October 5, 2017

Holy Hillary!

Autobiographies, like dramas, usually include passages of unconscious self-revelation of character.  Hillary Clinton's latest memoir, What Happened, is no exception.  But, like the Bible, it will be interpreted differently by different ...

May 1, 2017

Dream Corps fantasies

A relative, liberal and on the Dream Corps e-mail list, received the following yesterday.  It shocked even her progressive conscience, so she passed it on to me:   On Friday, Trump and ICE decided to create VOICE (Victims of Immigrant ...

April 6, 2017

Gorsuch vs. Sotomayor

It is surprising that, throughout the convolutions of the Gorsuch hearings, no mention has been made of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, whose nomination and confirmation were – with one important difference – a mirror image of the present proc...

November 7, 2016

Tales from the Suicide Club

Tomorrow, voters will decide whether Colorado will join Oregon, California, Washington, Montana, and Vermont in the nation's assisted suicide club.  They had better think twice; the proposed law, modeled after Oregon's, is susceptible to...

April 1, 2016

From ‘Madam Secretary’ to 'Madam President’?

Like the unjust steward in the Bible, Morgan Freeman and his colleagues are to be commended for their audacity. Their production of "Madam Secretary", the current TV series starring Téa Leoni as a feminine Secretary of State, appears...

March 25, 2016

Once again, Hillary doesn't know what she's talking about

We conservatives tend to nitpick, which, during the current electoral season, is unwise, since our own candidates also make occasional embarrassing gaffes.  However, Ms. Hillary Clinton's latest little blunder deserves comment because it rem...

December 21, 2015

Contrasting liberal views of gun control and immigration

In a sense, liberals are extremely religious.  They adhere to a set of dogmas that must be unquestioningly believed under peril of excommunication.  Obamacare is good, voter ID is evil, abortion is good, possession of guns is evil, diversit...

October 12, 2015

Blowing hot and cold from the same mouth

The scientists who have been agitating for measures to prevent global warming have become literally legendary.  In one of Aesop's fables, a host throws out a traveler for first blowing on his hands to warm them and then blowing on his soup t...

February 2, 2015

Two Approaches to Climate Change

The U.S. Senate has overwhelmingly voted that climate change is not a hoax.  This may be a major breakthrough in scientific research.  No more tedious gathering and analysis of data, no more laborious derivation of mathematical models ...

February 2, 2015

Politicians as players

I agree with Jared Taylor's contempt for the Super Bowl.  But I did watch part of it – and realized how much I envy the fans. There are many parallels between professional sports and politics.  Instead of fighting their own bat...

January 31, 2015

A sad footnote to Explorer Day

On January 31, 1958, the U.S. Army and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory launched the first American Earth satellite.  A 2008 commemorative blog bemoaned the subsequent politicization of our space program.  But in fact, the incompre...

January 6, 2015

The Paradoxes of Capital Punishment

Ironically, the controversy surrounding the death penalty seems destined to live forever.  Like Proteus, the issue seems to change its shape as you consider it from different points of view – justice, deterrence, closure, the safety of soc...

December 29, 2014

The Month of 'Remember'

In an episode of Easy Aces a classic radio program, Jane Ace proposed a calendar with thirteen months, ending with October... November... December... Remember. "Remember would be the month when you did everything you put off during the firs...

November 25, 2014

The Missing Word in the Immigration Debate

The voting public, disgusted with the Democrats, has decided to try the Republicans for a couple of years. But if a Republican Congress does not win the public’s heart by 2016, it will be ousted as emphatically as it was installed a few weeks a...

November 21, 2014

Divorce, German-Style

In a recent article in the Weekly Standard, Jay Cost notes that the House is more often Republican than the Senate: ... the Republican party has won control of the House of Representatives in 9 of the last 11 elections and the Senate in 6 of the...

October 20, 2014

Renaming the 'Holidays'

Although the Pacific Northwest is one of the last parts of our country to see the sunrise, it has led the rest of us in institutionalizing progressive ideas such as the legalization of abortion, suicide, and marijuana. It scored another first last we...

