Jack Shafer at Slate takes a meta-look.
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Huh?
David Edelstein, in his review of Win a Date With Tad Hamilton:The gimmick of Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!, directed by Robert Luketic from a script by Victor Levin, is that the movie star’s bacchanalian lifestyle is on the verge of derailing his career, so his agent (Nathan Lane) and manager (Sean Hayes)—both named […]
More from the Omaha principal:
From the Omaha World-Herald: Two Westside High School students say they were using satire to make a point: The school shouldn’t have a special award to recognize the achievement of black students. Trevor Richards, the Rambo twins’ choice for Westside High’s “Distinguished African American Student” award, moved from South Africa to Omaha six years ago. […]
Bay Area Hotel Recommendation:
Continuing today’s consumerist theme, I had a great experience last weekend at the Holiday Inn Express in Mountain View, Ca. Having stayed on Holiday Inn Expresses before, I wasn’t expecting much, and only stayed there because the rest of my extended family was staying there for a bat mitzvah celebration. It turned out to be […]
Moving your stuff?
Hanah and I also didn’t have a great experience with Giant Van Lines, which picked up Hanah’s stuff from Arlington, Va., on December 30, and didn’t deliver it until over 2 weeks later, when they had predicted 3-5 days. Also, they damaged a bookshelf and a dresser, and didn’t put the bed together properly.
Moving your car?
Avoid A AAAdvantage Auto Transport, and National Auto Transport, which is the broker that set us up with A AAAdvantage. Our car was picked up from Boston on Dec. 29, and didn’t arrive in L.A. until three weeks later, Jan. 20. My wife was told that it didn’t even leave Boston until Jan. 9. The […]
Hanah
discusses e-mail forwarded rants and anti-spam laws.
Retiarius: My friend Jack Schaedel passes along this word of the day, from the people who came up with one word for “to kill every tenth person as a means of collective punishment.” UPDATE: Sasha tells me that, etymologically speaking, “retiarius” more or less corresponds to “netster.” So maybe in a sense we are all […]
You Can Say That! Overlawyered reports that two Southwest Airlines customers lost their “hostile racial environment” lawsuit based on offense taken when they heard a flight attendant say “einee meinee mienee moe,” a portion of a rhyme that has long since lost any trace of its racist origins (“catch a tiger by the toe,” the […]
Peremptory challenges of judges:
Eric Muller has some interesting thoughts about the California practice (I believe called “papering”) of letting litigants reject, once per litigant per case, the judge that they’re drawn. The prosecution in the Peterson murder prosecution just did that to a judge. I’m skeptical, though, of the argument that [W]e worry about the partiality of jurors […]
What, no bracha? “Israel Rabbi Offers Prayer for Web Porn Browsers”: “Please God, help me cleanse the computer of viruses and evil photographs which disturb and ruin my work . . ., so that I shall be able to cleanse myself (of sin),” reads the benediction by Shlomo Eliahu, chief rabbi in the northern town […]
More on Matrilineal Descent in Judaism:
Orthodox Jewish readers have written in to defend the proposition that since Sinai, descent in Judaism has always been matrilineal. For the Orthodox take on the issue, as well as a good example of how traditional rabbinic scholars analyze an issue (essentially reasoning backwards to find plausible language in the Torah supporting the idea that […]
Religious beards may now be banned
in French schools, says Education Minister Luc Ferry (thanks to Hit & Run for the pointer): Discussing the plan to remove Islamic headscarves from state schools, he told a communist deputy who asked about a pupil with a beard, “As soon as it becomes a religious sign and the code is apparent, it would fall […]
American Family Association changes its mind:
Late last month, I blogged (emphasis added): Julian Sanchez at Reason‘s Hit & Run reports: The American Family Association is running a meaningless online poll on attitudes about gay marriage which, they say, they’ll be sending to Congress. Presumably, they thought selection bias (who goes to the AFA website, after all?) would yield a huge […]
States’ rights approach to proposed Federal Marriage Amendment may be working:
An ABC News/Washington Post poll reports, to my pleasant surprise (see here for my fears to the contrary), that the question “Would you support amending the U.S. Constitution to make it illegal for homosexual couples to get married anywhere in the U.S., or should each state make its own laws on homosexual marriage?” yields 38% […]