For some reason, I had remembered the Bangles cover of “Hazy Shade of Winter” as being much better than it is. I now feel as though someone ought to do a cover as good as I’d imagined it being. In related news, I finally paid enough attention to Wire’s lyrics to realize that R.E.M.’s “Strange” […]

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Solveig Singleton at Tech Liberation Front comments on that Steve Levy column about mash-up artist Girl Talk I linked last week. While she’s certainly right that it seems like a bad idea to riddle copyright law with a tangle of ad-hoc exceptions (is this actually what’s being proposed?) her take seems unfair in a variety […]

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An op-ed in The New York Times argues that the “orthodoxy of privatization — that it’s the government that’s mired by inefficiency and a lack of competition — has been turned on its head in the intelligence industry.” And fair enough, but it’s worth noting that the “orthodox” argument for the superior efficiency of the […]

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I’ve given this exactly no serious thought, but Megan McArdle has an interesting proposal. My first-pass reaction is that this would weaken the humanitarian argument aspect of the argument for immigration, but it’s probably still worth pondering.

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The Supreme Court has ruled, by a 5-4 vote, in favor of Wisconsin Right to Life, which had been embroiled in long struggle with the Federal Election Commission over ads the anti-abortion group was prevented from broadcasting. The spots would have asked voters to urge Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl not to filibuster Bush’s […]

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TCSDaily seems to be on a real tear against Christopher Hitchens’ book-length jeremiad against religion: The lastest attack there blasts Hitch for neglecting to grapple with the theological ideas of some of his favorite literary giants. He says not a word, for instance, about Shakespeare’s Iago as a critique of atheism. What’s that you say? […]

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The folks at ThinkProgress are purporting to be upset about this exchange on Glen Beck’s show: [Michael] Graham asked Beck if he wanted to see the Clintons murdered in the [spoof Sopranos] video. “[S]eriously, Glenn, didn’t you at one point want to see, like, Paulie Walnuts or someone come in and just whack them both […]

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“Awesome Canadian hip-hop” are three words seldom strung together in that order; as far as I’m aware, it’s a descriptive phrase with a unique extension: Edmonton-based rapper Cadence Weapon. He’ll be playing The Red and the Black next month.

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Kevin Drum suggests that Rudy Giuliani—who seems to imagine that having watched things blow up makes him a terrorism expert—is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect: Dunning and Kruger, in a famous series of tests, found that “Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, will dramatically overestimate their ability and performance relative to […]

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I realize Ross’ defense of circumcision in response to Andrew Sullivan’s most recent attack on the practice is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but to the extent that it’s serious, it’s not all that cogent. First, there’s the aesthetics. I’ve heard preferences in both directions here, but frankly, I’m not sure why this should cut in either direction […]

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