A nice Dangerous Liaisons mashup critiquing Californian government pensions (funny, if you are not a Californian taxpayer).

Feminism explained (more accurately, a certain sort of American political feminism explained, but still funny).

Which US State is worst at what.

Cruel but funny: advice to a newly unemployed former Congressperson. ( Read more... )

19 killed in stampede at German music festival.

Noting that European politics has been moving rightwards for both cyclical and structural reasons.

About the euro and political sovereignty.

About Portugal’s experience with drug decriminalisation.

The fertility rate of Danish migrants is now falling to that of the general Danish population ( Read more... )

Australian soldier awarded the Victoria Cross.

Nice discussion of New START.

Considering the balance of civilian and military power and interest in China.

Southern Sudan is voting to secede.

Looking at the implications of the Moscow airport attack. Putting terror attacks intelligently in context. About how the better training and marksmanship ( Read more... )

I am reposting a new version of my earlier post on reading political responsibility into the Tucson shootings because responses to my original post wandered off into whose rhetoric was worse, which was irrelevant to the point the post was trying to make, and because the earlier version ended up with so many updates as to be unwieldy. So, once again ( Read more... )

What do we know about the tragic shootings in Tucson?

(1) The shooter shows considerable evidence of mental illness. [UPDATE His logical disconnectedness showed up in his philosophy class.]
(2) He has stated admiration for an eclectic group of political texts, (The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf) of extreme but not of a politically specific ( Read more... )

Chop suey piano.

On Kant and abstract art, as a poem.

Lovely tribute to the late Leslie Nielsen from David Zucker.

About the director of the best Star Wars film, who died recently.

Venus Williams shows definite class.

A Thatcher-themed nightclub has opened in London.

Arguing that the decreasing cost of audio equipment leads to increasing ( Read more... )

The Inner City Gaia (formerly known as ‘The Spencer St Soviet’, formally known as The Age) is stunned. The Victorian Liberals are putting the Greens last in their preferences and how-to-vote cards.

Part of what is going on is a case of if you won’t play with us, we won’t play with you. Clearly, as the article notes, the ALP-Green preference deal ( Read more... )

A lovely obituary of a quiet man who knew what he liked:
They will toast the memory of a solitary man who knew his likes and lived within his means, a man who could be counted upon.

Texas continues to provide competitive jurisdiction evidence on preferable public policy.

Culture war politics are not helping Republican candidates ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on the way gentry progressives tend to be “tone deaf”; to simply not hear themselves, to not see how their “self-evident”, their “reasonable” pronouncements really seem to others.

It is not hard to find examples: the 2009 speech by Obama Communications Director Anita Dunn praising Mao is a classic (historian Victor ( Read more... )

A quick Google™ search turns up many incidents of Muslims burning Bibles. These pass with minimal, if any coverage, in Western media. They certain do not become cause celebres. Partly, this is because no Westerners are involved, and that makes such incidents inherently less newsworthy in the West ( Read more... )