Some of you know about my long-running battles with snakes. You’ll understand, therefore, why I so appreciate Jonah Goldberg’s jeremiad against snake-enabling military-industrial complexes, and beyond that, his bloody-minded willingness to harness good old American entrepreneurial violence in order to kill the big ones. An excerpt: “You see, I don’t think we need a vast …
This weekend I read Daniel J. Flynn’s wonderful piece on Ray Bradbury in The American Conservative. I hope my friends who are: a) not American, b) not conservative, or c) none of the above won’t be turned off by the journal title, and I hope my friends who are solidly both won’t think they know …
I recently discovered a delightful poem by David Kirby in Five Points, and thought I’d share a snippet of it with all of you: … and you’d think that’d settle it, that the opera lovers of Tallahassee would let go of their plow handles and wipe their sweaty brows with their bandanas and say, “Well, …
It used to be required, of an intellectual seeking to hold forth on an idea, that he define his terms. Words are slippery things, after all. But then so are intellectuals, and perhaps this is why they often play faster and looser with terms than a backwoods car salesman. Corey Robin doesn’t have a car …
Some of you may like my latest Image post, even though (or maybe because) it ranges from E.O. Wilson to homosexuality to Michael Polanyi to engineers to literature to the Dewey Decimal System to sparking revolution with bedtime stories. Here’s an excerpt: “. . . I confess I enjoy seeing scientists upset. Whenever you stumble …
Sometimes I care about a political battle or news event or Item of Great National Debate enough to write about it, but then I stop, because I think someone has already said this better, or said its opposite more persuasively, or someone who donates money to the non-profit where I work will see it and …
