Maintaining the recent standard of high-quality commentary, I pass along to you in the Extended Entry a funny story posted by the Physics Geek yesterday.

(Heh heh heh, Beavis . . . he said extended entry). more...

Posted by: JohnL at 08:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 511 words, total size 3 kb.

Go to Google. Type in "SF Babes." Hit return.

Can I get a yip y'all?

Posted by: JohnL at 08:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 25 words, total size 1 kb.

A few months back, I linked to a trio of Lileks' Trek tunes (Lileks keeps these and other original tunes here).

Recent commenter Stiiv points me to his own collection of ALL ORIGINAL Trek music.

I like Legal Lizard and Acts of War.

Posted by: JohnL at 08:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 49 words, total size 1 kb.

I'm sorry for the recent radio silence. Life happens.

And life ends. Ronald Wilson Reagan, requiescat in pacem.

We owe a huge debt to this man. He, along with Margaret Thatcher, turned the tide of Marxism and put the lie to the notion that socialism was inevitable and could never be reversed.

At this point, I can't possibly add much to what has already been written elsewhere. And I don't want to generate any more "purple prose" than has been generated. Two of my favorite bloggers, Virginia Postrel and Timothy Sandefur, have done a great job covering Reagan. (Just click on each link and keep scrolling).

Posted by: JohnL at 11:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 112 words, total size 1 kb.

An interesting site (via Gravity Lens) with loads of golden-age pulp-fiction Sci Fi artwork interleaved with photographs of real futuristic designs, some built, others not.

Posted by: JohnL at 10:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

I found out yesterday that I have a blog child -- an old friend from high school days. Very similar background to mine, but as should be apparent from a reading of his site, quite a different adult life.

He is very smart with a really dry sense of humor, so I look forward to checking out his observations on things. Here's the money quote from one of his first posts:

"I didn't start my own blog because I thought I didn't have anything to say. Finally realizing neither does anyone else, I decided to go for it."

That's the spirit!

Posted by: JohnL at 10:35 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 103 words, total size 1 kb.

Life's been busy, and my muse has been mute recently, so you get more filler:

The Honest Bloggers Quiz (or, making my biases clear)

Q&A in the extended entry. more...

Posted by: JohnL at 10:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 654 words, total size 4 kb.

While I'm on the topic of fascism, I have to confess that tonight I'm feeling like a member of the Ministry of Truth, going back and changing the history to show that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia instead of Eurasia.

You see, I've been re-categorizing my old Blogspot posts into their proper subjects. In the process, of course, I am re-writing history so that it appears that I have always been a Munuvian. For some reason, I feel vaguely guilty. Should I?

Posted by: JohnL at 09:46 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 91 words, total size 1 kb.

When I was a real Randroid back in college, I slogged my way through Leonard Peikoff's 1982 book, Ominous Parallels. The thesis of the book is that America was (is?) vulnerable to a fascist takeover in much the same way the Weimar Republic was susceptible to takeover by the Nazis as a result of our worship of unreason, demand for self-sacrifice, and elevation of society above the individual.

These days, I am much more optimistic, and think that external fascism is a greater threat than any sort of rot from within. And I think our dynamic culture is much less susceptible to authoritarianism than it was in, say, the 1930s.

When I read this (I presume the picture is of the American Idol stage, but am not sure since I haven't ever seen the show), I couldn't help thinking of Peikoff's thesis again.

Posted by: JohnL at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 147 words, total size 1 kb.

I loved the old (70s) Land of the Lost show. Not surprising, despite the cheesy special effects, since many of the episodes were written by hard-SF authors such as Larry Niven, David Gerrold, and Theodore Sturgeon.

So it was fun to stumble across this clever art website the other day: Monet meets the Sleestaks. (Hat tip: Gravity Lens).

Posted by: JohnL at 08:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 62 words, total size 1 kb.