A fascinating and typically well-written piece by Kerry Howley about cryonics and death, published in the New York Times Magazine last week. It begins well and gets better: There are ways of speaking about dying that very much annoy Peggy Jackson, an affable and rosy-cheeked hospice worker in Arlington, Virginia. She doesn’t like the militant
My word, the Daily Mail is a tender, easily-startled fawn. Here’s James Chapman today: The Prime Minister raised the extraordinary possibility of a non-aggression pact between the Tories and the Lib Dems at the next election as he mounted his strongest defence yet of the coalition. Well, the Daily Mail may consider this “extraordinary”; readers
Been a while since Waylon was in these here parts. No longer! So here’s the Great Outlaw with some marriage advice for y’all…
Tim Montgomerie makes a prediction: Call it Montgomerie’s Law of the Coalition (launched in The Times (£)). This Coalition is heading for breakdown or it’s heading Leftwards. The Left of the Liberal Democrats will demand an end to the Coalition if Nick Clegg doesn’t get more and more concessions from David Cameron. If the Coalition
I’m far from being an enthusiast for electoral reform not least because, as I’ve said, I don’t think electoral systems matter much. But, my word, the defenders of First Past The Post are doing their utmost to convince me that the Alternative Vote can’t possibly put more fools in parliament than FPTP. Here, for instance
From Jonathan Jones in the Guardian: Surely if the novel in English has a master now at the peak of his powers, it is Ian McEwan. It doesn’t and he isn’t. This follows an equally dubious claim: Any honest fan of modern fiction has to acknowledge the supremacy of American writers since the 1960s. For
Growing inequality is, plenty of people agree, a problem. So what do you make of this chart from a Brookings Institute study from 2009? It’s a US-centric chart of “relative mobility”: This, via Jon Chait, comes from David Frum and is, in many respects, possibly the biggest issue of the age. I don’t think this
I’m not going to write about the Tour de France every day – just as I won’t about the cricket season as soon as anything interesting or significant happens – but this was a great day in the Tour. Commenting on this post, Ronnie was right to suggest that a stage that involved a few
I suspect Rod Liddle’s analysis of the BBC and, more especially still, the mentality of its top brass is acute and persuasive: My suspicion is that it will become increasingly difficult to justify a license fee when the balance of the BBC’s output is tilted so far in favour of populism and ratings chasing. This
Fabian Cancellara is one hell of a bike rider, but Sartacus blundered today. That’s him on the left and in the Yellow Jersey reminding the peloton that they wouldn’t race one another on the approach to the finish of Stage Two yesterday. This is what had happened: it was cold and wet and on the
A droll post from Iain Martin on David Cameron’s murky views on changing the voting system. It is possible, as Iain says, that Cameron’s public position – he’s in favour of keeping FPTP is, shockingly, also his private and unchanging view: Theory Three? Outlandish this one. Cameron is wedded to first-past-the-post, thinking of it as
Welcome to the Liberal Unionist club, Fraser! It won’t surprise regular readers that I think your latest post is spot-on. While we’re taking names, let’s also add John Rentoul to the list. His Independent on Sunday column this week concludes: This is where I think that Cameron is misunderstood. It seems to be generally assumed
This may be today’s most infuriating “story”: Rugby scrums should be banned in schools to protect children involved in a sport which is “not safe enough” for them, an expert has warned. Professor Allyson Pollock, director of Edinburgh University’s Centre for International Public Health Policy, called for the ban after research into child injuries. The
Like Matt Yglesias and Jonathan Bernstein, I’m delighted that Ulysses S Grant’s reputation is currently being revised and that, consequently, he’s no longer thought of as one of the worst Presidents in American history. The latest Siena College poll of “presidential scholars, historians, and political scientists” puts Grant towards the middle of the pack in
A regrettable, discreditable business back in, you know, 1776 And All That. Nevertheless, happy Fourth to you all. To celebrate here’s John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at the Albert Hall in 1976.
Like Satan, Sodomy and Socialism, Soccer begins with an S. Obviously, then, it’s un-American and likely to corrupt these great United States. Hats off to Marc Thiessen for scrawling the most absurd anti-soccer nonsense of the World Cup. At long last we have a winner: The world is crazy for soccer, but most Americans don’t
Does prison work? I’m very pleased that John McTernan – who is one of the brightest and sanest of Labour buttons – is now ensconsed at the Daily Telegraph. Unfortunately he’s not inoculated against daftness: Suddenly it’s become fashionable to see ending short term sentences as common sense. Alex Massie is the latest victim of
A shout-out to Canadian friends and readers on this, your national day. Another year passed: another year of peace and prosperity in the northland. Here’s my friend Will Wilkinson writing about how he became an accidental Canadian: As the clock struck midnight on April 17, 2009, the Canadian citizenship of my Saskatchewan-born but subsequently naturalized
A follow-up to this post on the Irish economy: our friends on the Emerald Isle are now officially out of recession. That’s good news. The bad news? Unemployment remains above 13% and, if you exclude multinational corporations, the “indigenous” economy (if you can call it that) still hasn’t recovered completely. The bleeding has slowed but
If this weren’t posted by Marc Ambinder I’d think it must be a parody. It certainly has the feel of a Jihadi edition of The Onion. It is, however, supposed to be al-Qaeda’s first English-language, glossy propaganda magazine. Obviously Inspire is the title you’d choose too and, frankly, who can resist the appeal of a