Archive | December, 2004

Mark Steyn has an interesting column, Go ahead, burglar, make my day, in which he compares a community that allows personal self defense from one that discourages or punishes it. But that’s the point: you’re there, the police aren’t. And, even in jurisdictions whose constabularies aren’t quite so monumentally useless as Britain’s, a citizen in […]

A large and very distinguished group of professors have started a new group blog, Left2Right, with the goal of trying to understand Red America. Hint: It’s not all like this. I assume Left2Right will be followed shortly by Right2Left, in which bloggers from Red America try to understand very distinguished professors? Seriously, though, it looks […]

This story (via How Appealing), about local opposition to a Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue, spurred largely by less-observant Jews, reminds me of what my observant Jewish friends often tell me: the worst boss to have is often a secular Jew, who often evinces hostility to the observant Jews’ religious requirements; much better to have a Christian boss, […]

Chris Brooke is plugging Sankar Muthu’s excellent book Enlightenment against Empire. I’ve mentioned it before, as well, but thought I’d take the occasion to mention the upcoming conference “Colonialism and Its Legacies” I’m cochairing with my colleague Iris Young April 23-25. (That’s the same weekend that APA Central is in Chicago– philosophers coming to town […]

Peterson v. Hewlett-Packard:conflict between Peterson and Hewlett- Packard arose when the company began displaying “diversity posters” in its Boise office as one component of its workplace diversity campaign. The first series consisted of five posters, each showing a photograph of a Hewlett- Packard employee above the caption “Black,” “Blonde,” “Old,” “Gay,” or “Hispanic.” Posters in […]

Puzzling Bushism of the Day (Slate): “So thank you for reminding me about the importance of being a good mom and a great volunteer as well.”—St. Louis, Jan. 5, 2004 I don’t get it — what’s supposedly wrong, otherwise Bushistic, or remotely noteworthy about this? I honestly don’t understand. Is it that Bush, being a […]

The Guardian (U.K.) on the environment and on Lomborg: The Daily Ablution has the scoop. UPDATE: The Guardian‘s environmental editor responds, also at The Daily Ablution; apparently they will be having more about Lomborg shortly.

Last Friday, I quoted columnist Clarence Page, who was paraphrasing an item from Abigail Thernstrom’s & Stephan Thernstrom’s No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning: In the survey by Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University social scientist, published in his 1996 book, “Beyond the Classroom,” most of the black and Hispanic students surveyed said they […]

The Rock of Gibraltar was the most interesting locale of my recent honeymoon. Typically we think of Anglo-American culture as penetrating the rest of the world, but in this case the positions are reversed. 30,000 nervous Gibraltarians are surrounded by 40 million Spaniards. Morocco is on the other side. Gibraltar is currently a territory of […]

Richard Sandomir, in today’s New York Times, has an article that explains part of the reason football games are becoming completely unwatchable. The big LSU-Oklahoma matchup Sunday night lasted for 3 hours and 43 minutes, of which — get this! — a total of 16 minutes and 28 seconds was actual live football action. The […]

From Ha’aretz: “a clear majority of the Jewish public (59 percent) prefer a swift, unilateral separation by Israel from the Palestinians, with the other alternative being to work for an agreement with the Palestinians even if the process takes a long time (today only 29 percent favor that, and 12 percent have no clear preference). […]

In California, local law enforcement has nearly complete discretion in deciding whether to grant a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Here’s one citizen’s tale of his attempt to get a permit, or at least to get some information on who gets permits and who doesn’t. It isn’t pretty — but it isn’t surprising, either, […]

In today’s Slate: “I believe that, as quickly as possible, young cows ought to be allowed go across our border.” — Ottawa, Nov. 30, 2004 Now this one just puzzles me. Here’s the relevant excerpt from the transcript. Bush was apparently responding to a question about the importation of beef from Canada to the U.S. […]

Shattered Glass: Speaking of good movies, for the heck of it, I decided to find an online version of the made-up article that led to the downfall of New Republic writer Stephen Glass, the subject of Shattered Glass. My immediate reaction: how could such obviously nonsensical crap get past TNR’s editors? The piece isn’t as […]

Jd2b.com mentions a new anonymous law prof blog, or rather, a fictional anonymous law prof blog, titled, appropriately, Anonymous Law Professor. The genre of anonymous blogs purporting to be by law profs is fairly new; as best I can recall, the only other attempt was the glorious but short-lived Proculian Meditations.