Tip for the Day
Courtesy of a friend’s Facebook status update: XXX XXXXX advises you not to chop chillies before inserting contact lenses Good advice!
Alex Massie
Thursday
McCain’s in the house, but which one?
I suppose that, technically, it has nothing to do with whether a candidate for the Presidency is worthy of the office, but, really, don’t you think John McCain should at least know how many houses he owns? From the Politico’s Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that
Wednesday
Latin America’s Under-Performance
Tyler Cowen is generously soliciting questions: here’s mine, asked knowing that Tyler is keen on South America and capable of answering almost anything… Why do Latin American countries perform so poorly at the Olympic Games? The Republics of the Caucasus and Central Asia win medals in sports such as wrestling and weight-lifting, West Africa has
A Sadly Predictable Picture…
There’s the theory – and history – of cricket in Scotland. Then there’s the reality… Scotland vs England, The Grange, Monday August 18th, 2008. Match abandoned.
Hawkeye Nighmares
Kerry Howley moves from Washington DC to the American heartland and finds herself discombobulated, nay gently panicked, by the niceness of the place: The only other place I’ve lived where people didn’t steal bikes was a military dictatorship. The good news is that she’s promising to blog more.
Monday
The Lessons of the Past
Bill Keller’s piece on “Springtime for Autocrats” in the New York Times has received plenty of attention (See Yglesias’s sane response for instance) but for Russian and Caucasus commentary I’d recommend Neal Ascherson’s article in the Observer. It’s probably the best-balanced, most historically aware and, for that matter, humane piece I’d read on the whole
It is never difficult to distinguish between a batsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine…
Scottish cricket is a tough school. Not so much because of the standard, but on account of the conditions cricketers must endure north of the border. The climate is not, to put it mildly, suited to the greatest game. And this summer has been especially bleak; my own club, Selkirk, haven’t played since mid-July, rain
Sunday
Tonight’s TV…
It’s a Sunday night in August. Hardly the most auspicious time of year for television programming. Still, that also makes it a reasonable moment to see how Channel 4 is faring in its mission to meet its public service remit. Tonight, on the supposedly up-market and less-idiotic-than-most channel, you be reassured that British TV is
Ronnie Drew, RIP
The Foggy Dew should be busy tonight. Mind you, so should all the other pubs in Dublin. There’ll be more cause than usual for singing now that one hears the sad news of Ronnie Drew’s death. The Telegraph obituary puts the appeal of The Dubliners quite well: The Dubliners achieved fame and notoriety as singers
Saturday
Obama’s Jobs Rhetoric
Since we’re on the subject of Barack Obama’s economic nationalism, here’s a radio ad airing in Wisconsin in which he suggests John McCain has a treasonous desire to ship American jobs off to nasty, grasping foreigners. You can listen to it here. (Text of the ad is also after the jump).It’s all part of some
Friday
England Our England
So, after a nip and tuck South African affair, Norm and I finish the week by selecting our teams to represent a post-1945 England. As always, players need only have played for England after 1945 to be eligible for inclusion and the merits of their inclusion are to be judged on the totality of their
Arise, Sir Nils!
Really, can Friday stories get much better than this? A penguin who was previously made a Colonel-in-Chief of the Norwegian Army has been knighted at Edinburgh Zoo. Penguin Nils Olav has been an honorary member and mascot of the Norwegian King’s Guard since the 1972. Over the years, he has been promoted through the ranks
Barack Obama, Nabob of Nationalist Negativity
Expect more of this. The ad hits McCain on jobs, lobbying and Washington insiderishness and has a nativist whack at dodgy foreigners too. In other words, it’s probably pretty effective…
Wednesday
Department of Food
An excellent recipe for “breakfast pizza” courtesy of the New York Times. It is, however, I would suggest, incomplete. That is to say, the pizza would be immeasurably improved by the addition of black pudding. Or haggis, now that I think of it.
Tuesday
The Battle for South Africa
Episode three of the Geras vs Massie cricketing showdown is underway. It’s Norm’s turn to pick first and, as I feared he might, he’s exploiting his greater knowledge of South African cricket. Getting my excuses in early, I consider myself the underdog in this game. Anyway, the rules are the same as ever: only chaps
Capello’s Common Sense
More evidence emerges that England selected the right man when they asked Fabio Capello to rescue their football team. From the Times today: On another issue – Wayne Rooney’s smoking habit – Capello was curiously indifferent, a stance that brought out sweat beads on the foreheads of his FA employers, fearful of their manager unwittingly
Fallows vs Brooks
And it’s no contest: James Fallows dismantles David Brooks’ column on China. His advice: Take a little time and look around, David. The parts that don’t fit what you theorized before arriving are actually the most stimulating. That’s in response to Brook’s beloved pseudo-scientific hucksterism: If you show an American an image of a fish
The Kosovan Connection
There’s not much point in arguing with Andy McCarthy, but National Review’s resident pop-eyed frother-and-splutterer-in-chief has this to say today: the recognition of Kosovo was a huge blunder, forced by those who think Muslim agitators will like us better, rather than sense weakness, if we appease and break the rules for them. On what planet was this
Quote for the Day | 12 August 2008
Yes, I mentioned this post earlier. But… But the very most obvious thing about today’s XXXX is how internally varied and contradictory it is, how many opposite things various of its people want, how likely-to-be-false any generalization is… XXXX here is China but it could just as usefully be the United States of America. That’s
The Streets of Baltimore
If you like The Wire you should definitely read this piece in the Washington Monthly. And if you don’t like The Wire that must be because you haven’t seen it yet. If that’s the case, you have a treat in store: 60 odd hours of the best television series ever made. I mean this sort