Can you imagine how much better our lives would have been if we got to use the Five Times Rule instead of always having to toe the line?
Can you imagine how much better our lives would have been if we got to use the Five Times Rule instead of always having to toe the line?
Like most fans of Bob Dylan, I've been trying to figure him out for years. Looks like he has me figured out, at least to the point of knowing where I might stumble across his new album. Of course, a few years ago, he would have had to catch me in a bar or a bookstore. And in a few more . . . suppose they'll have a rack of his CDs at the assisted-living center?
The Allen County Public Library has chosen Frankenstein as its third book in its One Community, One Story project. I liked the first two choices -- "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Diary of Anne Frank" -- and I like this one, too. Many of us who are science-fiction fans consider Mary Shelley's book the first true work of science fiction in the way it explores the clash between technology and morality.
It's dangerous to make radical predictions like this one so early out, but it makes fascinating reading anyway. I suspect Barone is greatly underestimating the power the hard left and hard right have in the Democratic and Republican primaries, for one thing. Two New Yorkers running against each other for the presidency? Don't think so. John McCain. He loves the media too much. My own guess is that the candidates will be two people not even being talked about much right now.
The Chinese learn that democracy can be a tricky business:
How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?
Really. Just wait till you try to answer the question, "How come an elaborate democratic system participated in by millions of people and costing tens of millions of dollars can only come up with these two candidates for president?"
Was it just yesterday when I wrote about people whose mission in life was to remove all the fun from your diet? The food nannies never sleep.
In commuting the death sentence of Arthur P. Baird II, Gov. Mitch Daniels has not quite set the stage for the debate on capital punishment and the profoundly mentally ill that some had hoped would begin. The governor mostly talked about the fact that life without parole was not an option when Baird was convicted, and the victims' family members and all the jurors who have made their opinions known would have preferred that sentence for him.
Sure, we all like to visit places like New Orleans, but on days like this we should be grateful we live in tornado country instead of hurricane country. As scary as a tornado is, its terror is relatively short-lived. We hear about it coming and hide in the basement and the thing either hits your house or not, all of the action taking place in a few hours. Hurricanes terrorize people for days. Will it get here, or will it veer, will it build in strength or fizzle?
It's sad that the childhood home of Ernie Pyle has been lost. Its continued presence was important for the same reason we preserve the homes of other significant people. We want to visit their pasts to see what it was like for them, what inspired them, even just what they saw out the window on a summer day. But this loss isn't in the "tragic" category, because Pyle still lives and always will in the writings he left behind.
OK, this is the kind of thing that drives small-government libertarians bonkers, the kind of dishonesty engaged in by politicians and journalists alike that keeps the federal budget so high. "Critical vote looms for Hill Republicans," says the headline in the Washington Post, followed by the subhead "Party to set cuts to entitlement programs" (later elaboration in the story, the first cuts to entitlement spending since 1997). CUTS in SPENDING by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT?
I should be gloating. All those people who have telling me for years that I drink far too much coffee now have to cope with the fact that it's the prime source for antioxidants. But I won't, because tomorrow, some scientist will discover something else bad about coffee. Science tends to move slowly, with lots of preliminary reports, tentative conclusions, further study and revisions of opinions.
One of the tragedies of exaggerated environmental fears has been the abandonment of nuclear power as a part of our energy strategy and our resulting overdependence on much dirtier coal-fired plants. Now, it seems that high gas prices and Middle East unrest are finally increasing support for nuclear power, even among some groups among whom oppostion has been strong. Common sense at last?
For the fifth year in a row, the United Nations has ranked Norway the world's best nation in which to live. But the country ranks 29th on the Index of Economic Freedom. The United States, on the other hand, ranks eighth on the best-place list and 12th on the economic-freedom index. People will take various lessons from that.
You don't have to worry about Indiana being out of the mainstream of progressive thought. Indianapolis Star columnist Dan Carpenter has done some agonizing soul-searching, and it was a close call, but he finds himself morally superior to all the cretinous "Bush loyalists" who have "never come within a country mile of a combat zone" but nevertheless feel compelled to wage an "all-out assault" on Cindy Sheehan.
Suppose Sen. Lugar will come back with lots of ideas about improving airport security?
This form of protest is a little more drastic than carrying a sign and marching. Here is a particularly startling observation, a provision of Indiana law I was not aware of:
Prosecutors say it is legal in the state of Indiana to burn your own house down if you own it outright.
Another in the continuing series of outrages in post-Kelo America. For the libertarian view of private property, check out this essay, which, by the way, is a very readable articulation of that political philosophy.
I don't want to excuse Pat Robertson's bonehead remarks, but does anybody remember there being a media firestorm when this former Clinton aide wrote a Newsweek article calling for the assassination of Saddam Hussein?
The name of Casey Sheehan has been invoked by so many people for their own reasons that it seems only fair that we at least know who he was. (Be sure to follow the links within the article, too.) I would have loved to have known the young man. I wonder how many of Cindy Sheehan's hangers-on really admire such a committed soldier, not a child who was stolen from his mother, but a rational adult who knew exactly what he was doing and why.
The Great Time Zone Controversy is fizzling out the way many people predicted (oh, OK, the way I predicted -- pat, pat, pat), with most counties wanting to stay the way they are and a few counties in northwest and southwest Indiana near Central zone counties wanting to switch from Eastern. South Bend is the most interesting case. I used to live about as far west of South Bend as I now live east of it, so I'm familiar with the conflicting pulls people there feel.
