HOW LIVEJOURNAL WAS MADE: Fun stuff, including this: “There have been glitches along the road to success. Last year, LJ crashed for two days when someone at one of the offices pushed ‘a big red button’ that cut power to the servers. ‘They thought it opened the door to the bathroom,’ sighs Fitzpatrick.” (more) Read more

But simply because Alexander chose to pursue glory within the dramatic unities of time, place and action that warfare imposes upon those who practise it, the perfection of his performance should not blind us to the harshly limited nature of his achievement. He destroyed much and created little or nothing. The Persian empire, a force for order in the ancient world, to summarize its function at its lowest, did not survive the Alexandrian conquest. Within a generation of his death,... Read more

Stop your messing around,Better think of your blogwatch… Balkinization: Must-read (for right and left) post on the Miers maneuvering. MarriageDebate: Me vs. gay marriage! Series of posts starts here; includes God vs. heterosexuals; the next St. Valentines; and atheist cathedrals. I strongly suggest you read the entire series of posts first, then hit the comments-boxes for various objections and my responses. I really think that strategy is the best way to get a sense of what I’m actually arguing, even... Read more

Alexander, we may guess from his later reactions, guessed from their attempt to strengthen their position that they had no stomach for a fight and could be devastated if brought under physical attack. Certainly it would be the case in all his subsequent engagements that he took any improvisation of field defences as an invitation to boldness and always attacked precisely at the point the enemy had sought to make attack most difficult.–John Keegan, The Mask of Command Read more

BLOGS FROM IRAQ: Iraqi citizens; US soldiers; other folk. Some defunct blogs. Still a good resource. Iraq Blog Count is another one, more comprehensive and focused on Iraqis rather than just anybody blogging from Iraq. Via Oxblog. Read more

But theatricality was at the very heart of Alexander’s style of leadership, as perhaps it must be of any leadership style. Throughout the Alexander story, acts of theatre recur at regular intervals. Daily, of course, he had to make sacrifice to the gods; in Macedonian culture, only the king could perform that central religious act. Bizarre though it seems to us, therefore, his day began with his plunging of a blade into the living body of an animal and his... Read more

READ THIS BOOK OR I SHOOT THE DOG!: Two weeks ago I finished Elizabeth Marquardt’s new book, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. You can read excerpts here. Basically, this book is amazing, and everyone should read it, right now. The book is based on two interlocking research projects: a nationally-representative survey of 1,500 young adults, and the in-depth interviews on which the survey questions were based. She interviewed 70 young adults with at least a... Read more

GOOD, BASIC PIECE ON CHRISTIANS’ RESPONSE TO DETAINEE-TREATMENT ISSUES: President Bush faces a defining question of morality on which he has yet to receive any discernible guidance from the faith-based coalition that helped put him in office. The question: whether it is ever right for Americans to inflict cruel and degrading treatment on suspected terrorist detainees. … I do not know how others would advise the President theologically on these matters, but as a convinced Christian who has tried for... Read more

THE RIGHT TO BE WRONG: Kevin Seamus Hasson, head of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, has a new book out on the moral and metaphysical/spiritual case for religious freedom. I’ve read some of his speeches on which portions of the book are based, and if the book is anything like those speeches, there will be a lot of real, hardcore philosophical work being done, presented in clear and easily-grasped language. Hasson’s work is deeply influenced by Pope John Paul... Read more

MARRIAGE DEBATE: Maggie Gallagher is guest-blogging on same-sex marriage at the Volokh Conspiracy. Maggie–my new ex-boss, so if you want my resume, drop me a line!–may be the most brilliant person I’ve ever met. She’s insightful, intellectually honest, steeped in the current research on marriage and family life, and… yeah, I could go on, but really you should just read her posts. The Volokh.com posts are kind of disconnected, a problem made worse by the blog-protocol of posts appearing in... Read more