Daniel Pipes gets to say “I told you so” to Rushdie. I wondered about the seeming lack of security around Rushdie that enabled his attacker to get so close to him. Scott Johnson has an interview with Daniel Pipes at … Continue reading →
In a post I wrote earlier today about Germany’s power problems, there was a link with a photo of a low-water Rhine and the caption: “A ferry cruises past the partially dried riverbed of the Rhine river in Bingen, Germany … Continue reading →
It was Lenin (or Stalin, or Marx) who supposedly said: “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” Whoever really said it, it’s one of those pithy witticisms that encapsulate some sort of truth, in … Continue reading →
Let’s take a break from all the heavy politics, and talk about music. Have you ever noticed that certain songs dealing with the very same themes are very different? Love of course is one of the main topics of songs … Continue reading →
Since the Uvalde shooting, I’ve been reading statement after statement, as though it’s a proven fact, that school shooters and other mass murdering shooters are usually fatherless, disproportionately so. The people saying this don’t usually feel they have to prove … Continue reading →
First they came for the statues. Now they’ve come for the sonnets: The University of Salford, a public university in Greater Manchester, England, removed sonnets and other “pre-established literary forms” from a creative writing course assessment, The Telegraph reported. …A … Continue reading →
…not with a bang but a whimper: The smaller number of marching units, the absence of the “Z” sloganeering, any air units, and the elite of the Russian Army all gave the parade a more subdued air. It was not … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Here’s a slightly-edited version of a post I first published in 2014. I thought it might be good to put it up again, because it still seems appropriate.] The time was 1956, over 65 years ago. The place was … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Today is Presidents’ Day, and this is a repeat of a previous post.] I’m not that old, but pedagogical practices in my youth seem absolutely archaic compared to whatever passes for education these days. For starters, we had Washington’s … Continue reading →
This video has been making the rounds. It shows Las Vegas schoolchildren’s wild glee at being told that starting tomorrow they can ditch their masks. They’ve certainly suffered more than enough with this, but one of the things I find … Continue reading →
A large swath of New England is expecting a big snowstorm this weekend, and that includes me. I’ve got a lot of food in the fridge, my place is warm, and I’m hoping for no power outage so that it … Continue reading →
Here’s a comment about the song “Dust In the Wind,” on the thread about the death of Robby Steinhardt, the violinist for the group Kansas: Sorry Neo, but that is about the tritest sappiest song there is. As if the … Continue reading →