Hitchens, always worth reading: On the second front, everything I hear by e-mail from soldiers in Anbar province and some well-attested other reports suggest (see my Slate column of Aug. 13) that the venomous rabble of foreign murderers and local psychopaths that goes to make up AQM has insanely overplayed its hand, lost all hope… Continue reading

John Wilkins has another, eloquent, go at the ‘angry atheist’: But tolerance is a crucial facet of a civil society, as many wars have taught us. If a lab assistant is a Muslim, you may think that irrational, as irrational as supporting the wrong football team, but so long as she does good science and… Continue reading

Ben Stein in an anti-evolution movie? I thought better of him. The Expelled movie isn’t yet out so we can’t make fun of it in its entirety, but as everyone knows by now, the filmmakers started things off rather badly by lying to the pro-science people they interviewed, making them think that it was an… Continue reading

Michael Barone points out some overlooked good news. How more and more US firms divesting Iran could bring pressure to bear on the goombahs mullahs: At the same time, divestment can hurt the targeted companies enough to persuade them to change their ways. We learned this 20 years ago from the divestment movement directed against… Continue reading

I don’t often come away from Harvard Book store with this good a haul. The good old days, as I’ve probably lamented here before, are long gone in Harvard Square. No more Wursthaus, no more Star Book Shop, no more Science/Fantasy Book Store, no more Macintyre and Moore book store; that great little diner where… Continue reading