The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Global Warming Kills Florida Surfer UPDATE: Thousands Without Electricity or WiFi; Bloggers Hardest Hit by Storm UPDATE: New York Braces for Irene; Women, Minorites, NFL Fans Hardest Hit

The past couple of days, I became irritated by non-stop TV hurricane hype, which depicted Irene as a cataclysmic danger to the East Coast. However, just because the cable-news hysteria was absurdly disproportionate to the actual threat didn’t mean Irene was harmless: Six people, including an 11-year-old boy and a surfer, were dead and the East […]

‘The Relationship Soured After They Came to Doubt His Reincarnation Credentials’

That weird sentence was buried in a New York Times story about a Twitter “stalking” case involving an intra-Buddhist dispute: Born in Canarsie, Brooklyn, Ms. Zeoli is considered to be a reincarnated master in the Tibetan Buddhist religious tradition, and is known to her followers as Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo. She is an avid Twitter user, […]

The Politics of Fear

“In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think . . . but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of […]

Is The GOP Hopelessly Nixonian?

by Smitty Insty links to Bret Jacobson in Forbes. Jacobson starts with the obvious JFK/Nixon debate point, enumerates the various major new media channels, and concludes: So successful campaigns using digital tools well should always be congratulated, sometimes emulated (never duplicated), and always topped. Showing up is a great first step. Then it’s time to […]

Hard Times Spreading Just Like the Flu …

. . . Watch out, homeboy, don’t let it catch you: In the occasionally prickly world of media reporting, it’s hard to find anyone who does not love, respect and, yes, slightly fear Jack Shafer. So widespread is the love that American Journalism Review published a valentine to him earlier today, devoting 2,500 words to figuring […]

This Item Is Not (Yet) Available at Amazon

But it’s probably only a matter of time: The Duet is a new, sleek, multispeed, waterproof vibrator – and it doubles as a USB drive with up to 16GB of storage. Its designers, Ti Chang and Michael Topolovac, realized that the biggest complaint from women about vibrators had to do with the hassle of cords, […]

More Predictable Than the Weather

Hurricane hysteria gives way to global-warming hype: Was Hurricane Irene caused by global warming? — Politico How Global Warming Is Making Hurricane Irene Worse — Thnk Progress Global Warming’s Heavy Cost — The Daily Beast And if you don’t buy into the hype, you’re anti-science. Just wondering: Would I be the first to say that […]

Tiny Indiana College Likely to Get a Whole Lot Tinier in the Near Future

The kind of stuff you can’t make up: Tiny Goshen College in Indiana has banned the “The Star Spangled Banner: at all sporting events because the Mennonite school’s president considers the National Anthem’s words to be too violent. The 1,000-student school had already banned the words last year, but the band could still play the […]

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