Dec
27
2012

URLs du Jour

2012-12-27

  • [Sammy and Martin] Today's image stolen from Cracked, and you should check out their article "13 Awesome Photos That Will Make You Happy to Be Alive"

  • What'd I get? Well, let me tell ya: DVDs: Futurama: Volume 7; Iron Man 2; The Dark Knight Rises: The Avengers; Brave. CDs (yes, they still exist): Albert King and Stevie Ray Vaughn In Session; Sunken Condos by Donald Fagen; That's Why God Made the Radio by The Beach Boys; Privateering by Mark Knopfler; Born To Sing: No Plan B by Van Morrison. Books: The Bookwoman's Last Fling by John Dunning; Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d'Art by Christopher Moore; The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker; Holidays in Heck by P.J. O'Rourke; Spade & Archer (a prequel to The Maltese Falcon) by Joe Gores.

    And (last but not least), beef jerky from McKinnons Market and a couple biiig bottles of beer from local Throwback Brewery. Specifically: "Hog Happy Hefeweizen" and "Dippity Do American Brown". Now all I need is a football game on TV; I understand there are some coming up.

    I have very generous friends and family.

  • I didn't have anything sensible to say about the Newtown CT horror. If you want cheap strident emotionalism it's easy enough to find elsewhere. The folks who brought you the phrase "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" are busy at work trying to push through "gun control" legislation in the heat of the moment.

    Which brings to mind a Thomas Szasz quote:

    The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.

    So it is with "gun control"; the aim is not to control guns, but to control citizens.

    That's the primary goal of your average 21st Century American Progressive, and they'll use any pretext—including your understandable reaction to murdered children—to get it.

  • Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, was apparently taken with the "we gotta do something" disease, and went on-air with advocacy of "armed security" of "every single school in America". The response of Cato's Gene Healy deserves your attention. Bottom line: top-down "solutions" conjured up out of panic and fear will inevitably lead to misallocations of scarce resources that will leave us all, including the kiddos, less safe.

    Is that irony? I can never tell.

  • But enough seriousness: there's a nice little story from Walter Mosley in the December Atlantic magazine, and the folks there have put it online: "Reply to a Dead Man".

  • I'm a huge fan of the FX network series Justified, a potent combination of wonderful acting, plotting, mordant humor, shocking violence, and bad language. Among the supporting talents is Nick Searcy, who plays Art Mullen. As we await new episodes coming up in a few weeks, you could do worse than take a few video lessons from Nick Searcy's Acting School.

    Nick also did this unconventional ad for… well, let's leave it as a surprise. Check it out:


Last Modified 2022-09-28 6:21 AM EDT