Hat tip to Instapundit, who entitles his post “Cats and Dogs Living Together”: Moderates have been spotted at the meetings of the Modern Language Association, which rejected resolutions against Israel and for Ward Churchill in favor of ones expressing support for academic freedom. I especially admire these remarks, from someone who opposed even the [...]
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Britain declares that the war on terror is over.
That’s a relief, I guess—but doesn’t it depend who won?
Seriously, this seems to confirm the hypotheses of Dr. Sanity and ShrinkWrapped that many people’s reactions to terror are based on displacement and denial.
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Andrew McCarthy argues that Benazir Bhutto was murdered by the real Pakistan—something that should give us pause in pushing for democracy in the Islamic world.
If he’s right, however, why did al-Qaeda have to assassinate her? Couldn’t they have just won an election?
Then again, perhaps murder is easier than politics.
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Posted in Music, tagged Music on December 31, 2007 | No Comments »
NPR lists the top ten unknown artists of 2007. I especially like Lucinda Blackbear and Georgie James.
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Posted in mathematics, tagged mathematics, puzzles on December 31, 2007 | 7 Comments »
I’ve returned from my conference equipped with a few new ideas, and three interesting mathematical puzzles:
Show that, in any community of finitely many people, at least two people have the same number of friends. (Assume that no one is friend of himself.)
In a certain park, there are some trees, and in those trees are [...]
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Posted in science, tagged science on December 31, 2007 | No Comments »
Wired lists its ten top science stories of 2007. It’s too early, perhaps, to say whether “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” belongs on the list.
Of more practical use might be this explanation for why wires, threads, and just about everything else ends up in knots.
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Posted in Cats, tagged Cats on December 27, 2007 | No Comments »
It was December 2005 when the stray, tailless cat my daughters whimsically named Bobo McFluffins started coming around to our house. We tried to trap him, but he was far too skittish; we caught a raccoon instead. (Have you ever tried getting a raccoon out of a trap at 5am?) It took [...]
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Posted in liberty, tagged liberty, paternalism on December 26, 2007 | No Comments »
Dan Surber discusses the sled police, using radar guns on sled-riders. Good grief.
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If we think of Islam as a meme propagating itself in quasi-evolutionary terms, we get an interesting interpretation of various aspects of Islamic ideology, as Amil Amani adumbrates.
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Posted in terrorism, war, tagged Iraq, media, terrorism, war on December 26, 2007 | No Comments »
Austin Bay predicts that terrorists in Iraq will attempt a Tet offensive within the next six months, to sway public opinion in the United States just as the North Vietnamese were able to do in 1968 when their devastation in battle was spun in the media as a Communist victory. (HT: Instapundit.) That seems [...]
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