I’m back from the beach, and not a moment too soon to judge by the Noachian blanket that’s fallen over the eastern seaboard. Among the more sober diversions of the week away, we all got a fair amount of reading done. I made use of the first days to tackle John Barth’s Lost in the […]

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A couple people have taken up my invitation to analyze their writing in search of recurring stock phrases or constructions as a means of keeping their prose fresh. I’ll add links as I notice them if anyone else jumps on board. Charles G. Hill Jane Galt

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Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language” was an assault on “ready-made phrases,” those clichés and dead metaphors that spring so readily to the writer’s mind, sparing him (and his readers) the trouble of thinking. But it occurs to me that in addition to the phrases at large in the written culture of the society, […]

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They’re finally turning Neuromancer into a film and all I can summon is a sort of dull horror—a feeling not unlike a television tuned to a dead channel (back before that meant serene blue). J. Random Hack Jr. is slated to direct. Hope springs eternal, though: Gibson himself won’t buy that it’s happening until he […]

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At the risk of belaboring what one would hope is an elementary distinction, it’s worth saying something about the connotations of saying someone has “invited,” say, a terrorist attack. John Tabin thinks defenders of Ron Paul are contradicting themselves: Larison seems to think that saying that American policies invited 9/11 is somehow different from saying […]

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I enjoy the occasional popcorn novel as much as the next guy, but am I the only one who cringes slightly at the number of candidates for the presidency who are reading crap?

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Tyler Cowen’s Cato Unbound essay is generating some discussion. He argues that what successes libertarian ideas have had actually tend to promote more government over the long run: Libertarian ideas also have improved the quality of government. Few American politicians advocate central planning or an economy built around collective bargaining. Marxism has retreated in intellectual […]

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I see that (praise from Caesar!) Jeff Goldstein has some nice things to say about my January Reason story, allowing that I’m occasionally cogent when I’m “not acting like a polemicist for privacy absolutism.” Now, I recall arguing with Jeff about the NSA program on an Internet radio show once, so presumably he’s aware my […]

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Jesse Walker has the best obituary/tribute I’ve seen since the death of professional mindbender Robert Anton Wilson.

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Via DCist, I find a City Paper editor complaining that he “hates” the serial comma, which is house style at CP, for what strikes me as a truly bizarre reason: My argument against the comma is simple: It’s ungrammatical. Here at the copy desk, we hunt down and fix phrases such as “I ate tuna, […]

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