June 15, 2014

On Being a Parent

A few years ago, an earnest young friend asked me some rather embarrassing questions: "Should I have a child? Can I afford the time and trouble?" I answered bluntly that having a child is like buying a Lamborghini: if you have to ask ...

January 6, 2014

Obama's War Against the Elderly

It's hard enough being old, with your faculties declining as you become a prime target for scammers and hucksters. But to make matters worse, you are also being cheated and persecuted by your own government. I don't think "persecuted" is too strong a...

December 11, 2013

Mandela's Forgotten Partner

We humans are by nature idolatrous; we crave god-like heroes. In our haste to build a pedestal for a new idol, we often appropriate achievements that were actually the work of others. Admittedly, Nelson Mandela was a truly heroic figure, but the prin...

October 30, 2013

Our Topsy-Turvy Holidays

Our national holidays used to be straightforward; they were religious (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas) or they celebrated patriotic heroes (Washington, Lincoln, war veterans) or events (July 4, Columbus, Armistice). Nowadays, they are mostly an excu...

October 26, 2013

Washington State vs. GMO Foods

Political weirdness is endemic to Washington, the first state to legalize marijuana. But we've outdone ourselves this year with I-522, an initiative that would require labeling of some (but not all) foods that contain ingredients from genetically mod...

October 16, 2013

The Pacific Northwest's Chameleon Candidate

An election year is like a traveling circus.  One gets to see all sorts of grotesque sideshow freaks, such as chameleons, contortionists, snake-charmers, and phoenixes. This year, in the race for commissioner of the Port of Olympia, Washi...

October 15, 2013

Scientists' Eyes on the Prize

So Peter Higgs finally got the Nobel Prize he so richly deserved. He was lucky. Many worthy candidates, such as Neil Bartlett and the other discoverers of noble gas compounds, waited many years in ever-growing disappointment for an award that ne...

September 30, 2013

How to Make Obamacare Obsolete

Republicans are falling into the trap the Democrats have set for them.  By repeatedly voting to overturn Obamacare without proposing any effective alternative, House Republicans are allowing Democrats to brand them as "enemies of the poor." Th...

September 12, 2013

Cultured Meat, PETA, and Mandel's Cow

Technology has finally made vegetarians an offer they can't refuse -- maybe. Dr. Mark Post's group at Maastricht University have made "cultured" meat by extracting muscle stem cells from cows, pigs, or chickens and multiplying them in a growth medi...

September 12, 2013

A Comparison of Threats

I'm a little confused. A decade ago, when Bush wanted to go to war against Iraq, the liberal outcry was that (a) the supposed "weapons of mass destruction" hadn't been proven to exist and (b) the Iraq government had not made any threats against the U...

September 9, 2013

Rebutting Retroactive Racism

I intend to see 12 Years a Slave; it sounds like a very good movie. But I was somewhat daunted by the discordant note struck at its debut in Toronto: Toronto festival artistic director Cameron Bailey, who is black, introduced the film by noting its...

September 8, 2013

Media Mudded Manning's Metamorphosis

Journalists like to think of themselves as bold and fearless. In practice, they are often a timid bunch of rabbits -- as evidenced by their handling of Private Manning gender problem. What you have been reading lately is not an Iowahawk satire -- i...

June 25, 2013

What's wrong with Same-Sex Marriage?

This year, June's wedding bells had a discordant tone, as they ushered in a raft of same-sex marriages. I hereby invoke a panel of experts -- Fr. Thomas Vandenberg, G. K. Chesterton, and Kurt Vonnegut -- to explain why such marriages are a dangerous ...

May 8, 2013

The Source of Our Moral Decay?

Like many senior citizens, I have been bewildered by the rapid degeneration of our American society. A half-century ago, we were a decent people and a benevolent force in global affairs. Even then, we had to contend with drugs, violence, pornography,...

April 25, 2013

Choice of Weapons

The advocates of gun control seem to believe that, by restricting or eliminating private possession of guns, all violence can be eliminated. However, recent events have tragically demonstrated that would-be assailants have a wide choice of weapons, i...

March 31, 2013

The Fourth Devil

There's an old legend about three devils that sounds like "The Apprentice." The boss devil (whom you can easily imagine as Donald Trump) assigns to three junior tempters the task of increasing the traffic of damned souls into Hell. The first devil t...

