Over at Slate magazine, William Saletan gives a rave review to the new world of smokeless tobacco, leaning heavily (very heavily) on an article by Kevin Helliker in the Wall Street Journal. Saletan had earlier derided the snuff stuff as “carcinogenic, addictive, and gross,” but now he’s starting to think that he was too hasty….
And I’ll bet it was served on “wry” bread, too!
There’s no doubt that Richard Feynman’s brain was about a dozen times as powerful as mine. And the odds are about 6.62 X 10^34 to 1 that Stanford physics professor Leonard Susskind is smarter than I am as well. But a little anecdote that Professor Leo tells in his new book The Black Hole War…
Since the Sixties: What’s It All About, Merriam?
For more than forty years now, Americans have been engaged in a furious culture war, disputing the significance and worth of that fast-receding decade, the “Sixties.” What were the Sixties about and what did they mean? Fortunately, the good folks at Merriam-Webster have been keeping track. Back in 1961, Merriam-Webster created a mini-culture war of…
David Holland Chris Potter Newport Jazz Festival 2008
David Broder, straining mightily to rain on Obama’s parade
Sick of my whiny, bitchy posts about the Post’s whiny, bitchy columnist David Broder? Well, skip this one, then. In today’s bitch, Dave comes up with a headline that must have had his blood a-pumpin’, “An Early Drubbing for Obama.” The awkward, “No, we won’t, okay, maybe we will” response of Senate Democrats to the…
Roy Hargrove November 2007
Joe Klein II
For several years now, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein has a been a relentless foe of the Bush Administration, and has heaped ridicule on neocons like Bill Kristol to the point that he’s been called, more than once, an anti-Semitic Jew. Just recently, he’s posted a withering denunciation of the Bush Administration’s shameful record, closing with…
Jack Goldsmith, still trembling before the truth
I’ve cast a cold eye on Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under W, before and I’m going to do it again. In the current Vanity Fair article on that debacle known as the Bush Presidency, Jack has this to say about how George and Dick Cheney seemed, well,…
Duke Ellington 1943
One good thing leads to another, right? Especially when the good thing is Duke Ellington. This is a “soundie” from 1943. “Soundies” were cheaply filmed musical performances. The band is actually playing, but the soundtrack is pre-recorded, so what you see doesn’t always match what you hear, allowing the musicians to ham it up if…
Those socks won’t coordinate
Over at the New Republic’s lead blog “The Plank,” Jason Zengerle makes mincemeat of Tom Brokow’s tribute to Tim Russert in the NYT (Yes, this is awfully inside, but it’s the Internet, damn it! It’s supposed to be inside!) Zengerle’s takedown needs to be read in full, but the essence is that Tim and Tom…