As a matter of coincidence, I happened to come across a discussion of the Suez crisis in Whitehall, by Peter Hennessy (New York: Free Press © 1989), and of course it started me thinking about paths to invasion, and repercussions….

Your Humble Blogger is reading (among other things) The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton (New York: Sheed & Ward, © 1936) (although the in-print version appears to be from House of Stratus). I had remembered that Chesterton was, of course,…

The term “welfare state” appears to have been coined in 1941 by Archbishop Temple (William Temple, of York, and later of Canterbury). The OED quotes Citizen & Churchman ii. 35 “We have..seen that in place of the conception of the…

Gov. Dean has, it seems, asked his supporters to vote on whether to accept federal matching funds. It’s certainly an interesting political move; there’s an awful lot to be said for it on many levels. In essence, it seems to…

Some of My Gentle Readers will already be familiar with Gannet’s recent work to direct people to government information. If don’t know Gannet, she is a marvelous offhand writer, with access to information and a passion for sharing it. Just…

Your Humble Blogger has been at this for less than a year, so it is, perhaps, presumptuous to start an annual tradition, but then Your Humble Blogger isn’t very humble. So. Here is Vardibidian’s first posting of Election Day, November,…

Your Humble Blogger was in Club Passim on Hallowe’en, listening to Jim’s Big Ego performing their song “Lucky”, a wonderfully funny and vicious kiss-off song from the album They’re Everywhere. This morning, I happened to hear Black Coffee in Bed…

As it happens, yesterday Your Humble Blogger was browsing through Pandemonium Books & Games, looking for a little light reading (it’s not all Spinoza here, you know), and it occurred to me that there was very little old-fashioned science-fiction. The…

Those of my Gentle Readers who read random lefty blogs (Your Humble Blogger has a shortcuts folder called “lefty blogs”) will already be aware of this, I suspect, but Grover Norquist was on Fresh Air a while back. There’s been…

Gentle Readers, Dennis Prager has, as promised, posted Part Two of his, well, interesting take on the differences between the Left and Right in America. I won’t go into the detail on this one, as the whole essay is simply…