So (now ex-) Emory professor Michael Bellesiles is found by a committee of historians to have grossly ignored academic norms in his much-ballyhooed book Arming America. Shortly thereafter, Columbia University decides to revoke the prestigious Bancroft Prize he’d recieved for the book. It’s the first time that’s happened and, one would think, something of a […]

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According to WaPo, Virginia police have been cracking down on public drunkenness in such “public” places as… privately owned bars. Cops just strolled in, and if folks looked tipsy — and in some cases even if they were stone sober — they were hauled out for a sobriety test. Now, it surely makes sense to […]

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Y’know, I like some of those AFF conservatives well enough, but I’ve got to say, if I had laughed any harder at Brad’s response to this Brainwash article, well, let’s just say I’d need a dry cleaner. (Lifted from the Radster.)

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Last night, I headed out to dinner with a trio of lefty folks, accompanied by my colleagues Kirby and The Gryph, to discuss possibilities for “transpartisan” collaboration. Incidentally, I like “transpartisan” better than the word I’d habitually used — “multipartisan,” which, though it at least ditches the implicit bias in favor of a polarized left/right […]

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Colby Cosh (spurred by the execrable John Derbyshire) comments on common confusions in speech and writing, among them the use of “flaunt” for “flout.” I mention this only because I recall a particularly amusing example of the mistake: I was at an NPR-sponsored panel discussion whose program promised that the speakers would “flaunt conventional wisdom.” […]

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I don’t see much TV, but what I do confirms something that both my father and my friend Kelly have recently observed: television commercials have taken on a sort of inverted minstrel-show quality. That is to say, if there’s going to be a buffoon in a particular advert — the one who just doesn’t get […]

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I have literally been waiting for years for the fantastic dark comedy The Last Supper to be released on DVD, and it’s finally coming to pass this Tuesday. If you haven’t seen it, I suggest going out and grabbing it immediately. If you have seen it, you probably don’t need my encouragement. The movie — […]

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Cyberpunk don William Gibson has a new book on the verge of release, and Neil Gaiman says it’s his best since Neuromancer — which would certainly be something. Almost as intriguing, Gibson’s website promises a WG blog “coming soon.” I’ll be keeping my eye on that page.

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Lawrence Lessig’s recently-launched Creative Commons project is highly cool. Basically, a crack team of lawyers has developed a set of modular licenses that allow you to reserve or release different sorts of rights to your creative works. For example, I’ve decided to license this blog as attribution-noncommerical-sharealike. That means you can copy my stuff, but […]

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Thursday, February 6th join Gene, Radley, Brink, and a gaggle of other bloggers, blog afficionados, people who like the word “blog,” and miscellaneous other sexy folk for a big fat shindig at Rendezvous Lounge, on the corner of 18th St. & Kalorama. Oh, yeah, I’ll be there too. Tell your friends, replicate the meme, etc. […]

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