Politics

COMMUNIST DUPES?….On Saturday Glenn Reynolds took issue with people who claim that it’s “McCarthyism” to criticize anti-war protesters for attending rallies organized by A.N.S.W.E.R.: It’s not McCarthyism to call people who are communists, communists. Communists, as devoted followers of murderous totalitarianism, deserve to be called to account every bit as much as their Nazi colleagues. […]

DOMAINS FOR SALE….Hey, would you like to have your own internet domain? How about one of those cool dot-mil domains for military sites? Patrick Nielsen Hayden tells you how to get one. It’s surprisingly cheap and suprisingly easy!

MORE COMPUTER CHESS!….Chess champ Garry Kasparov suffered a humiliating loss to IBM’s Deep Blue chess computer back in 1997, and current champ Vladimir Kramnik melted down a few months ago in his match with Deep Fritz, blowing an early lead and ending up in a 4-4 tie. Yesterday Kasparov decided to try again, this time […]

VIRGINIA HEINLEIN….The Los Angeles Times had a nice obituary for Virginia Heinlein today, and her hometown newspaper, the Florida Times-Union, has another one here. They include a few additional details that I didn’t know about when I wrote my post last Monday. As an interesting aside, my genealogy hobby came in handy when I wrote […]

SUPER BOWL UPDATE….Um, I meant Bucs by 10. Approximately. But that’s OK. At least Jay is happy, and since I just noticed that the Daily Rant has me on their blogroll twice, I’m willing to be happy for his team. This time. But Signs was a pretty dumb movie, Jay….

THE PENTAGON PAPERS….Warblogger whipping boy Robert Fisk thinks American journalists are doing a lousy job of reporting on the Bush administration’s anti-terror plans: Take Eric Schmitt in The New York Times a week ago. He wrote a story about America’s decision to “confront countries that sponsor terrorism”. And his sources? “Senior defence officials”, “administration officials”, […]

SUPER BOWL UPDATE….Why is a Canadian singer performing “God Bless America” at the Super Bowl? I mean, I’m happy to stand arm in arm with my Canadian comrades and all, but wouldn’t an American be more appropriate? On the other hand, the Dixie Chicks did a pretty good job with the national anthem. Using a […]

A VICTORY FOR BIG MACS….On Wednesday a judge tossed out the suit against McDonald’s that claimed their food caused obesity. Here’s what the Center for Individual Freedom had to say: Returning some common sense to our runaway tort system, the judge explained that his decision was ?guided by the principle that legal consequences should not […]

THOSE WACKY SOCIOLOGISTS….OK, here’s some Sunday fun: Project Implicit, a research project designed to test your unconscious feelings about stuff. What stuff? Well, they’ve apparently got about 60 different tests, which they assign randomly on subjects such as young vs. old, black vs. white, coffee vs. tea, Jew vs. Christian, etc. You have to take […]

WHY IS THE U.S. MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN EUROPE?….Brad DeLong has a bunch of thought-provoking posts up this morning. In one of them he asks: Why are there such huge differences in productivity growth between the U.S. and mainland Europe–especially in information technology-heavy services? One possible answer is that European firms have, like American ones, invested […]