Unqualified Offerings

My wife has started a Beliefnet Prayer Circle for my brother-in-law, a wonderful man whom I have always admired and loved, and who married my sister, and has been diagnosed with Stage Four cancer. Whether or not one believes in "the Power of Prayer," I do believe in kind thoughts, and I cherish any you […]

By Mona
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It isn’t merely former member of the Reagan DoJ, Doug Kmiec — who is also my former Con Law prof — who, among GOP ranks, is endorsing Barack Obama (as I wrote about here and here). So sayeth The New York Sun, which identifies several other higher-profile GOPers who are […]

Peace is for losers.
Foreigners - not so ignorant and primitive! (Via Marginal Revolution.)
Decline and Fall on the emotional costs of war for him personally.
Joyner on Maliki’s famous victory.

Because hey! it’s an old tradition here! As are . . . occasional link dumps!

Anatol Lieven talks about the horror that a John McCain presidency would likely make of American foreign and "defense" policy. " . . . a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration […]

Like you, I’ve spent the weekend rooting for America’s efforts to insure the victory of one set of Iranian-backed Shiite mobsters over another set of Iranian-backed Shiite mobsters. If John McCain were here he would remind us that this is nothing less than our moral duty.
Meantime . . .
* There is more Ohio than […]

By Thoreau
Last night’s dinner got my wife’s enthusiastic endorsement, so I present the recipes here for you, dear readers.
Salmon with pistachio crust:
Take a large skinless salmon fillet and rub it with lemon juice on both sides. Then brush with olive oil. In a food processor, grind up 1/2 cup pistachios (roasted, lightly salted […]

By Thoreau
Today I was right to be wrong and those who were right were wrong to be right.  At a meeting of local physicists, they held an “order of magnitude estimate” contest.  The winner of the contest is the person with the median guess, not the guess closest to the right answer.  This is in […]

By Thoreau
A common statement regarding the incompetence of the Bush administration is that people who don’t believe government can solve a problem shouldn’t be in charge of running it.  Whatever the merits or demerits of that statement, let’s get one thing straight:  The Bush administration does think that the government can solve problems.  They just […]

By Mona
Over at AoTP — and Jim has kindly allowed to point to some of my posts there from this platform — I admit to being prepped to sign onto conspiracy theories. Notwithstanding all the 2001 hype that the deadly toxin which killed five people screamed “Saddam!” it was apparently not only home-grown, but by […]

By Thoreau
Electron magnetic moment measured to 13 decimal places. Can any other science lay claim to such accuracy? I think not!

By Thoreau
Friend of the blog Jennifer informs us that Connecticut has just atoned for witch trials centuries ago. She predicts that by 2350, we may have some sort of atonement for the drug war.
Although, I am informed by certain libertarian bloggers that given the state of the science at the time, Connecticut was right […]

Driving back today. You people completely screwed the war up while I was gone.

By Thoreau
Despite all our wailing and gnashing of teeth over the suckitude of the punditocracy these last few weeks (well, more than just the last few weeks, but especially recently, given the anniversary of our latest war of aggression), I think Pennywise managed to sum the problem up in one line.

By Thoreau
Online simulations of physics experiments are of course abundant, but this is a particularly nice collection.

By Thoreau
I have been tough on Megan McArdle, but her article on the body count in Iraq seems reasonable. She reports that some of the higher estimates may be off, and those who want to can bash her for that, but she makes the important point that even if the body count is “only” […]