The Scariest Science
Reading the November issue of Literary Review (a British monthly, somewhat like the New York Review of Books but less claustrophobically liberal), the following thing caught my attention. It's in Donald Rayfield's ...
Reading the November issue of Literary Review (a British monthly, somewhat like the New York Review of Books but less claustrophobically liberal), the following thing caught my attention. It's in Donald Rayfield's ...
It’s baffling to me that some people still can’t grasp the simple notion that humor is subjective. I have friends—decent, smart people—who’ll say things like “[fill in the blank] jokes aren’t funny,” as ...
As with Robert Frost's two paths diverging in the woods, the COVID pandemic has hit a fork in the road. Back in 2020, when the virus first presented itself, anything could be forgiven. Trump could shoot hydroxychloroquine ...
The mainstream media embarrassed itself again last week by propagating another hate hoax. A 12-year-old black girl in the D.C. suburbs claimed that three white boys in her class held her down on the school playground, ...
Malcolm Gladwell published in The New Yorker a long essay, "The Crooked Ladder: The Gangster's Guide to Upward Mobility," on how black drug dealers today are just like Italian mafiosi, and their descendants would ...
My goddaughter was Face Timing with her grandfather the other day and there was something eerily magical about the way he spoke to her. He's been having a hard time recently. Dollar General called the cops because he was ...
I’ll begin this week’s sermon, I mean column, with the Parable of the Hemorrhaging Mexican Whore. I used to have this friend—I won’t say his name because he’s an actor and you’d know him—who loved driving down ...
“America is on trial,” said Rev. Al Sharpton from the pulpit of Greater St Mark’s Family Church in Ferguson, Missouri. At issue, the shooting death of Michael Brown, Saturday a week ago, on the main ...
In July of 1967, after race riots gutted Newark and Detroit, requiring troops to put them down, LBJ appointed a commission to investigate what happened, and why. The Kerner Commission reported back that “white ...
I know there are married couples comprised of one liberal and one conservative, the same way I "know" there are fans of pegging, blood pudding, and Dixieland jazz. That is to say: I can"t resign myself to the ...
Although not afflicted with a crippling deficiency of self-esteem, I once in a while get to wondering whether my opinions on the passing charivari are perhaps ill-informed, warped by personal prejudice, absurdly ...
The NAACP's sole weapon is fear. The organization gets its way because many businesses and public figures live in fear of being slapped with the label "racist." But what, if anything, frightens the NAACP? No, it's ...
The long lazy summer is upon us, and as I walk the Swiss hills below the mountain ranges my thoughts are always of the past. I think of long hot summers of long ago: girls in their pretty dresses and my father in his whites ...
My friend Jerry Pournelle has died at age 84. Jerry was the embodiment of a famous quote by his mentor in the science-fiction business, Robert A. Heinlein: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, ...
Why did Europeans come to dominate the world from roughly 1492 onward? We live in an age increasingly resentful of the world-historical achievements of white men over the last six or eight centuries. Therefore, it’s ...
Ceruzzi, Paul E. Computing: A Concise History. Cambridge, MA; The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, 2012. This time last year all I was hearing about was MOOCs"Massive Open Online Courses, in which ...
Ever hang out with an old dude? They’re pretty great. They’re not self-obsessed the way boomers are. They’re not “over it” the way Generation X is, and they’re not completely tuned-out like the kids today. Here ...
Professor Monroe Freedman of Hofstra University died last week, and the irony is, I wouldn"t have known about it had I not been scouring Google in an attempt to kill a rapidly-spreading phony Internet meme that ...
A recent study from the University of Michigan finds that the ever-popular youth expression "that's so gay" is actually harmful to gay, lesbian, and bisexual students. According to CBS News: Data suggests gay, ...
“The sound alone was worth the $24 billion!” So said fellow Nixon speechwriter Ray Price as the mighty Saturn V rocket lifted Apollo 11 and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins off the launch pad, three miles away, ...
If you’re Scandinavian—or, more properly, if you consider yourself to be Scandinavian—then Scandinavian Airlines has made it their duty to inform you that you don’t exist. Last Tuesday, in what was essentially a ...
The sport of wrestling has suffered a slow decline over the last 100 years. Professional wrestling was a legitimate and popular sport in the United States 100 years ago. Gladiators such as Frank Gotch, George Hackenschmidt, ...
Somebody get the naltrexone; the Jews are cutting again. Jews have a baffling tendency to resort to self-harm during times of crisis. Mind you, all professional victim groups have a self-defeatist streak. Black kids demand ...
When you take away a man's identity, is he left with anything worthwhile? I pondered that question when listening to a sympathetic NPR report on a Mexican-American's experience in college. Pablo Ramirez is a student at San ...
