Bookworm Room

Crazy people — really crazy, the ones with serious schizophrenia or other mental illnesses — reflect the times.  (And yes, you’ve heard me say this before.)  In a pre-scientific era, they heard voices from God or the Devil.  In the post-WWII era, the men from Mars spoke to them, and they paraded around in tinfoil [...]

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Michelle Malkin’s family continues its non-stop search for her cousin, Marizela.  As Michelle’s update explains, in addition to a dedicated website, there’s also a Paypal link to help defray mounting expenses.

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Earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, market collapses, Middle Eastern turmoil . . . .  It’s been a busy week news-wise.  So you want to know what the hottest story is?  None of the above.  Per Allahpundit, the absolute hottest story is this video: The story behind the video is that the bigger boy, Casey Heynes, has [...]

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I wrote yesterday about the vagaries of buying books on Kindle.   I look for the cheap stuff and, occasionally, I get very, very lucky.  Michael Walsh, a National Review contributor, has just put out one of his own books out on Kindle for an introductory price of $0.99.  The book sounds great, and you can’t [...]

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Please, somebody explain this to me.  I’ve heard it reported that the original problems with the reactors were caused by the power going off when the earthquake hit.  Of all places, wouldn’t one expect a nuclear power plant to have a failsafe emergency backup power generator?  Was there no such backup power or did it fail, too?  Or [...]

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The two competing news stories — Japan’s nuclear reactor and the unstable narrative in the Middle East — provides the best illustration I’ve ever seen of the fears that move Progressives and conservatives. Progressives fear us:  Westerners.  They fear our technology and our values.  The nuclear reactors, while currently just a dreadful problem, are imminently [...]

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Accepting as true the narrative that Ray Davis is indeed a CIA contractor, and was working undercover in Pakistan, one of our most dangerous “friends” in the world, I am very happy to report that Davis is free and heading home.  (I say “accepting as true” because, even assuming Davis is CIA, there was clearly [...]

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Another short, but telling, link.

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Or just an incredibly sweet and funny video?  You decide.

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Poor Cassandra was cursed by the Gods with the gift of making accurate prophecies that no one would believe.  The disasters she foresaw always came true, but she was helpless to stop people (and nations) from racing towards their doom.  The endings were always so terrible — and Cassandra was herself swept up in them [...]

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I just finished reading a Zombie post about Owsley Stanley, the man who popularized LSD.  The post reminded me why I’ve never been interested in drug culture.  Back in 1974, when I was an impressionable young teen, my father, a very old-fashioned German man, went back to school to get his Masters in English.  There, [...]

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Today, as I was reading the headlines (Middle East decompensating, Qaddafi slaughtering his own people, mass hysteria about Japan’s less-than-likely nuclear disaster, the collapsing American economy), I asked myself, “Why did this all have to happen on the incompetent Obama’s watch?”  I then realized that the question had the answer. This all is happening because [...]

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Mr. Bookworm, New York Times reader, was telling the children that there was a total catastrophe in Japan, with the Japanese and the world exposed to the possibility of massive radiation poisoning.  I calmed the children’s fears by telling them that the paper could be right, but it could be wrong.  First, newspapers sell well [...]

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On Facebook, I linked to Bret Stephens’ article about the slaughter of the Fogel family in Israel (which is behind a pay wall).  In it, Stephens says that we in the West have essentially dehumanized the Palestinians by giving them a free pass for acting on their baser instincts: I have a feeling that years [...]

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Someone took this video from a point almost directly opposite the Bay from my house.  Had I been looking out the back window, I might have seen the same thing:

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Legal work isn’t half as much fun as blogging (and all the interesting stuff I read as part of blogging).  Still, after a year-long drought, I’d be a fool to complain.  As soon as I have time, though, I’ll weigh in here.  Until then, if you’re having a quiet evening at home, feel free to [...]

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Even by Watcher’s Council standards, last week saw some extraordinary articles.  I’m sure, therefore, that you’ll be interested in the voting results: Council Winners *First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Joshuapundit–Eyes Wide Shut – Dealing With ‘Anti-Zionism’ On Campus Second Place with 1 2/3 Votes -The Noisy Room- Imperial Islam – Prepping for a [...]

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The news is so terribly depressing, it’s nice to retreat into a good book.  I’m reading H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind. It’s not bad, as it’s written in simple, declarative sentences. It’s fascinating, too, to see how history has been revised since 1920, when he published [...]

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The earthquake/tsunami/potential nuclear meltdown in Japan is one of the great disasters to hit the Western world.  It’s worth remembering, however, that the media is a visual engine that lives to convey disaster. This post is an excellent antidote to that media tendency, as it carefully explains why the world is not ending in Japan.  [...]

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If there is one defining characteristic of liberals, it is their sense that they are better than everyone else.  Nowhere was that more explicitly illustrated than in Ron Schiller’s comments: In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives. Schiller wasn’t unique, just unguarded.  The whole point of liberalism, [...]

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Why are so many people who are unwilling to do anything to stop Iran from getting and intentionally using nuclear weapons so freaked out at the possibility of a nuclear accident?

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I’ve had a series of random ideas following me around for the past few days, and will just throw them out in a single post.  Considering them food for thought (or bones to chew or bury). *** My husband finally got around to watching HBO’s Reagan documentary.  I missed the beginning, but got to see [...]

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Who is at fault in the NFL labor dispute?  And how will it all end?

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My daughter and I were talking about incongruous songs.  My favorite is Ben, a sentimental, romantic homage to a killer rat:

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Call me cynical, but…. I’ve opined frequently that, when push comes to shove, Obama will always hew to the strong man.  (Witness his dream of being President of China.)  With that in mind, consider this paragraph in John Podhoretz’s savage dissection of Obama’s press conference: And what about doing something to help resolve the Libyan [...]

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