…from Megan McArdle, who is currently traveling through both countries: For some of the people around Ho Chi Minh City, of course, we were the good guys in the war; I spoke to a fair number of people who had relatives who had fled to the States after fighting on the South’s side in the […]
It seems that little maniac that tried to take over Europe some 70 years or so ago was a notorious farter. His gas was so epic in fact that it may have played a role in Germany losing World War II (if so it would be a possible to assume that flatulence is a force […]
I’m not a veteran, though my co-blogger Bruce Henderson is. But my mother (the genealogist) sent me a list of veterans in our extended family. Here’s the list (with a few additions of my own) in rough reverse chronological order: Jon A. Webster, USMC (active) — currently at Camp Pendleton, awaiting deployment to Iraq [son] […]
Ok, I am probably an old, partially insane intelligence junkie. But I wandered across this site that is devoted to old Soviet era propaganda and motivation posters. These things always fascinated me (the modern ones from China and North Korea still do), and this site, as you might expect, has one of them each day. […]
Japan is a wonderful and fascinating place. It has a long proud tradition of a warrior culture, that at the end of WW2 was invalidated and pushed to the far corners of Japanese society. Japan was all about peace and happiness. With a huge US presence in multiple bases across Japan, the people shifted their […]
Gerard Vanderleun — who was just across the river from Manhattan, in Brooklyn Heights, when the WTC was hit — has posted his own memories of that day: The Wind in the Heights Notes made on September 11, 2001 — Brooklyn Heights I’ll simply link to my posts from last year, as well as Bruce […]
For close to a year now, Bruce Henderson (my co-blogger here) has been using his Boomerang data mining technology to gather and present housing- and economic-related data from across the nation (for an example, see the Hardtack site). For just about that same period of time, he’s been making posts at this blog that expressed […]
This great posting over at American Digest (one of the best-written blogs on the web) is worth taking the time to read: 1. Scenario: Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack. 1957 – Vice principal comes over to look at Jack’s shotgun. He goes to his […]
Brad DeLong, economics professor at UC Berkeley, has posted a great article reminding us just what life was like for most US citizens back in the early 20th century: A quarter of American households in 1900 had boarders or lodgers (compared to two percent today). Half of American households in 1900 had fewer rooms than […]
Ten Postulates of Political Correctness
Baron Bodissey [nice pen name, since I happen to know where it comes from] does an excellent job of laying out what he calls the Ten Postulates of Political Correctness: 1. America is uniquely evil. 2. America is never justified in defending itself. 3. Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans. 4. The […]
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