the online diary and political musings of an American man
A Friday Hodgepodge Editor's Note : I will be recovering from a minor medical procedure next week and will not be blogging, although I will probably post on X/Twitter most days. I plan to be back here on August 24. *** 1 . Some time ago, I encountered a kitchen gadget site called the Blind Kitchen , which I used to give my wife gift ideas for Christmas that year. One such gift was this…
... or at least the choice or the alternatives aren't always obvious. Three very different situations I read about in my weekly look at advice columns surfaced the same common thinking error. I've heard this called "binary thinking," but I'm not wild about the term. False dichotomy is another one that doesn't quite sit right with me here, although I like it better. I'll roll with the above title…
Depending on which conservative you read, either disaster was averted or an an election was stolen in Minnesota's Republican gubernatorial primary yesterday. Credit John Hinderaker of PowerLine with enough sense to see that pillow magnate and Trump stooge Mike Lindell was a poor choice for governor: Lisa Demuth, the Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, has been called as the winner…
I hear from the Guardian that Anthony Fauci pled the Fifth 100 times in Senate hearings about his actions during the pandemic. To a certain knee-jerk portion of the body politic, I hear this means that Trump's former advisor is guilty as sin and should be locked up. [Insert whistle here.] Amesh Adalja: "Blaming Fauci Won't Prepare Us for the Next Pandemic" Unfortunately for MAGA, that same…
An Australian budget airline is coming under fire after offering its customers a new way to make flying less stressful. That new way? Paying for overhead storage: Jetstar says the decision followed feedback from both passengers and airline staff, who identified "having bags weighed at the gate and struggling to find room in overhead lockers as the more stressful parts of the airport experience, "…
A Friday Hodgepodge 1 . From a news story about the "alien chemistry" found within a meteorite, here's what to do if a meteor strikes your home and you want to help scientific progress: He then immediately preserved and documented the entire scene using disposable gloves and aluminum foil to place the meteorite fragments in glass jars. The surviving rock weighed two pounds and was a rare, and…
Although Alison Green wasn't writing about conspiracism, a recent post of hers at Ask a Manager indirectly reminded me of that phenomenon, and the seemingly creative ways that conspiracists purport to explain what's "really going on." Green takes a question about what might motivate instances of apparently mixed messages from management in a couple of instances the writer is aware of, and the…
At RealClear Markets , Peter Grossman of the National Center for Energy Analytics considers President Trump's recent tirades against "unrealistic" gasoline prices and what an authoritarian ignoramus like him might do about them. Along the way, a name increasingly familiar lately for other bad reasons comes up: Richard Nixon, whose brilliant solution to inflation, price controls, sounds like it…
I oppose Trump's SAVE Act for reasons I have already elaborated upon. It is nevertheless interesting to see that even some of its supporters see its passage now as a disaster, as it is currently written. At The Washington Examiner is an editorial supporting the legislation that points out that it is now too late to implement it in time for the midterms: The legislation's timing provisions would…
With the current waiver of the Jones Act set to expire on August 16 and copious data indicating its repeal would be a boon to the U.S. economy, one might wonder why there isn't significant momentum behind repealing it once and for all. The general answer -- that precious few of today's politicians are pro-free-market and that we're too deeply mired in a mixed economy for that to even be in the…
A Friday Hodgepodge Editor's Note : I'm taking a blogging break next week, although I plan to post on X/Twitter now and then in the meantime. I'll resume posting here on August 3rd or 4th. *** Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner. *** 1 . At our home, a mud dauber built her nest on a glass door facing the back patio, and our…
Letters from readers of Miss Manners and Prudence each show the potential value of meeting bigotry with a dignified response. One of these letters, to Miss Manners from an American who frequently travels abroad, deals with a common complaint : people who make snide comments about "Americans" at our expense. Miss Manners replies in part: As such comments are almost certainly based on the age-old…
Judging by the headlines in the New York Post , reparations for slavery are back in the news . This time, Alameda County, California, which notably contains Oakland, is considering cash payments to black residents. The conservative outlet, predictably, is against the idea and, just as predictably, focuses on the impracticality of the idea and its historical absurdity, while sloppily conceding the…