October 29, 2012

Is the Obama Machine Running Out of Steam?

The science of thermodynamics may provide a means of assessing Obama's likelihood of re-election.  Political machines are much like heat engines and tend to obey the same laws. In thermodynamics, all steam and fuel engines are treated as "heat e...

October 28, 2012

Mitt Romney Unmasked!

Charles Lamb once said that "the greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident." If so, then Mitt Romney must be beaming today. Throughout this election year, I have been puzzled by the strange silen...

October 14, 2012

Button-Pushing for Romney

The outcome of the election, and perhaps the fate of our country, will probably be determined by a word most of you have never heard -- velleity. Velleity is a desire that is too feeble to generate any action.  It is the antonym of activism....

October 5, 2012

High-Level Politics

Al Gore's contention -- that Denver's high altitude caused (to quote the Huffington Post) "Obama's dismal debate performance" -- took me by surprise. I have occasionally had to do hard work at such altitudes, and have frequently flown in commercial a...

October 2, 2012

A Tale of Two Videos

YouTube has replaced the soapbox as a platform for political expression. Go to http://www.youtube.com/, type in a few keywords, and you will be deluged by thousands, if not millions, of political videos ranging from the individual to the professional...

September 25, 2012

Distress signal: A Sign for Our Time

At a meeting where the opposition continually prevents you from being heard by shouting you down, your best recourse is to wave a highly visible sign, preferably a picture. I've had to do this at anti-abortion rallies. We're in this situation now. We...

September 23, 2012

An Unsolicited Endorsement of Conservatism

In 1993 Fr. Michael Moore submitted this quotation to the National Review : "The wise man's understanding turns him to his right; the fool's understanding turns him to his left."  (Ecclesiastes 10:2)  ...

September 23, 2012

A Call for a Pre-Election Day of Prayer

Like many citizens, I have become increasingly apprehensive about the deterioration of our national spirit.  I think the principal reason why this is happening is because we don't pray anymore. Consider the irony of the names of our holidays. ...

May 9, 2012

Polygamy next?

Several of us have pointed out that legalization of gay marriage will pave the way for polygamy. But few have done it as deftly and succinctly as Marita Herrera, of Olympia Washington, whose letter to her local newspaper was (in its entirety) as foll...

April 9, 2012

Hillary's Plan B

In the middle of the battle for this year's Republican nomination, a curiously irrelevant diversion has appeared. Suddenly, we're told, a "Hillary 2016" bandwagon has sprung up out of nowhere. Senator Gillibrand proposed the idea, Nancy Pelosi endors...

January 8, 2012

A Provisional Anatomy of Truth

We frequently criticize MSM journalists for distorting the truth. But what is "truth"? When Pilate asked that question, he was probably being ironic and didn't expect an answer.  But philosophers have written piles of impenetrable books attempti...

December 26, 2011

The Roots of Liberalism and Conservatism

Conservative writers sometimes complain about the obstinacy of liberals -- how they persist in their beliefs despite the flagrant misdeeds of their politicians and the collapse of welfare states, as is now happening in Europe.  Since false concl...

April 1, 2011

The Wit and Wisdom of Barack Obama

Despite the temptation of today's date, I'm not going to try to be funny. I'm not particularly good at it and prefer to lean back and enjoy the news parodies at sites like Iowahawk and the Onion. But even these adepts are being outshined by supposedl...

March 25, 2011

And Where it Stops, Nobody Knows

Excuse me for not joining in the cheering for the recent uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, and other Islamic countries. I'm very nervous about revolutions, especially those that take place in February. The symbol of all political revolutions is a spinning...

February 27, 2011

William F. Buckley, Jr. Left Us Three Years Ago Today

My memory is like an album compiled by an inept photographer. It contains thousands of fuzzy, badly cropped images of moments in my life that were not particularly significant or consequential but that the photographer, for some arcane reason, though...

December 21, 2010

A Desperate Plan to Save Our Dollar

Inspirations often arise from the accidental juxtaposition of two concepts that have not been combined before.  My plan for saving the U.S. dollar was inspired by a Christmas gift.I had just finished reading Herbert E. Meyer's terrifying article...

