Archive for October, 2007

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Reader Wayne Baisley emails: “In case you were unaware of it, 47 seconds into Brownsville Turnaround On The Tex-Mex Border, the opening track on The KLF’s 1990 album Chill Out, the Mexican radio announcer mentions, ‘Comandante Glenn Reynolds.'”

Heh. Yeah, the KLF was a big influence on Mobius Dick, actually, though not this album particularly. (In fact, it wasn’t really any of their albums as much as some of their attitude; Mobius Dick was influenced more by Juan Atkins, Juno Reactor, BT, etc.). You can hear the sound clip here.

UPDATE: While we’re plumbing the distant past, the inspiration for “A.G. Android” came from this Tom Tomorrow cartoon.

DEBATE FATIGUE DEEPENS: “Can anyone possibly be in the mood to see that none of her competitors come close to Hillary again?” Luckily, it’s not affecting very many people.

UPDATE: But TigerHawk will be stolidly liveblogging anyway.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hillary on the National Archives. (Mislabelled earlier; sorry).

THE DREADED ZIONIST / IRA CONVERGENCE.

DAVID ADESNIK: “I consider it a small victory when even the UN recognizes that anti-American forces are the actual perpetrators of crimes against humanity.”

MICKEY KAUS: “Do you sense there is some large mass of dark matter, an unseen Scandal Star, the gravitational pull of which is warping the coverage of what seems, on the surface, a pretty dull presidential race? I do.”

More from Ron Rosenbaum. If it’s there, it’ll leak.

UDPATE: Reader Tony Deakin wonders if this is it. I doubt it. Not enough sex.

MEET THE NEW BOSS, YADA YADA: “Earmarks. Back-room deals. Cronyism. This is the kind of stuff the Democrats pledged to clean up during their ‘Culture of Corruption’ campaign swing in 2006. But members like Murtha — influential power-brokers addicted to the old ways — have very effectively prevented them from keeping their promises. At the beginning of the year, Murtha called the Democrats’ ambitious ethics-reform proposals ‘total crap.’ Thanks to guys like him, that’s what they’ve amounted to.”

PARENTS’ MAGAZINE’S list of recommended toys.

LAME PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS FROM LAW SCHOOLS are called “law porn” in the trade. Tom Smith objects to the term: “My objection is that it is demeaning to pornography.”

MORE ON INDOCTRINATION AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE, from John Leo. “The basic question about the program is how did they think they could ever get away with this?”

EUGENE VOLOKH: “First, killing an enemy military leader — and apparently a highly competent one — in the middle of a war almost always is the humanitarian decision. It takes little consideration, it seems to me, for our military to properly come to this conclusion. That Yamamoto was ‘highly intelligent’ and that he had lived among us might have emotionally humanized him to people who are considering his fate. But it surely didn’t entitle him to any exemption from military attack. . . . There’s nothing humanitarian about preserving an enemy military leader — and instead focusing only on killing enemy line soldiers — when that means more likely deaths for our soldiers. . . . Indeed, if Yamamoto’s killing were analogous to the death penalty, then the death penalty should be acclaimed as a high moral imperative: Rather than wondering whether the death penalty saves innocent lives, we’d be nearly sure of it.” Read the whole thing.

HAVE GIRLS’ HALLOWEEN COSTUMES gotten too slutty? “A bigger question is, who’s designing these costumes in the first place? And why do they think parents will buy them?”

I’m okay on slutty, but not for 9-year-olds.

NAGGING WORRIES ABOUT CHINA. Me, I think that their long-term prospects are excellent if they can avoid civil war, but that they’re currently in the mother of all bubbles and that it is likely to pop with a serious bang.

GREYHAWK ASKS:

How many media reports on the failure of the media to report the horrors of Iraq will we need to see before realizing the magnitude of their failure?

Some of us already realize. Others never will — or, if they do, will never admit it.

CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR: A report on Armadillo Aerospace’s close brush with success in pursuit of the Lunar Lander Prize.

Plus, an interview with Peter Diamandis on what’s next.

MORE ON POPPIES IN AFGHANISTAN, from John Wixted.

IDEOLOGICAL REEDUCATION at the University of Delaware.

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, we’d see loyalty oaths and ideological crushing of dissent on America’s campuses. And they were right!

ADVERTISING AGE: “Of course, the news here is that The New Republic still had advertisers!”

IN THE MAIL: Judge Andrew Napolitano’s new book — out today — entitled A Nation of Sheep. The thesis, I gather, is that Americans are no longer willing to stand up for freedom.