In case anyone had been wondering, here’s the sound clip from Transformers: The Movie. (The original classic, not what will, in all likelihood, be the Michael Bay abortion.) Fun fact: Megatron’s interlocutor in this scene, Unicron, is Orson Welles in his final screen role. Welles derided it as “a movie about toys who do horrible […]

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I somehow missed this earlier, but Tyler Cowen has a piece in the International Herald Tribune noting that American cultural products don’t enjoy the kind of monopoly on global attention spans some imagine. Now, while it may hearten those who spend sleepless nights worrying about “cultural imperialism” or creeping homogenization, some of the data he […]

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D’Souza v. PowerLine catfight.

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Wired has posted a series of “snacktones” composed by probably the first band I was ever head-over-heels into, They Might Be Giants. The choice to name two of these “Devil Spawn” and “Friend or Foe” suggest that maybe the TMBG boys have a problem with unwanted calls, but my personal favorite is “Call Connected Thru […]

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When I first heard Kriston Capps complain about the new “contextual dictionary” on the New York Times‘ website, I thought he was overreacting. Until I tried to read an article on the New York Times‘ website. Now I’m ready to join his Bring Back Free Clicking Campaign. The new “feature” truly is beyond obnoxious: If […]

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Ed Feser responded to my post below in the comments a few days back, and I promised a reply, but didn’t get around to it until today. Here it is, in case anyone’s still interested. Feser writes: Re: the remark you find “truly weird,” you have simply ignored the context in which it was made, […]

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…this band. That is all.

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So, I figured it was finally time I own Swimming to Cambodia, long one of my favorite films, on DVD. Except it appears that it’s only in print on DVD in Canada (fortunately also region 1, so it works fine on an unhacked U.S. player), meaning you can find copies easily enough on Amazon or […]

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Wow, this is beyond ridiculous. I’m hosting the libertarian end of a battle royale for BloggingHeads, with Will Wilkinson narrating while Megan “Jane Galt” McArdle cooks a sumptuous meal, in competition/debate with Spencer Ackerman and Ezra Klein. My “stadium kitchen” is lit up like Christmas, and the parties are arguing the merits of transfats and […]

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If you’re in the D.C. area, you can come out to a panel tonight where I’ll be debating the role of faith in politics: Don’t forget that tonight AFF will host a roundtable discussion on the topic of liberals and faith. Two years ago, Nancy Pelosi created a “Faith Working Group” for members of the […]

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