December 11, 2010

Welcome to AT&T!

I'm pleased to inform you that Consumer Reports has rated AT&T as the worst of all major cell phone carriers.  I can assure you that they deserve the honor, at least with regard to their customer service telephone line. A few months ago, I h...

December 11, 2010

A Tale of Two Presidents

Once upon a time, the people of the United States elected a relatively obscure man, with little or no Federal government experience, as president. Although many nasty things were said about him, he had considerable charm, his opponent was a comparati...

November 24, 2010

A Condom is like a Tenth-Floor Window

The truth is still half an hour behind the slander; and nobody can be certain when or where it will catch up with it. The garrulity of pressmen and the eagerness of enemies had spread the first story through the city, even before it appeared in the f...

October 20, 2010

This Year's October Surprise

I assumed that the Democrats' October Surprise for this year's election would be either a faked administration success, like doctored statistics showing a dramatic reduction in unemployment, or a negative attack, such as a rumor that the Tea Par...

October 7, 2010

My Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize

The recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize will be announced tomorrow.. Like the Oscars, the Nobel awards are a mixture of the appropriate, the bewildering, and the infuriating. The prizes in science, although seldom utterly undeserved, are often...

October 1, 2010

Facebook's Phony Friendships

In the last few months, I have received half a dozen e-mails inviting me to become a "friend" on Facebook. Some of these are from my beloved children, some from colleagues and former students, and others from people I barely know. In every ...

September 28, 2010

The Beatification of Hillary

After all these years, the Christian Science Monitor is starting to live up to its religious name. At least they are beginning to publish hagiography-the reverent biographies of saints. In the current issue, their candidate for canonization is St. Hi...

September 27, 2010

How to Lose an Election

I always admired Thomas E. Dewey for publicly admitting that he had managed to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" in the 1948 election [1]. Let us hope that we don't have to make the same confession this November.This year, the omens ...

June 20, 2010

The Madness of Mothers and the Folly of Fathers

Fortunately, in most of the eternal disputes between men and women, discretion prevails over candor. If the truth be told (as it probably shouldn't), fathers often think mothers are insane while mothers think fathers are cold and unfeeling. I think t...

June 7, 2010

Brave New Scams

There ought to be prizes for the most innovative scams of the year. We could award the Bidwell for the most elaborate preparation and the Ponzi for sheer audacity. I think I have found some candidates.I've been writing a book on the anatomy of decept...

May 6, 2010

In defense of profiling

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April 11, 2010

Salvaging the Wreckage of the Catholic Church?

Imagine this rewrite of the scene in Robinson Crusoe where he rows back to the ship to salvage its contents. Crusoe is filling his skiff with provisions and guns and books -- when he feels a tap on his shoulder and turns to face an imposing gentleman...

April 1, 2010

A Mysterious Appearance

On the night of January 2, 2009, I was passing through our living room, where my wife was watching a classic film on television. I was about to make a chiding comment about her addiction to old movies when I noticed a small coin in front of the TV se...

March 7, 2010

The Felix Awards: The Best Movies You Never Saw

I won't be watching the Academy Awards tonight; I never do. It's such a blatant display of the motion picture industry loving and admiring itself (to an extent that can be described only by an obscene metaphor) that one feels that the ceremony should...

February 22, 2010

Taking Rosen's Joke Too Seriously

When involved in a desperate struggle, as conservatives now are, it is important to keep one's sense of humor. This is especially difficult if our opponent is as pompously humorless as our current POTUS. But it is a necessity if we are to keep our sa...

February 14, 2010

A Cautionary Valentine for Lovers

Anyone who attempts to define love or advise lovers is a fool. Since I have never claimed to be anything else, I shall try to do both. Invoking Saint Valentine, who for good reason (below) is universally recognized as the patron of lovers, travelers,...

February 6, 2010

What's Wrong with 'Retarded'?

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. -Confucius, AnalectsI admit that it's fun watching an adroit man...

December 31, 2009

Looking back and looking forward

Looking back on 2009 is not pleasant; it has not been a very good year. Sifting through the articles and readers' comments in the American Thinker on the arrogance and excesses of the Obama oligarchy, the confusion and division among Republicans, and...

