"We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the Senate," said a senator doing his best to be one of them -- while also proving Patterson Hood's thesis that "Southerners love electing dumbasses." Michigan says the state's job is "to regulate sexual relationships." And more ... Read more
When Bram Stoker wrote of "Dracula" and "vampires" and "Transylvania" he did not and could not have meant all the things that I cannot help but take those words to mean, to imply, to connote. It would require enormous effort on my part -- not just willpower, but extensive research and scholarship -- to encounter Stoker's words and symbols without all that extra and extraneous meaning those words and symbols have since collected and accreted. I'm not sure that project could ever be wholly successful. Read more
Recipes from C.S. Lewis -- with bourbon. Klayman's Theme. The endless search for Who Actually Said. Bono does Bill. Are you reading the Phantom's List? (You should be.) One of the marks of a certain type of bad person. Jesus on the mainline. Read more
George W. Bush declares himself a champion of unquestioned and unquestionable goodness, battling the evildoers. Johnny Cash declares himself an evil man, battling to be good. Read more
A lovely number from Elephant Revival, plus some Tuesday morning links, including: mapping Rocky's route; from Mongolia to MIT; the Grand Canyon of Greenland; biblical dragons; selling divine punishment as health food; theological tequila; making sausage and scripture; stop calling people "losers;" and a celebrity contestant on "Justify That War!" Read more
Three good takes on a skeevy speech at Patrick Henry College. The two-fold ignorance of indiscriminate discrimination turns violent, again. Kludgeocracy. I learned a new thing. The BBC looks at America's mobile homes. Rieux's wager. And David Neiwert on what he's learned from decades of studying hate groups. Read more
The Question isn’t going away. Reporters will keep asking it, seemingly unable to grasp that the very act of asking it is, itself, all the answer they should need. Read more
The local firestorm over this has focused on the giggling racism exchanged by Como and Donato, and that's understandable. But the misogyny and rape language is just as disturbing, and it's woven throughout their "conversations." Their standard term for female students and teachers is "piece" and they're seething with resentment that, as white men, they're denied the free use and abuse of women's bodies in the way that both seem to think is their entitlement. Read more
The commissioners say they're friends of the ballet. They're posing as champions of artistic freedom. But their plan is a terrible idea that would, in practice, destroy the ballet and abolish artistic freedom. Here's how. Read more
Five good posts on the trap of creationism. Why I don't much care for the Greek system. Louis CK and the Magic Rat. Christmas Creep doesn't even wait for the end of summer. Ye cannot serve both God and Mammon. No, I don't understand what an amplituhedron is either. Read more
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