Apr
4
2006

URLs du Jour

2006-04-04

  • Ramesh Ponnuru has a book coming out later this month: The Party of Death. Subtitle: "The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life". If that seems a little overheated to you, check out this article from the Seguin (TX) Gazette that covers the … um … provocative beliefs of one Eric Pianka:
    A University of Texas professor says the Earth would be better off with 90 percent of the human population dead.

    Pianka's beliefs have recently been publicized by Forrest Mims, an effort apparently spurred by the Texas Academy of Science's recent grant of the 2006 Distinguished Texas Scientist award to Prof. Pianka. You can read Mims on Pianka here; Pianka's home page is here. You can read a Pianka sort-of defense and a Mims-trashing here by another guy with a big beard and a falcon.

    Is this a case of a devotee of environmentalism being unusually outspoken and honest in taking his ideology to its logical conclusion? If so, maybe Ramesh has a point.

    (Link to the Seguin Gazette article via Carl Schaad. Link to the falcon guy via Andrew Sullivan.)

  • What I learned today from reading the Bleat: I was an idiot for liking King Kong so much. Sigh. Usually Mr. Lileks and I agree on this sort of thing so often that it's unsettling. I assume a temporary bad mood turned him into a grouchy quibbler while watching the movie. At least he didn't go into the whole square-cube law thing.

  • What I learned from reading the Liberty & Power blog: scriptwriters for the TV show Law & Order either don't know the Constitution, or they desperately wish the Ninth Amendment could just be interpreted away.

  • Jacqueline Passey discovers that the pre-release marketing for this movie has probably gone a little overboard. (Pun Salad tries to keep it PG-13, but can't help but notice that the Google reports an extraordinary number of hits for this.)

  • If you didn't swoon at that last item, you might want to check out FIRE's award of "Speech Code of the Month" to Barnard College.
    This speech code deserves special recognition because it accomplishes the unique feat of violating itself.
    Yes, at Barnard College, they do adopt the time-honored strategy of destroying the village in order to save it. Or something.

  • The magic number for the Red Sox is 162.

  • And, oh yeah: Aieee! We're all gonna die! (Via The Corner.)


Last Modified 2006-04-06 8:17 AM EDT