Want to get a baby or toddler a really nerdy, yet surprisingly cuddly gift, try one of these. I think my favorite is Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. On a related note, the universe if fucking big. (Be sure to check out the video of the Milky Way rising that he links to as well.) I [...]
Archive for November, 2011
In commemoration of the horrible fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (and incidentally apropos of my last post) I direct you to this article by disaster researcher Rebecca Solnit who argues that, contrary to popular myth, the people of New Orleans behaved reasonably well as the chaos unfolded, while the government became even more vicious and [...]
There are a multitude of terrible things about going to prison, but the one people fear the most is undoubtedly being raped. Typically, this rape is portrayed as being one prisoner raping another, but Bryan Caplan has found disturbing evidence that prisoners may have more to fear from those supposedly protecting them: More prisoners reported [...]
Well, I finally finished the slog that is Aleister Crowley’s Book of Lies. The book actually became fairly enjoyable once I adjusted to the style–which took over half the book–and I was surprised to find in it some important thoughts on human freedom. The first and most important law of Thelema (Crowley’s religion) is “Do [...]
I went to see the movie on Sunday, and I held off posting about it because I wanted to see if a little time would change my initial opinion that it is the best movie Tarantino has made. Well, it hasn’t. It’s over two and a half hours long, but I wasn’t bored for a [...]
If you live in the South or have at least spent a substantial amount of time there, you know how weird a place Waffle House can be. This article collects some of the restaurant’s all time greatest hits. A pretty hilarious skit from an Irish show about a priest–Father Ted–who attempts to write a song [...]
So I have finally gotten around to reading (most of) H. L. Mencken’s Prejudices, and it as just as good as I had expected. For the most part, I’ll just say go read it for yourself, but I just wanted to share this quote where he compares my second most hated president Teddy Roosevelt to [...]
You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything yet this week. This is (in part) because I have been working for a site that pays me to write study guides for books, and the first one has been rather difficult as I selected Aleister Crowley’s Book of Lies, which now seems like a terrible, [...]
I’ve actually heard very little of Les Paul’s music, and I wasn’t particularly taken with what I heard. However, Paul essentially invented the solid-body electric guitar, an invention that I cannot imagine the world without. The music that Les Paul enabled has enriched my life far more than the machinations of any politician or bureaucrat [...]
Ezra Klein started something of a kerfuffle among libertarian bloggers with a post accusing critics of Obama’s health care plan of having no faith in government. Here’s the key paragraph: What we’re seeing here is not merely distrust in the House health-care reform bill. It’s distrust in the political system. A healthy relationship does not [...]
