Buckley’s Mix

Why the bailout was needed

To save us from this.

Victorian Painting

The Times is a-twitter that BBC blowhart Jeremy Paxman has had the gall to write a book (the Beeb series is not far behind) on Victorian Art. Big surprise. Celebrities sell more books than non-celebrities? Horrors! The good news is that Victorian painting continues to find its buyers and viewers. About ten years back the National [...]

Google Street View

Some locals in Pittsburgh found out when the Google Street View cameras would pass by their street, and planned a surprise for them. Go to 488 Sampsonia Street in Pittsburgh in Google street view to see. Or go here.

No Logo

Naomi Klein thinks (is that the right verb, where Naomi Klein is the subject?) that company logos distract us for substantive issues and take choices from us. So what’s the biggest brand name in the world today? James Bowman knows. Here’s a hint.

Chesterton

He is both the most overrated and the most underrated English writer. That’s because “he was never deeper than when he was superficial,” writes A.N. Wilson.

Peace in our time

Through Canadian World Domination.

Libertarian Paternalism

My book, Fair Governance, came out from Oxford U.P. last week, and I am asked by someone in the British government for a precis of my thoughts on “libertarian paternalism.” That’s a bit of jargon popularized by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, in their book Nudge. Cass is a very smart guy and it’s a [...]

Reality check

Shas’ new slogan is: Yes we can!      …     with G_d’s help

Why anthropology matters

Three brothers came from the east, and each founded an Albanian tribe. One brother had a saddle (shala), and became the ancestor of the Shala tribe; another had a winnowing sieve (shoshi), and became the ancestor of the Shoshi tribe; the third had nothing, so he said “Mir dit” (good-day), and went on to become the [...]

Where is Cindy Sheehan now?

In the place where costly (non-cosmetic) climate change legislation soon will be.

A Fragment

Saint Brychan of Wales had 24 sons and 26 daughters, of whom all of the former and half of the latter became saints in turn. Many of them were martyred by pagan Saxons at places where, remarkably, Saxons never lived. And that is all we know–or, rather, more than all we know–about Saint Brychan.

Where are the GOMs?

Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale described how a writer might acquire eminence through longevity, as the Grand Old Man of English letters. Maugham had the middlebrow Hugh Walpole in mind. Since then we’ve seen more worthy GOMs, Bertrand Russell and Malcolm Muggeridge, people to whom we deferred on the quesitons of the day, people whose opinion mattered, [...]

Politics as Mental Illness

     An (as always) thoughtful piece by Peter Berkowitz in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (1/31/09) sees Bush hatred and Obama euporia as two sides of the same coin. In both cases they signify lives too heavily invested in politics. To say that such people make a religion of politics is unfair to religion, which teaches [...]

Best Unwritten Books II

Piece of cake. Simply match one part of the title from column a with another part in column b, and elminate that which has already been written: a __________________________ [b] The Anatomy of_______ [Melancholy] The Morality of________ [Laughter] The Concept of________ [Saskatchewan] The Promise of________ [Wine] The Enemies of________ [Women] The Rise and Fall of ____ [Song] [...]

A Letter from China

A friend, now in Taiwan, writes: It is hysterically funny that former-president Chen [of Nationalist China] is thinking of suing [current] President Ma here for treason [for inviting ChiCom president Hu Jintao to Taiwan]. … Chen is currently in jail himself, awaiting trial on extremely serious charges of corruption. His daughter, his son-in-law and some [...]

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