Castalia House Store

Ladies and gentlemen, Dread Ilk, casual fans, rubberneckers, anklebiters, and fellow Hugo Award nominees, I am very pleased indeed to announce to you that the Castalia House online store is now open for business. Our selection is somewhat scanty at present, as the participation of certain books in Amazon’s Kindle Select program precludes them from […]

An appeal to reinstall Firefox

I was asked to reconsider my position on uninstalling Mozilla products and refusing to use them in the future: You are probably here because you have been advised to consider reinstalling Firefox. You may, in fact, have uninstalled Firefox as a result of a recent campaign protesting either Brendan Eich’s being appointed CEO of Mozilla, […]

Dogmatic and dishonest

Ross Douthat points out the moral defect being exhibited by a corporation and a university in the New York Times, which happens to be identical to that previously demonstrated by a writer’s organization: In both cases, Mozilla and Brandeis, there was a striking difference between the clarity of what had actually happened and the evasiveness […]

The international hypocrite

No one can reasonably take the US position on Crimean self-determination seriously anymore. Even the New York Times appears to be uncomfortable with the Obama administration’s anti-democratic actions: They wanted to break away from a country they considered hostile. The central government cried foul, calling it a violation of international law. But with the help […]

Why Putin invaded

It’s not too hard to understand once you realize that the anti-democratic coup in Ukraine had nothing to do with the Ukrainian people. Arseniy Yatseniuk; born May 22, 1974 is a Ukrainian politician, economist and lawyer who is the Prime Minister of Ukraine following the parliament’s 2014 removal of Viktor Yanukovych from power. He was […]

Can public schools now ban blacks?

That would appear to be one unintended legal consequence of the recent 9th Circuit Court’s decision concerning limits on the freedom of expression: Officials at a Northern California high school acted appropriately when they ordered students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during the Mexican heritage celebration Cinco de Mayo, a […]

Democracy in Virginia

Virginia’s attorney general single-handedly overturns the will of Virginia’s voters: Virginia’s attorney general has concluded that the state’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional and he will no longer defend it in federal lawsuits challenging it, his office said Thursday. In an email to The Associated Press, Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Attorney General Mark […]

This time it isn’t different

The astonishing story of a thrice-failed Spanish bank: Consider the story of Bankia. Bankia was formed by merging seven bankrupt regional Spanish banks in 2010. The new bank was funded by Spain’s Government rescue fund… which received “preference shares” in return for over €4 billion (from taxpayers). These preference shares were shares that a) yielded […]

And they do have oil

If anyone is looking for an excuse for another Middle Eastern war, it appears their casus belli is buried in a presidentially censored 2002 report. President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for […]