thoughts in and out of season
James Kalb In Holland one of the targets of a sustained international hate campaign has been murdered.
It doesn’t take much to become a target in Europe these days. Pim Fortuyn, a Dutch sociology professor, fashion plate and former Marxist, who wanted to maintain public acceptance in Holland of his own flagrant homosexuality, was a “far-right leader”… More ...
Sorry for the constant changes in the blog’s appearance and URL. I think they’re mostly over now, although I still might fiddle with details. They all had to do with software changes I made to escape technical problems I had first with Blogger and then with Greymatter. Everything seems hunky-dory with Moveable Type, so I … More ...
I missed Latin mass yesterday—it’s been my craze ever since I decided I couldn’t stand the Episcopal Church—so I went to the local English one this morning. From the perspective of the old mass it’s an interesting combination of modernity and archaeology (that is, what worship is assumed to have been in the first half … More ...
They certainly know how to fight internet racism in Scandinavia. In Norway they jail you for operating a web site on a foreign server, and in Sweden they make operators of online forums criminally liable for what people say on them.
Don’t know how bad the comments were, but it may not matter—Le Pen was … More ...
I hadn’t known that historians had turned against the Hemings paternity claims: “Jefferson progeny club votes out Hemings’ kin”.
I was at Monticello recently and there they tell you it’s true. I thought at the time they didn’t have much choice if they want to avoid trouble.
Another shocking revelation of the obvious—sisterhood is not so powerful after all. Still, it’s interesting that Phyllis Chesler is the one to notice.
An article on “racial profiling” in medicine. For some reason this sort of thing has become terribly controversial. Even in medicine the will to deny the obvious is becoming stronger and more open.
A friend asked me for my thoughts on a National Review article by John Derbyshire on the recent scandals in the Catholic Church.
I very much disagree with the article. First, the author argues that the sexual revolution has made people happier, all in all, because the abolition of reticence makes it easier to fix … More ...
It’s hard to know what to say about some things: Artist ‘fine’ after having arm nailed to wall. I suppose he’s playing around with an odd kind of symbolism, like going around stripped and naked for 3 years (Isaiah 20:1-3). Three years is too long, though, so he makes up for the shorter time … More ...
Will it ever be possible to force gays back into the closet? That rhetorical question is considered a crushing rejoinder when someone objects to the attempt to normalize homosexuality. Whoever is making the objection, it implies, is a typical reactionary—either he hasn’t thought things through, and is living in the past, or else he’s planning … More ...