Via Jacob Sullum:
Entries from June 2007
Incarcarex
June 21st, 2007 · Comments Off on Incarcarex
Tags: Random Cool Link
Worst. Profile. Ever.
June 21st, 2007 · Comments Off on Worst. Profile. Ever.
Pace Slate, I find it hard to believe Esquire‘s July cover story about Angelina Jolie can be “the worst celebrity profile ever written.” I’m inclined to nominate this vigorous fellating of Keanu Reeves in Details, which the inimitable Matt Welch references in his takedown of the entire genre.
Tags: Uncategorized
British Invasion
June 21st, 2007 · 4 Comments
Did I miss the memo specifying that the Britishism whinge would be supplanting the more familiar whine this year? I feel like I’m suddenly seeing this once-obscure variant everywhere. Is that extra “g” adding some special nuance?
Tags: Language and Literature
Astroturfing Crazy
June 21st, 2007 · Comments Off on Astroturfing Crazy
I was naturally repulsed upon reading this post at Feministe about “three ‘pro-life’ organizations” planning to stage some sort of macabre celebration in honor of terrorist and multiple-murderer Paul Jennings Hill. Fortunately, these “organizations” appear to be digital pufferfish: A couple of dudes creating a welter of websites in order to give the appearance of […]
Tags: Stupid Shit
The Grass Is Always More Uniformly Green on the Other Side
June 20th, 2007 · 3 Comments
One of the very, very few practical perks of being a libertarian is that you will occasionally find yourself in conversations about what’s wrong with “our side” with groups of both liberals and conservatives. It very quickly becomes apparent that both groups are utterly convinced that “we” waste all our time in petty internecine squabbling, […]
Tags: Sociology
Marriage: De Dicto and De Re
June 20th, 2007 · 5 Comments
I was just chatting with an old friend about attitudes toward marriage and children. I’ve always understood the desire for these things (to borrow a bit of philosophy jargon) in the de re, but not the de dicto sense. That is, I understand full well being crazy about a specific person with whom you’d like […]
Tags: Sexual Politics
Whining about Whining
June 20th, 2007 · Comments Off on Whining about Whining
I normally dig on Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, but his Adbusters piece on the sorry state of the American left is pretty weak sauce. (See Ross Douthat for a similar take.) First, the essay opens and closes with some rather odd reflections on the word liberal—its aesthetics and connotations—that treat the term as though it […]
Tags: Journalism & the Media
With Enemies Like These…
June 20th, 2007 · Comments Off on With Enemies Like These…
Security expert Bruce Schneier has an excellent essay at Wired drawing some much-needed attention to the increasingly obvious fact that very many of the scary terrorists who want to KILL us!!!1!!1!! are laughably impotent Keystone Jihadis. This worth bearing in mind, because lots of hawkish rhetoric seems to tacitly assume that the proper metric of […]
Tags: War
Scalia’s Lookin’ for Jack Bauer Too!
June 20th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Apparently, the Supreme Court justice grounds his reasoning on vital constitutional questions in what he’s learned from pop action shows: The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” […]
Tags: Law
Red Alert!
June 20th, 2007 · 1 Comment
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education does yeoman’s work drawing public attention to suppression of academic freedom on campuses around the country, but there are (sadly) so many cases each year that it’s hard to keep them all in perspective sometimes. Most university administrations make the occasional misstep, but many—sometimes with a little prodding—ultimately […]
Tags: Academia