December 1, 2009

Why Scientists Lie -- and What to Do about It

The recent revelations of misrepresentation by CRU scientists about research on climate change should come as no surprise. Scientists, like all human beings, are sometimes tempted to lie or cheat, and occasionally they succumb to those temptations. A...

November 18, 2009

Cosby and Obama

Throughout this past dreary year, while doggedly fighting against POTUS Obama, I have fended off accusations of racism with my standard ten-word refutation: "I would be delighted if Bill Cosby had become president."Dr. Cosby has a far more ...

October 24, 2009

The Apotheosis of Opera

Whatever uncertainties or fears we may have about it, we have emphatically entered the age of information technology. For good or evil, most of our traditional institutions, such as healthcare, education, books, and journalism, are undergoing drastic...

October 12, 2009

Damien, Stevenson, and Us

At long last, Damien the leper has been canonized as a saint of the Catholic church [1]. Two miracles having been investigated and verified [2], the lonely missionary who exiled himself to the leper colony of Molokai, tended to the needs of the leper...

September 13, 2009

'Google News' or 'Obama News'? (updated)

I hope this was an accident, a fluke that can be rationally explained. If not, then our news is being censored beyond the wildest excesses of the Soviet Union. And Google, which has already stooped to co-operating with China in similar censorship, ma...

August 20, 2009

We Need a Republican Response to ObamaCare

The current attempt to steamroller a drastic healthcare reform bill through Congress has created a rift between the Obama-Pelosi (OP) Democrats and what might be called the "blue-chip" (BC) faction---the moderate mainstream Democrats whose ...

June 19, 2009

'Goode' is Excellent

Considering the filthy state of current TV, I am delightedly astonished to be able to wholeheartedly recommend a new show: "The Goode Family" (ABC on Friday nights). But if you want to see it, you'd better hurry, because the liberal bigots ...

June 14, 2009

Inside Letterman's Head

David Letterman's vicious crack about Sarah Palin's daughter jogged my memory and sent me searching through Randall Jarrell's delightful Pictures from an Institution. I finally found:If the bus companies could have conducted tours of Gertrude's head,...

June 4, 2009

The Strange Beliefs of Leonard Pitts

Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts has an irritating habit of adding two and two and getting seven. This time, in proclaiming the cruelty of Christians, he has taken two separate ideas, misinterpreted both of them, and then added them up to get somet...

May 31, 2009

Mega-egos

Let us consider the mega-ego, a sub-species of humanity that has always been with us, and flourishes today in America. We know them from the media and from our surroundings. Every village tavern has its old soak who, between drinks, will ra...

May 23, 2009

Obama and Henry Clay

After all that fuss, which was much more anti-Notre Dame than anti-Obama, it seemed only fair to read what Obama had to say there. As I waded through his sonorous and high-sounding phrases, about "joining hands in common effort" and "d...

May 17, 2009

How Notre Dame Drifted Away from the Catholic Church

Today, to the disgust and apparent surprise of many Catholic bishops and laity, the University of Notre Dame, once the pride of Catholic intellectual life in America, will behave in a very un-Catholic way by honoring, as commencement speaker and hono...

May 17, 2009

Sister Pelosi meets a Water Board

(retold by S. E. Schlosser, edited by Paul Shlichta) A beloved American folk tale, updated for the Speaker.  ..."Good Morning," said Sister Pelosi, doffing her hat. "Nice weather we're having."The water board said nothing. Br...

May 14, 2009

Obama as Marc Antony

Some of Barack Obama's education at expensive elite schools seems to have paid off. The man appears to have read his Shakespeare. According to today's U.S. News & World Report:In what media reports are broadly describing as an about-face, Preside...

March 24, 2009

Is Obama Creating a BC Bubble?

France...rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it.  -A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens On Wednesday he [Bernanke] announced the Fed will print money to buy U.S. Treasuries in unheard-of amounts - nearly ...

March 11, 2009

Rush Limbaugh and the Two Minute Hate

I am ashamed that Republicans are so simple. Like Lucy in Peanuts, Obama has once again offered the Republican Party a football to kick, and, like gullible old Charlie Brown, Republicans tried to kick it and ended up flat on their faces.Obama's purpo...

