An excellent deconstruction of an unworthy review of Stephen Pinker’s The Blank Slate — from Mark Powers, whose blog is generally quite good. Shame about the review, since I otherwise rather like Blackburn. I was similarly disappointed not too long ago when I read a really grossly vicious, misleading, dishonest, and maybe even slanderous review […]

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So this is… umm… it’s… yeah. Never mind. Just go look. Update: I’ve been asked to warn casual browsers that some of the banner ads and links surrounding the cool thing in question are not the sort of thing some of you will want to be seen checking out in the workplace. Use your judgment.

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… “official” al-Qaedaâ?¢ merchandise. Get yours today, and be glared at by everyone you meet. Now that there are t-shirts to identify the terrorists, someone tell Ashcroft to ease up. [Courtesy of P.J. Doland]

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John Maynard Keynes once observed that the â??ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly believed. Indeed, the world is ruled by little elseâ?¦. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler […]

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Sully asks readers to point out little Sontags who blasphemously enclose the phrase “war on terror” in scare quotes, or what he takes to be scare quotes. (Those last are plain vanilla quotation marks, though I’ll confess that I may possibly harbor some further ironic intent.) He writes: “I wonder what part of the phrase […]

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Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly be shocked by any conceivable abuse of the odious DMCA, Declan forwards word that FatWallet.com is being threatened with legal action for posting the sale prices offered by various retailers. Yup, you read that right. A user posted price comparisons, and the site’s operators got nastygrams insisting the […]

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