Whither Phoenix?
I think Joaquin Phoenix is a good actor but honestly what the hell is going on with him?
Monthly Archive: March 2009
In Defense of Corruption*
One has to admire Murtha’s honesty. “If I’m corrupt, it’s because I take care of my district” might not represent the best of disinterested liberal governance, but it’s a refreshingly frank admission of his...
quote of the day
“It’s not fair for me just to single out the lyrics, because I also know I’m listening to Christian radio immediately because of the shimmery keyboards and amped-up major-key guitar lines — there’s a...
Taibbi could be way off base…
…or he could be absolutely correct; either way, to read him going off on the NYT’s AIG quitter is about as much fun as you can have on the clean parts of the Internet.
Anatomy of a Sequel
The New York Times‘ latest on the fourth Fast and Furious sequel has it all, from Vin Diesel’s highly-anticipated directorial debut: Once on board each of the “Fast & Furious” stars found something to...
Pop Christianity
In large part, when Christians attempt to do pop-culture it fails miserably. For one thing, I personally feel cheap thriller movies and boring worship rock songs inevitably fall short of achieving a truly holy...
Seriously…
The next time I hear someone mention The Community Reinvestment Act as a proximate cause of the financial crisis, I’m going to scream. To conservatives and my fellow libertarians, at some point, you are going...
Gone to Pot
I had planned to kick things off with a sweeping introductory post, but it seems William Brafford has already taken care of the intellectual heavy-lifting. For now, the essentials of my biography can be...
So when…
…will the “free market” take care of this anomaly? Fact is, the government isn’t doing a very good job of it, but private enterprise hasn’t really made buying food a very transparent process either. ...
Tradition and Ideology
J.L. Wall, writing in response to Scott’s treatise on 21st Century Conservatism, writes: There’s a danger in a self-conscious tradition, and a tradition in which it’s acceptable to toss off a limb for the...
Ahhh, Slate
Among the many editorial disagreements I have with Slate.com is the fact that, very often, their subheads or “jumpheads” (or whatever alternative web headlines are called) are written in a style that, in a...
“But who versus? Who are we doing it versus?”
The finale of the fourth season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia opened with Charlie bursting into the bar, carrying a messy stack of paper, and telling his friends that he wrote a musical—just...
ad hoc justice
So it looks as though Spain is opening formal criminal inquiries into alleged war crimes surrounding the use of torture by the Bush administration. Judge Baltasar Garzón is involved in the investigation, the same...
Comments
I have installed a commenting system called Intense Debate which allows people to have user accounts, track their comments, and lots of other fancy things that I’m not really 100% sure about yet. In...
Dear New York Times,
Writing an article like this, making empirical claims with almost entirely anecdotal evidence, and a single study, that doesn’t address the question you are raising (or assert the answer you are very much suggesting) —...
Working with what we’ve got….
I’m sure I’ve run this course long enough. I’ve been in constant contemplation of the merits of the individual vs. the community. I’ve written endlessly about the subject and read a good deal on...
Friday Night Jukebox: Senseless Violence Edition
Those handful of Ordinary Gentle-readers who have followed me from my old site may recall my occasional posts publicizing the late South African reggae star Lucky Dube. So if some of this sounds familiar to you,...
This…
….is the promise of globalization. Just like coat factories that moved from the States to Eastern Europe and then off to China, and from there…to where? Factories pop up for just a few years...