February 26, 2009

How He Did It: A Diagrammatic Analysis of the Obama Campaign

"All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia." ---George Orwell. The audacity and speed with which Obama railroaded the stimulus bill through Congress took Republicans b...

February 16, 2009

The Stimulus Bill Smells of Turpentine

I suspect that Obama has in mind a definite ulterior plan, for the sake of which he wants the current stimulus bill to fail to revive the economy.The porcinity of the stimulus bill is beyond any question and well documented. But mingled with the baco...

February 15, 2009

Can Governments have 'Bubbles'?

Dagny D'Anconia has proposed that governments, like commodities or companies, can be victims of "bubble" collapses. For those unfamiliar with her earlier articles, the following brief anatomy of bubbles may help readers to appreciate her pe...

October 24, 2008

In Defense of Negative Campaigning

Obama and his supporters have decried McCain's "negativity" and "hateful rhetoric". We are told that we should stick to the issues and not attack a candidate's personality or competence.These complaints are wrong. Questions about ...

October 19, 2008

The Mendacity of Hope

Hope is the thing with feathersThat perches in the soul,And sings the tune--without the words,And never stops at all. -Emily DickinsonI am deeply indebted to Barack Obama for reminding me that hope is often used as bait in scams.I have been writ...

October 12, 2008

The Lords of Life and The Lords of Death

Physician-assisted suicide, which is now legal in Oregon and may soon become so in the state of Washington, is putting an intolerable strain on the medical profession.It used to be much easier to be a doctor. You knew just what you were supposed to d...

October 8, 2008

Dirty tricks for a higher cause?

The Democratic national Committee is complaining that McCain is now resorting to the sort of "negative ads" he opposed eight years ago. Apparently the DNC has never heard of Magruder's law -- that combat tends to sink to the ...

October 3, 2008

The Enigma of Obama

A school of thought is emerging that Barack Obama has an advanced form of narcissistic personality disorder. I heartily agree with Robert Bowie Johnson and Dr. Sam Vaknin  in their shared conclusion, but I reached it from a somewh...

September 12, 2008

Will Chotiner's Law Work in 2008?

Murray Chotiner, who successfully managed Nixon's campaigns in 1950 and 1968, was the Ty Cobb of political campaigning, a ruthless and brilliant exponent of the philosophy that "politics is war." What would he think about this year' el...

August 19, 2008

An Anatomy of Flip-Flopping

With accusations of flip-flopping coming from all sides this summer, we should make sure that we are using the word correctly."Flip-flop" is usually just a politician's way of saying that an opponent has changed sides on an issue. But in fa...

August 4, 2008

The Olympics and the Presidential Games

Is it a coincidence, I wonder, that our presidential elections are held the same years as the summer Olympics? Or is it the natural affinity of one sporting event for another? Americans are so obsessed with sports that even our legal trials have beco...

July 2, 2008

The Lighter Side of Obama

More than halfway through one of the grimmest elections in the history of the US presidency, we gratefully snatch at any source of innocent merriment we can find. Fortunately, there is something intrinsically ridiculous about Obama's retinue of stars...

June 20, 2008

How Big Money is Hijacking a Small Business Technology Program

Like many high-tech small business proprietors. I've been wearing a black armband since April 23 to mourn the death blow that Congress inflicted on one of the great incubators of technological small businesses: the Small Business Innovation Research ...

May 19, 2008

Some Logical Corollaries of California's Gay Marriage Decision

As Lady Macbeth said, "what's done cannot be undone" -- except by constitutional amendment. In order to appease an intransigent minority group, the California Supreme Court has, in the manner of Roe v. Wade, resorted to inventing a new lega...

May 18, 2008

Let's Give Obama the Benefit of the Doubt

Senator Barack Obama's repudiation of Reverend Jeremiah Wright has inspired the praise of some and the denunciation of others. This broad spectrum of opinion reflects the strange opacity of Obama's character and motivation. We know all too well what ...

April 19, 2008

Why Worry about Deaf Babies?

England is currently deciding whether or not to legalize the use of embryo selection to produce deaf babies to accommodate deaf couples who want their children to share their soundless world. When Thomas Lifson reported this in AT, he expre...

