Bookworm Room

Tweet I'm one of those people who can quickly see if a room is ugly.  I am, however, constitutionally incapable of figuring out how to make it beautiful.  I'm simply lacking in those visual and spatial abilities.  I'm constantly reminded of my own weakness vis a vis decorating — the almost anarchic ability to destroy [...]

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Tweet Here's Debra Saunders on tomorrow's threatened illegal immigrant boycott: I am one American who will be moved in the direction not intended by sponsors of the May 1 National Day Without Immigrants Great American Boycott demonstrations. When supporters of illegal immigration threaten to boycott all stores, it makes me feel like shopping. When I [...]

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Tweet The big focus in American education from the 1960s through the present was why children can't read (something I attribute to the new educational approach that abandoned the wonderful logic of phonics). Now, though, for parents hewing to traditional morals who have kids trapped in public schools, the question becomes, "Why should my child [...]

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Tweet When my son was born, I agonized a lot about circumcising him.  As a Jew, I felt it was appropriate.  However, as someone horrified by female circumcision (which I do know is a much more extreme procedure), I wondered how I could justify cutting into a new baby's healthy flesh to satisfy a cultural [...]

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Tweet I'm a huge proponent of vaccination. The last two generations of Americans have lived complacently without the spectre of childhood killers such as measles and polio. I always get irked by — and will challenge — suburban mothers who think homeopathy will protect their children from deadly epidemics. At the very least, they should [...]

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Tweet Mark Steyn writes repeatedly about the West's self-immolation on the pyre of low birth rates.  While it may still be a trend in many places, it has become a practical reality in Japan: This mountain village near the Sea of Japan, withered to eight aging residents, concluded recently that it could no longer go [...]

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Tweet I've had an unusually (and delightfully) lazy day today, and can't bestir myself to any serious blogging.  Fortunately, others are willing to do the heavy lifting.  For example, here is James Lewis, at the American Thinker, writing about the fallacy between the attacks on Israel's nuclear weapons that seek to apply to Israel the [...]

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Tweet Kevin Sites tells the appalling story of the tortures visited on a child in Afghanistan when, at 5, she was married into a family of sadists.  Although he doesn't say so, I can't help but believe that her tortures were a product of life under the Taliban, and the fact that she was able [...]

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Tweet If you're feeling down, you have to check out one of Phibian's latest, which will cheer you up in a minute.  Indeed, I was cheerful right until the last paragraph where he boasted about his splendid physique.  Clearly, this man has never been pregnant!

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Tweet You only have to turn on the news, open the pages or the New York Times or attend an urban rally to know that Iraq is Hell on earth , comparable only to the Sudan or Rwanda. This is so because Iraq, which used to be such a peaceful place under Saddam Hussein, fell [...]

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Tweet If you want to know why I have a benign attitude towards American small towns, go here.

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Tweet This is a dreadful story, with grotesque pathologies bursting out all over the place: A woman charged with killing eight of her newborn babies has gone on trial in a case that has shocked Germany. The bodies were found buried in a fish tank and in flower pots and buckets in her parents' garden [...]

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Tweet This NPR story addresses the Day of Silence gay kids are holding today at American schools and the Day of Truth that Christian kids are countering with tomorrow at American schools.  I think both are proselytizing, and I'd like to see both out of the school.  However, to the extent any given school allows [...]

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Tweet You know Eliza Doolittle's complaint in "My Fair Lady":  "Words words, words, I'm so sick of words."  I thought of this when I saw this snippet that Congressman Tom Tancredo posted on his website.  (Thanks for the tip, Kevin.) Pythagorean theorem: 24 words The Lord's Prayer: 66 words Archimedes' Principle: 67 words The 10 [...]

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Tweet I'd finished writing a really beautiful post about al-Zarqawi's latest pronouncements, in a newly released video (you can find it here, at Centcom). I then did the intelligent thing, hitting the "save" button, only to do see my magnum opus vanish entirely. Sadly, I don't have the time to recreate it. I urge you [...]

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Tweet I could — as others already have — devote my blog to portraying the insanity that passes for higher education at so many American Universities and Colleges.  I've opted not to, since there are other things I want to maunder on about here.  Nevertheless, occasionally something going on at one of these "education" factories [...]

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Tweet My son belongs to a music group that functions in a large urban area, but has suburban satellites. My son trains with one of those satellites. In the days leading up to performances, all of the satellite groups descend on the urban center for final rehearsals. I got to audit one of those rehearsals [...]

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Tweet To a hammer, everything is a nail. Currently, I'm hammering away at the idea of manly men. I did so yesterday in a post that alluded to early posts and articles I've written. Today, I'm doing it in connection with a New York Times article about Paul Greengrass's United 93. It turns out that [...]

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Tweet Since 9/11, we've been hearing a lot about the Crusades.  The current version is that Christians were evil in the Middle Ages when they attacked the peace-loving Saracens.  The version goes further, which is that the psychic scars inflicted seven hundred years ago were so deep that they go a long way to explaining [...]

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Tweet Maybe it's just objective news; maybe the AP is making a point. Who knows? All I know is that the AP is once again announcing the number of US forces who have died in Iraq: 2,392. This averages out to less than 1,000 deaths per year of war. While I find the number saddening, [...]

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Tweet Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. I'm a little late, but it's really never too late to remember not to forget. In a weirdly hopeful sign, there might be a small corner in Egypt — of all places — that isn't forgetting: A new book which does not deny the Holocaust and the number of [...]

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Tweet Here's one of the pictures: Go here for others. 

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Tweet I love it when people hostile to the current administration get onto every TV show and garner column inches in every newspaper to voice their complaints about censorship and suppression.  Irony doesn't seem to be an operative word in their vocabulary.  These same people are always remarkably quiet when the real deal happens.  In [...]

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Tweet As the mother of a very masculine little boy, I spend a lot of time thinking about (and some time blogging about) what makes for a good manly man. In the "what not to do" category, I've been reading Kate O'Beirne's Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault [...]

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Tweet Fascinating. This is one bookI'll be looking for.

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