Unqualified Offerings

Aargh! Now They’ve Got Me Doing It – Reader Mark Shawhan e-mails
On reading your most recent post (on that special forces unit that got pulled out of Afghanistan), I noticed two things. One of them is a bit trivial: in the fourth paragraph from the end (the one beginning “back to the Guardian claim”), it [...]

Fair’s Fair – Virginia Postrel has a point:
Remember when putting troops on the ground in Afghanistan was a sure ticket to disaster, a military action hardly more conceivable than launching a nuclear attack? Remember the lessons of the Soviets and the British? Judging from this week’s discussions, not many people do.
True! Which is why, at [...]

Voting for the Terrorists – Well, which ones, darnit? Fafnir helps you make an informed choice. (Will you have the right to slap a “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Apulus” sticker on your SUV?)

Sweet Relief – What’s that floating away? At least a few libertarian anxieties about John Kerry:
For the first time, he will target a popular tax incentive, known as “deferral,” offered to most U.S. companies that do business in lower-taxed foreign countries.
To soften the blow to corporations, Kerry will propose a one-time, one-year offer to tax [...]

A Fanboy’s Head’s Up via this kind e-mail:
NPR’s Morning Edition will be doing a feature on Mike Mignola/Hellboy this April 5th. I did a taped interview with Morning Edition this afternoon to be used in connection with the feature. Our local NPR runs from 5 to 7am and repeats from 7 to 9am. Your local [...]

Another Fanboy’s Notes – Good article in the Guardian last week about John Updike, lifelong cartoon fan. There’s no indication that he still follows the field closely, but his love of the medium and his own attempts at a career in cartooning have clearly marked him.
If all Updike’s stray references to comics were gathered together, [...]

Look Over There – In case you haven’t learned it from everybody else, former Calpundit Kevin Drum is now essentially The Washington Monthly website – or at least, his relocated and renamed blog, Political Animal, is the most prominent thing about the place. Still indispensible for political analysis from a mostly-measured Democratic perspective.

Annals of We Are Not Making This Up – “Man told to stay away from mascot chicken” reports the Salem, Oregon Statesman-Journal:
He was released from jail later that morning, five days after he took Speckles home from outside Ray’s Food Place, where the chicken is a longtime mascot and local favorite.
Kathy Dean, Gombos’ wife, said [...]

Plan Ahead – Will Wilkinson explains why you should go to Libertarian Summer Camp.

Blogger Makes Good – Now-Somewhat pseudonymous Diana Moon has published a profile of film-maker Albert Maysles in The Forward. (Link requires registration. “jhenley/jhenley” will work.) Being a film ignoramus, I learned a lot from it. Like that Maysles made the Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter,” which I’ve actually seen, and which was a pretty amazing piece [...]