In The Atlantic is a lengthy profile -- over 6500 words -- of Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who is contemplating a presidential run. Based on his standing up to President Trump and Pete Hegseth last year regarding the impropriety of military officers following illegal orders and his subsequent legal persecution by the same, I have come to admire Kelly as among the few good men in politics in a…
At the Wall Street Journal , Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) explains why she will be voting against Donald Trump's ill-considered and disingenuous attempt to federalize and overhaul American elections. Many of her objections sound like those I raised in March , only greatly exaggerated by Alaska's peculiarities as new, far-flung state with a very low population density: Or maybe you're a fisherman…
A Friday Hodgepodge 1 . " How About a Genuine America-First Policy? ," by Peter Schwartz ( PeterSchwartz.com ): The movement Trump launched claims that his policies will "make America great again." Here, too, there is a prior question that demands an answer: What made America great in the first place? And it's the same answer: freedom. America's exceptionalism rested on the premise that each…
... sometimes means not adopting at all. A couple of advice columns dealing with pets reminded me of the time one of my brothers broke up with a girlfriend decades ago. The straw that broke that camel's back: She came home with two yippy dogs without having consulted him about it. I am not a dog person. I was sympathetic then, but it took me time to appreciate what a good move this was on his…
There may soon be good news for businesses that rely on the franchise model, which, along with gig work , has been under assault from the left for quite some time. The good news comes in the form of proposed regulations concerning "joint employment" that have just passed the required period for public comment: These distinctions between business relationships and arrangements matter under our…
The White House is once again in damage control mode after -- get this! -- something the President said turned out to be made up. I was going to say false , but that would be too good a word for what Trump spews out: False would imply that there is a relationship -- even a negative one -- between reality and what this person says. Oddly enough, Walmart's recent lowering of food prices had…
John Stossel's latest column is eye-opening for three reasons, perhaps the least being the astounding safety record of Waymo's driverless cars: Waymo claims its cars are 10 times safer than human-driven ones. I wouldn't believe that if insurance companies, with their own money at stake, didn't agree. Reinsurance News reports Waymos had an "88 percent reduction in property damage claims and a 92…
A Friday Hodgepodge Screen capture by the author. 1 . If you like Wordle, one "pompomsheep" at Hacker News is developing a timed word-solving game called 18 Words . As of this morning , the game gives you 30 seconds to solve words of increasing length and presents your score, in shareable form, for the 18. 2 . A recent post at GeekPress notes that $180,000 isn't a "living wage" in San Francisco ,…
Sometimes, advice columnists field questions about things that turn out to be non-problems. Case in point: a Dear Prudence question from the owner of a small farm whose guests fled at the prospect of no television set -- yes, set -- for a week after they broached the subject of their host purchasing one. The writer is concerned that she should have informed the family beforehand that she didn't…
Witch-Hunting is making a comeback. If you thought Tucker Carslon's ridiculous assertion that he'd been attacked in his sleep by demons was a one-off, I have news for you: At the Atlantic is a disturbing read about a particularly irrational Christian movement to wage what they call "spiritual warfare." The piece focuses on a campaign of harassment by a couple, Andrea and Mike Brewer, who deem…
The World Cup run for the United States Men's National Team came to an end last night in a manner harsh for the players, but befitting the autocrat who tried to influence the game. Before the game and the controversy that would overshadow it, the Americans were having a good tournament. The head coach, Mauricio Pochettino, had done a fine job of instilling a team identity and a strategy that both…
Editor's Note: I will blog sporadically or not at all until Tuesday, July 7 due to OCON and the upcoming holiday. I will probably continue to post daily on X , however. *** Shortly after my son got me to work out a new gumbo recipe (which he indirectly named with his review of my first stab), he got interested in coming up with a family mac-and-cheese recipe. Viewing this as a side dish, I dragged…