If John Derbyshire didn’t exist, I might have to invent him. In a recent column, Derb reveals the psychological roots in his British childhood of his vehement, bilious loathing for the left, bristles at the “snobbery” of people who think education is better that ignorance, and he doesn’t care if his president is insanely out […]

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There are many reasons to be glad war is over. A fairly minor one is that I find I can read Andrew Sullivan again. Not that I agree with everything now, but for a few months the effect on my blood pressure made it positively unhealthy.

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Nina Simone, one of the greatest jazz singers ever, has died.

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Amitai Etzioni posts on the benefits and (mostly) the hazards of online anonymity. The point is, in one sense, well taken. Anyone who’s watched online fora degenerate knows that without some sort of accountability, online conversation follows a discursive variant of Gresham’s Law: bad posting drives out good. But Etzioni closes his plea for less […]

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Among the many things I’ve been meaning to post on over the past week but haven’t is Jacob Levy’s excellent post on the differences between political philosophers and political theorists. Since I found myself nodding my head along with most of it, I find that (alas) I have little to add here, except in confirmation. […]

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There’s a new issue out, and Will’s got a characteristically witty post on the difficulties of bringing “democracy” to a freshly [occupied / liberated] country.

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The New York Times just profiled a quirky little record store called Rockit Scientist over on Carmine St. that I used to pop in to occasionally—though I spent more time at Other Music, also mentioned in the piece… at least when I could tolerate the tone of disdain when I asked whether they had something […]

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So I’d thought that I had a problem this evening: did I want to catch Yo La Tengo at the 9:30 Club, which I’d been looking forward to, or go out with Radley’s posse to check out some jazz at Bohemian Caverns? Well, my problem has been “solved” insofar as I find myself sick as […]

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Y’know, I think I had the right idea before—I shouldn’t post about Iraq. I have no particular comparative advantage there, in that I’m not going to say anything others can’t say better, and it just puts me in a foul mood. Back to philosophy.

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