doomed, according to a narrow vote by our audience at Lolita Bar. It’s a harsh message to receive just before Independence Day but perhaps a fitting one for Canada Day, which was yesterday.
And after all, isn’t Canada the real danger? We may not become Albania, [...]
I know what many of you are thinking: that I’ve been too moderate, often too kind — that my blog entries have sometimes been too long, perhaps too thoughtful. Well, that ends today.
Oh, I’m not saying there won’t be the occasional longish essay, but it’s a fast-moving world, and perhaps I can accomplish more [...]