Monthly Archive: August 2010
Aristotle: “Poetics” (I disagree, slightly)
Socrates, we’ll remember, felt a reverent awe in the face of poetry. In Ion, god-inspired rhapsody had an effect on the audience akin to possession. In Republic, the emotions aroused by poets threatened the...
Regime Change
It was a disaster, a quagmire, a nightmare, and the American government should have never gotten us involved… But, some short term goals have been met and now they’re getting ready to start pulling...
The Man Who Pretended to Know Too Much
[Update: In response to comments, I have toned this post down a bit. It was unduly harsh in relation to the fault I am identifying.] NR‘s Jason Steorts, responding to Whitaker Chambers scholar Richard Reinsch, writes: I think Reinsch mischaracterizes...
Beer Blogging: The Gateway Drug
This is my confession: I did not emerge from the womb a fully-formed beer snob. I will admit to sneaking off to the bathroom during high school parties to pour out half-empty Budweisers (adolescence...
Caricatures of libertarianism
I’m not a libertarian but I do share many beliefs in common with libertarians. That’s one reason I find this piece by Amanda Marcotte so incoherent. Leaping onto the anti-Koch bandwagon, Amanda comes to...
How bad was the Deepwater Horizon spill?
At Master Resource, Paul Schwennesen takes on oil spill alarmism:
Cash for Clunkers, Indeed
It wasn’t so long ago that everyone just loved Cash for Clunkers. People thought I was a total crank when I scoffed. Even some of my fellow ideologues wavered. On my now-defunct blog, I...
Beer Blogging: The Godfather Comes Out of Retirement
If you’ve been following Erik’s debate over the origins of the craft brew movement, you might be interested in the story of Jack McAuliffe, a beer enthusiast who built the first modern microbrewery in...
Beer blogging: What makes a craft brew?
Interesting thoughts from The Washington City Paper on what makes a craft beer. Now that the industry is expanding, do numbers or quality distinguish between micro and macro brews?
From the land of pleasant living…
My favorite spot to view him is standing by the Pagoda looking East over Patterson Park at night. There, staring back is the neon face of a smiling, mustached, one-eyed man – often mistaken...
Bradbury at 90
Bill Kauffman just reminded me of his excellent Ray Bradbury remembrance (you’ve already caught Bradbury’s tirade against big guvmint, the Internets, and our lack of space travel, right?).
Beer blogging: Chimay “Red”
I’m not sure this is the best approach to “beer blogging”, but I thought I’d post something about my current favorite beers, the three Chimay ales. The Chimay “red” was available at the LCBO...
The Demand-Driven Prestige Racket
The Washington Monthly’s college rankings issue is an excellent read, and I hope their list of dropout factories generates an appropriate level of heartburn for crummy administrators (their list of top community colleges is...
Will blog for food
Jonathan Strong has an interesting piece on the sometimes-fuzzy line between blogging and paid political advocacy. I think there’s quite a difference between getting paid by an ideological organization to blog (this is hardly...
“The Great Ghastly Rand”
NR’s latest on Ayn Rand is quite good. As a side note, I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who enjoyed The Fountainhead a lot more than Atlas Shrugged.
The Language Legislature
Friedrich Hayek famously suggested that we could improve on representative democracy by separating state powers in yet another way. There should be two legislatures, he said — one for crafting the general rules incumbent...
