Memo to the NCAA
Sunday, March 28th, 2010 Posted in Irritations, Judo Chops | 4 Comments »Perhaps it's a new phenomenon, or perhaps I'm becoming more curmudgeonly, but it's gotten that I cannot abide watching the aftermath of NCAA basketball games. It's almost a certainty now that, in the event of a close game, at least ...
If you’re reading this, you’re going to hell
Friday, March 26th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 4 Comments »At last, an answer to the rock-of-ages old dilemma: How will I evangelize to my heathen friends and neighbors after I'm taken up in the Rapture? These folks have a cost-effective solution. For a reasonable yearly fee, they will email -- ...
The law bites back
Friday, March 26th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »A coda to the story of the dogs in California who mauled several small children.
The fine line between unrecognized genius and . . . stupid
Monday, March 15th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 7 Comments »From Alternet, this excerpt from a student's email to his professor, contesting a mediocre grade in light of his self-evident brilliance: "I am an A student and that is an A paper, and always will be to me. . . But ...
More evidence that Tony is a bad Christian
Friday, March 12th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »I understand the importance of civil society, and laws, and turning the other cheek, but there are some people I'd like to beat senseless with a tire iron.
Popular science notions
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »Mark Noll, in John Wilson's Books & Culture email newsletter (which is provided free by Christianity Today and which you really ought to subscribe to, if not the premium online version) has this to say about a book that I really ...
The gift horse’s mouth
Friday, February 5th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 8 Comments »So here's what irritates me about the Haitian government's decision to prosecute Baptist missionaries for child abduction and criminal conspiracy. First, this is, according to the news report, the first criminal case to receive a hearing in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. ...
Animal control
Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 7 Comments »My thing with these people who keep unstable or outright dangerous breeds of dog is that they're always shocked when their monsters break loose and, I don't know, maul three small children. A five year-old girl remains on life support, ...
Because names are not snowflakes
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 1 Comment »The Texas Board of Education strikes a blow against communist tracts cleverly disguised as children's books. In other news, the author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is discovered to be a former manager of the New ...
Short-sighted
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 7 Comments »If this really is "...the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country," then I think we're all going to be just fine. And I have trouble seeing how a coded Christian verse on ...
Pat Robertson, pagan
Thursday, January 14th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Theology | 17 Comments »Believing, as Pat Robertson does, that the suffering of those you despise is inflicted by a god on your side, and that the suffering of those you pity is the result of a devil's curse, seems to come awfully close ...
Criminalize this
Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics, The Art of Parenting | 9 Comments »Izzy Lyman takes apart Georgetown Law professor Robin West's attack on home-schoolers as ignorant trailer trash in delightful form. Perhaps most disturbing about West's hit piece is that it's published in a scholarly journal, even if it does come out ...
It all begins with an apple
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 Posted in Business Behaving Badly, Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 4 Comments »Ordinarily I'm not a fan of government meddling, but sometimes I am ready for a regulation requiring products made in whole or part in China to be labeled as such. Poisoned toothpaste, animal food, infant formula, building products that rot and ...
Ruh-roh
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
Don’t do as I do, do as I say
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Theology | 1 Comment »This news from the BBC, about a rise in the number of pagan winter solstice celebrants in the UK, is disturbing. How could people raised in the Christian West miss the point that Christmas is about shopping until your debt rivals ...
Memo to the Nabisco Food Goliath
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 Posted in Business Behaving Badly, Judo Chops | 5 Comments »Dear Nabisco MegaCorporation, Once upon a time there was a delicious little cracker called Harvest Grain. This cracker didn't ask for much, nothing, really, other than to be crispy and nutritious and delectable in Tony's mouth. Tony and his Harvest Grains ...
Prepaid college tuition . . . sort of
Friday, January 1st, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 3 Comments »Think those 529 prepaid tuition plans are a safe way to make your child's college education affordable? Think again. The Money Blogger breaks it down: Alabama invested 70 percent of its plan's funds in stocks, and assumed a perpetually high ...
Word ban 2010
Thursday, December 31st, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 3 Comments »In addition to these fine nominations, I'd like to throw the following monstrosities into the pit: impact and dialogue as verbs; trainings as a plural for training; the unholy trinity of corporate blather -- incentivize, utilize, and synergize -- in any form, ...
Otherwise reasonable people
Friday, October 2nd, 2009 Posted in Irritations, Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 11 Comments »On a long drive through red-state country yesterday I decided to listen to talk radio. I heard Rush Limbaugh mock the First Lady, in his extended rant about her lobbying Olympic officials to place the 2016 games in Chicago, because ...
Yeah, he is your president, jackass
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 3 Comments »In the parking lot of a local college I saw a window sticker that I'd forgotten, a grainy picture of George W. Bush with the treasonous slogan: "Not my president." As a southerner who believes Sherman brought with him the ...
Quit parking
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »I'll begin by saying that I did not get a ticket. I'm stipulating that right up front, because I know some of you smart-alecks are going to ask. I haven't had a ticket, in fact, since I accidentally tapped a ...
From the mouths of babes
Monday, September 21st, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »I was going through my collection of quotations, searching for James Burnham's quip about (modern) liberalism (to wit, that it is "the ideology of Western suicide"). That's when I came across something one of Wife's students, years ago when she ...
The emotive impulse
Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 Posted in Irritations, Judo Chops | 9 Comments »I don't know when or how the American experiment will end, but I am fairly certain that the dread day will find most of us texting or carrying about signs or otherwise expressing our deeply felt, ill-reasoned, poorly articulated opinions ...
Memo to my local school board: be careful what you wish for
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 25 Comments »I recently learned that public school officials in my area sent a letter to parents of their students, asking for the names and addresses of any children they know who are not enrolled in public school. This is troubling, because the ...
War is peaceful co-existence
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 8 Comments »I don't think C.S. Lewis was a violent man, but I think even he might have been moved to take up something heavy and begin bashing the exhibit that trades in his name as well as that of his beloved ...
Back off pal, I’m an M.D.
Monday, March 30th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 6 Comments »"She's taking it to the chiropractor," smirked one Newton Medical Center technician to another as my wife waited for them to hand over an x-ray scan of baby Isaiah's arm. We were twenty hours into an ordeal, sparked the night before ...
We don’t believe in grouping people like they do
Friday, March 13th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 7 Comments »Amusement of the day: while flitting about the A.M. band, I happened upon Rush Limbaugh giving a speech, in which he declared that we don't believe in grouping people, unlike them. And not surprisingly, all the Dittoheads in the audience agreed ...
Go loud
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 9 Comments »Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma used a recording during their "performance" at the presidential inauguration. The U.S. Marine Corps Band played live, despite the weather. Enough said.
Where’s Goia?
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »Some of you might enjoy my essay, at National Review's Corner, on Sunday's inauguration concert. Here's an excerpt: "Ashley Judd is very cute, of course, and Samuel L. Jackson was entertaining in Pulp Fiction, but one wonders if these are the best ...
In defense of a (grayish) white Christmas
Monday, January 12th, 2009 Posted in Judo Chops | 10 Comments »One of my fondest childhood memories is the ride to Grandma's house on Christmas Eve. All of us bundled up inside the Monte Carlo, music crackling over the AM station, my mother and stepfather smoking like chimneys. I can still ...
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