June 20, 2020

Democrats picking the scab of racism

They're picking the scab of racism with dirty hands and introducing infection.  It's resistant to treatment at the moment.  I could prescribe a treatment, but I wouldn't survive that.  I imagine that this may...

April 11, 2020

Too much sensitivity can kill

Alabama withdrew its guidelines for ventilator triage after the Department of Health and Human Services found that the state had discriminated against the elderly and people with disabilities. Office for Civil Rights director Roger Severino said, ...

April 10, 2020

The incredible stupidity of sensitivity

Alabama withdrew its guidelines for ventilator triage after the Department of Health and Human Services found they discriminated against the elderly and people with disabilities. Office for Civil Rights Director Roger Severino said “Persons ...

December 4, 2017

Abolishing primate behavior

The American Spectator has an article on sexual misbehavior in the workplace. The results of the mania surrounding sexual harassment and abuse is likely change both the workplace and dating culture, for good and ill. Instead ...

February 22, 2017

When is it okay to discriminate?

Before you get your knickers in a bunch, let's agree that there are differences among discrimination, prejudice, and bigotry. Discrimination is recognizing the differences between things generally and valuing some more than others.  This ...

January 29, 2017

How you get death panels

This tragic story of bureaucratic arrogance, resulting in the potentially avoidable death of an infant, recalls my experience with Certificate of Need regulations, back in the early days of that movement to save costs and centralize equipment and exp...

December 17, 2016

How to Fix a Stutter

This is a great article on John Glenn, now deceased, with a focus on Annie, his wife of 73 years, who had a severe stutter. For most of her life, Annie was afflicted with an 85 percent stutter, meaning she would become "hung ...

December 17, 2016

How to encourage Islamic reform

Encourage it in the appropriate manner. The owner of a Cairo newspaper deplores the bombing of  the Coptic Christian church on Dec. 11, 2016.  Salah Diab, owner of the Al-Masri Al-Yawm daily, wrote that religious extremism and terro...

November 13, 2016

How I Almost Died in the Flood of the Arno

Do I remember it?  We were in it! It was before the Arno burst its banks and drowned Florence, but it had been raining hard and continuously for many days.  Having "done" Firenze, we were driving south at 6:00 A.M., out of...

October 29, 2016

The FBI reopens the can of worms

The FBI has reopened the Hillary email investigation, so it's interesting to briefly review what has already taken place: This is the Reason Magazine five-minute video of Hillary's statements and Comey's  contradictions.  OK,...

October 23, 2016

In defense of the Electoral College

The Electoral College gives unwarranted power to the less populated states!  So goes the argument with which more than 60% of the voting population agrees (thus the value of the Constitution). The number of electors for a state is based upon ...

June 19, 2016

How to identify terrorists

Paul Gigot is a senior editor of the Wall Street Journal, and a highly-regarded pundit.  Here he opines that the Orlando shooter was not, as Obama declared, self-radicalized, but was influenced by web pages and external influences, and he traces...

February 29, 2016

Throwing the dice on Trump

Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post has speculated on the consequences for Israel of a Trump presidency plus or minus a British exit from the EU.  Her points are good and can be expanded to more general applications. 1. Trump, by purist defi...

January 25, 2016

Australia's war on cats

Australia has declared war on cats.  Feral cats.  Feral cats who eat wombats.  The Economist reports: "Australia has one of the world’s highest rates of mammal extinctions—29 have been recorded over [a little] mor...

January 9, 2016

Syria's President Assad may be the least bad alternative

Bashar Assad, admittedly, is not a good guy.  He's minimally competent as a head of state, intolerant in the extreme of dissent, and bereft of popular support.  He has received support, however, from an ally: Russia, in the form of Vlad...

January 6, 2016

More misrepresentation on climate

Freeman Dyson (the smartest man in the world, still) published a reproof in the Boston Globe, chiding the Paris Conference and attendees for believing that "the science is settled": The IPCC believes climate change is harmful...

December 18, 2015

Climate science misrepresented

"Shakespeare made a reckless ruler pull down his kingdom on his head, [and we are adding] a hundred and twenty excess parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere." But it is generally acknowledged that it's horrifyingly ig...

March 13, 2015

Cop-killings and discontent

It's interesting to revisit the Ferguson shooting and its sequelae, and to recognize once more the important differences from the Staten Island case.  Let's postulate for the moment that the Brown case was appropriately decided by the gr...

November 16, 2014

How Do Doctors Die?

Mostly just like everybody else: quietly and gratefully, or serenely, or screaming and whimpering.  What is unusual about them, as a group, "is not how much treatment they get compared with most Americans, but how little" (Arthur Giron...

September 18, 2014

There they go again

The history of the UN peacekeeping forces would be amusing if it weren't so disgraceful. Established in sentimental expectation of cooperation if not amity, conducted with willful ignorance, and contaminated with corruption and venery,  ...

September 11, 2014

Ebola I Hardly Knew Ya

Dr. Margaret Chan, the World Health Organization director-general, has said that disruptions in commercial air travel to West Africa would impede the efforts of international health organizations to contain and combat the disease. "We must be...