Inviting suggestions for additions to the blogroll to your right. What sites aren't listed there that should be? Read more

Scott, this one's for you. Herein I invite our resident feisty libertarian to take on all comers in another round of debate as to whether there really is such a thing as "the common good" or if the appeal to such concepts is merely a ploy to legislate morality and lead us all down the road to serfdom. (I personally think that the slogan "Taxation is theft" would be more honestly expressed as "Rights without responsibilities!" or "Citizenship is for... Read more

I thought by now we'd live in space And eat a pill instead of dinner And wear a gas mask on our face A president of female gender … — "(It's the Eighties, So Where's Our) Rocket Packs" by Terry Taylor OK, so no rocket packs, but we do have picture phones. Many of the longed-for/expected sci-fi developments of the future haven't come about, but other glorious advances have helped to make our 21st-century future an enjoyable place to live.... Read more

Movies everyone should see before they die. (This is completely self-serving. Your responses will be used to shape the content and priority of my Netflix queue.) Read more

I head north tomorrow for a few days with the family and without the computer. So please, talk amongst yourselves. Here's a series of open threads with suggested themes which, of course, you should feel free to hijack and convert into any other topic you find more interesting. I'll go first: Slower traffic is supposed to keep to the right. That seems simple enough, but apparently it's not. So, what's bothering you? Read more

We pointed earlier to Kung Fu Monkey's discussion of the "Crazification Factor," in which he suggests 27 percent as the theoretical lower limit of presidential approval ratings. This was the percentage of the vote that Michael-Moore-moshpit-veteran Alan Keyes got running against Barack Obama in the Illinois senate race. Dohiyi Mir takes another stab at fixing this lower limit, factoring in the current low-tide figures for both the president and vice president: So what's his floor?  Maybe somewhere between Cheney's 19... Read more

When I was a kid I used to watch M*A*S*H re-runs, often twice a day, on Channel 5. The hero of that shcw, you'll recall, was Capt. Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce. He was irreverent, slovenly, sophomoric, disrespectful of authority, contemptuous of military regulations and unable to refrain from wisecracking. He was also, the show insisted, a brilliant surgeon. In opposition to Hawkeye, the show also gave us Maj. Frank Burns. Burns was a stickler for the details of military regulation... Read more