December 21, 2007

Fighting against a Christless Christmas

In the fourth century A.D., the Catholic church made a big mistake. Acceding to the popular tradition that Jesus Christ had been born on December 25 and wishing to keep Christians from participating in the infamous orgies of the year-end pagan festiv...

October 21, 2007

Honk if You Want to Stamp out Cell Phone Driving

I hope that you're as irritated as I have been about people driving through the streets with one hand on the wheel and the other clutching a cell phone, obviously more preoccupied with their conversations than their driving.The absurdity of our toler...

August 11, 2007

Politicians and Their Self-Delusions

Long ago, at a college mixer, a beautiful girl asked me to dance with her. I was flattered and excited, and a little drunk with my good fortune. But soon enough, I began to realize that she had quarreled with her boyfriend and had just picked me at r...

August 2, 2007

Just say "No!" to YouTube Debates

I breathed a sigh of relief when most of the Republican presidential hopefuls declined to participate in the next YouTube debate. I think they displayed good judgment and common sense in refusing to be inveigled into what is at best a CNN publicity s...

July 10, 2007

Who is Losing What War in Iraq?

President Bush's apt comparison of the present situation to the Revolutionary War evokes a vivid image of Nancy Pelosi and Harold Reid, as members of the Continental Congress, screaming that the war is lost and demanding that we surrender to the Brit...

June 20, 2007

Thrift, Thrift, Horatio

The current uproar about harvesting embryos for stem cells and 'encouraging' organ donations reminds me of the story about the missionary sailing overseas to take up her post in a primitive country. When she mentioned her destination to a fellow...

April 1, 2007

Seating Arrangements

 In a recent analysis of current gender disparities in communication, Selwin Duke wisely refrained from tackling the toilet-seat-position (TSP) issue. I was less prudent a few years ago, when my three sons and two daughters lived in five apartme...

February 4, 2007

Obscenity in Los Angeles in 1966

In 1966, the Supreme Court was once again trying to define obscenity. Among other decisions, they revised an earlier definition to include the requirement that the material be "patently offensive." As usual, Justice William O. Douglas disse...

January 13, 2007

What are these "Laws of Nature"?

In a recent series of articles, James Arlandson engaged in a debate with philosopher David Hume and his successors on the question of whether the laws of nature preclude the possibility of miracles. Miracles and New Testament StudiesHume's ...

January 4, 2007

The Congressional Oath of Office: A Quandary

Keith Ellison's plan to take the Congressional oath of office with his hand on the Quran has triggered one of those disputes that seem to generate more heat than light. In such cases, it is usually best to defer discussion until one has first defined...

December 25, 2006

"The Wise" - a Christmas Poem by William Everson

For many of us, this is a rather bleak Christmas. It seems as if our enemies are getting  steadily stronger while our society is beginning to come apart at the seams. I remember another bleak Christmas, in 1941, when it also appeared that the wh...

November 25, 2006

My Love-Hate Affair with Classical Music

I first encountered classical music in summer camp when I was ten. The cabin next to ours had the only record player in camp, and the only record was "Voices of Spring" by Strauss, which they played over and over and over again. Later that ...

October 14, 2006

White Noise and the National Political Conversation

I learned how to make the wind sing to me when I was fifteen, driving through New England one summer with my parents. I usually rode in the back seat with the window a bit open, so that I was immersed in the hissing noise that the inward rush of air ...

September 11, 2006

Heroes

A hero is someone who makes you proud to belong to the same species. If a group of aliens from the Thothian galaxy were to come here, looking for a new planet to colonize after sterilizing it of all contaminating life forms, and ask you why they sho...

September 4, 2006

United 93: Plutarch Would Have Loved It

The DVD of United 93 will go on sale today. There are at least five reasons why you should rush out and buy a copy: 1. It is a way of voting against liberal defeatism and mainstream apathy and forgetfulness—a way of saying, in the language of s...

August 12, 2006

A Lesson on Terrorism from Harold the Saxon

The Battle of Hastings  was a turning point in Western Civilization, as the Norman invaders (from France) crushed the Saxon defenders, and eventually gave the world what was to become British civilization. The hapless Saxons were led by Harold G...

