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Last week in London, I ran into an acquaintance who kindly invited me to share a bottle of claret with him and a friend of his. After the bottle was drained and our little group was about to disband, the friend mentioned he was off to the Reform Club and asked if I would like [...]
Archive for the ‘Handbasket, world going to hell in’ Category
February 4th, 2011
Glenn Beck has revealed himself, finally, as a covert agent of the communist/socialist left-Islamic-fanatic-Code Pink-Obama-fluoridation-currency-abasing-job-killing conspiracy. While ill-informed and unqualified naïfs like Jon Stewart and Rachel Maddow give him the cover of ridicule, Beck advances his masters’ designs by describing just enough of the plotters’ workings (and for credibility, sticking assiduously to facts) to conceal [...]
January 4th, 2011
My late August rant about my terrible experiences at the Virginia and California Department of Motor Vehicles generated comments from RBC readers, from Mark, as well as from Kevin Drum, Matthew Yglesias and their flocks. Some resonated with my trauma; others defended the high quality of DMVs. In light of all the comments here and [...]
December 23rd, 2010
We have met Dr. Kissinger, and he is us.
November 8th, 2010
Category: Diplomacy, Economics, Handbasket, world going to hell in, International Affairs, Macroeconomic Policy, Watching Conservatives
Robert Zoellic goes gold bug, and the strange US lock on the World Bank presidency.
November 3rd, 2010
The initial results in California last night make my state seem like a sane drop of blue in the country. Jerry Brown won for Governor; Barbara Boxer was re-elected; and Proposition 23, which would have reversed the state’s landmark climate change law, was resoundingly defeated. Voters also approved Proposition 25, which allows the state budget [...]
October 8th, 2010
New Jersey is a living embodiment of why political boundaries should never be drawn along rivers, and always along ridgelines. Nine million people live in two enormous clusters attached economically and culturally, but not politically, to the cities of New York and Philadelphia across the major regional rivers. These clusters anchor the ends of an [...]
August 27th, 2010
“She was a fat, resentful woman. The kind who is always behind the counter at the DMV when you need to renew your registration” –P.J. O’Rourke, A Parliament of Whores “There are days when we don’t let the line move at all” –Patty and Selma, The Simpsons I generally ignored the protestors with the “Obama-is-a-Radical-Muslim-with-a-crazy-Baptist-preacher-in-Chicago” [...]
August 7th, 2010
Category: Gay marriage, Handbasket, world going to hell in, Struggle Between Good and Evil, Woolgathering
Occasionally my training as an engineer prompts me to ask, “why aren’t conservation laws more useful in social science?” In economics, everything is held together with bungee cords (which is OK, all physical mechanisms are more or less elastic) but the quantities of everything, including money, seem to be spongy as well. Analysis of gay [...]
July 29th, 2010
Category: Energy and Environment, Handbasket, world going to hell in, Journalism (Online and Otherwise), Wayward press
Spoiler alert: if this post doesn’t spoil your week, or worse, you and I don’t share the same reality. What makes human life worth living? Content, obviously: news, art, music, conversation – social intercourse in all media. What makes it possible? Food and drink, broadly defined: fresh water and all the plant and animal products [...]