April 1, 2006

NASA and Nostradamus: A Spin Puzzle

[Editor's Note: This article is satire in celebration of April Fool's Day.] Nancy Reagan is a loyal American who has endured false accusations in dignified silence and has steadfastly refused to reveal her key role in U.S. foreign policy. I thin...

March 22, 2006

The Strange Beliefs of Richard Cohen

Richard Cohen, a columnist for the Washington Post, looks like a nice man and seems to be sincere about what he writes. He is no lock—step Democrat and recently broke ranks by commending President Bush for his stand on the Dubai port management...

March 19, 2006

Sudoku and Other Diversions

My wife, having been told by friends in Europe that Sudoku, the Japanese [1] number—grid puzzle, was all the rage there, asked me to find some Sudokus and teach her how to solve them. A Google search disclosed a website with billions of Sudoku ...

March 2, 2006

Diehards

Consider the wretched plight of Professor van Helsing, AKA Peter Cushing.  The poor man must have buried Count Dracula, with the mandatory stake through the heart, in dozens of movies.  Yet each time, the Count managed to rise again to put ...

January 16, 2006

Happy Equality Day!

It is tempting to compare the zealots of political correctness to the pigs in Orwell's Animal Farm who proclaimed that 'all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.' There seems to be a certain selectivity in their concern for inclusive...

January 1, 2006

A Backward Glance at the Twentieth Century

We're only five full years into the twenty—first century and I want out. The changes are coming too fast and thick for my comfort and cherished values seem to be crumbling before my eyes. And so, on the start of yet another year, let's loo...

December 23, 2005

The strange beliefs of Nicholas Kristof

A couple of years ago, to celebrate the Catholic feast of the Assumption, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column called "Believe it or Not" (New York Times, 8—15—03), in which he scoffed at the naïve religious beliefs of Americans and in particu...

October 14, 2005

Portrait of an old man ringing a bell

Iraqis go to the polls tomorrow, to vote on a new constitution, another historic step in the spread of democracy. The outcome remains to be seen. Every one of us has a few dozen pictures engraved deeply in our minds; pictures that stay with us until ...

October 1, 2005

Alvinism: a social disease

Does anyone still remember the incomparable Marvin Kaplan, creator of dozens of comic icons?  In the 1950s TV sitcom "Meet Millie", he played Alvin Prinzmetal, composer, poet, and psychotic.  One of Alvin's paranoid peculiarities was that, ...

September 16, 2005

Admiral Byng and President Bush

Admiral John Byng was court martialed and shot in 1757 for failing to relieve the British garrison at Minorca. Although both the French  and the British  agreed that he had behaved skillfully and without cowardice, he was executed for ...

September 7, 2005

An Open Letter to Bush Haters

I just want to say that, however much I disagree with you, I sympathize with your frustration. Since, in the rather restricted circle in which you move and converse (mathematicians would call it a 'closed set'), everyone shares your hatred, it is har...

August 26, 2005

Intelligent design redux

Most of the responses I received about my recent article on intelligent design were frankly too irrational to deserve a reply.  However, several of them did seem to indicate that I had failed to explicitly state my rationale for regarding 'State...

August 25, 2005

Intelligent design vs. the black slab

A humorist once responded to a rebuke of his puns by saying 'I don't know if puns are the 'lowest form of humor', but I'm sure that the disparagement of puns is the lowest form of criticism.'  In the same spirit, I am forced to say that, whether...

August 21, 2005

Closing ranks

A bereaved mother of a murdered son has a right to her grief and anger and may even be excused for a certain degree of confusion. The only thing wrong with Cindy Sheehan's vigil is that it's in the wrong place. Saddam Hussein's regime was notorious f...

August 9, 2005

Space exploration begins at home

Despite Discovery's successful landing this morning —— and despite brilliant recent successes with the Mars rover and comet impact missions —— the prevalent mood at NASA headquarters this morning may well be frustrat...

July 14, 2005

The magic of Harry Potter

Magic is in the air again.  In two days, a new Harry Potter book; in four months, a new Harry Potter movie. And while the bookstores and theaters are being mobbed, some of us will wonder what the fuss is all about. A few years ago, tired of bein...