Would you give up your seat on a city bus for an elderly person? A pregnant woman? Someone with a load of shopping bags? A disabled person?
I would do pregnant women. Well, when I say “do” I wouldn’t literally “do” them there and then on a city bus, but I would give up my seat […]

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“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too.”
Three years ago, almost to the hour, legendary comedian Mitch Hedberg was found dead of “multiple drug toxicity” including heroin and cocaine, in his New Jersey hotel room. Now, this may seem like a strange thing for me to write about. […]

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I was called these things in this exchange at Will & Testament after giving my opinion about a subject with which I’m intimately familiar: the British addiction to pomp and ceremonialism.
My friend William Crawley did a fantastic job of hosting for the BBC a live 90-minute program covering the Royal Maundy Service in Armagh, Northern […]

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Anyone who lives in Britain is probably well acquainted with the “Chugger” phenomenon. Since I’m not sure if our transatlantic friends have “chuggers” or not I’d best spell out what they are. “Chugger” is short for “charity mugger”: people who work for charity fundraising companies and hang out in the street trying to make money […]

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Wired asked their readers to submit self-portraits and published the top ten as decided by readers. This is one of them. (I wonder what we’d see if we asked our own readers to do the same?) 

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There hasn’t been much by way of weird news this week so I thought I’d go Monty Python on you all:
“And now for something completely different”
I ordinarily hate spam mail and all that other crap that gets forwarded around the planet mostly from people I don’t know terribly well, but I thought this was funny […]

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Steve Chapman summarises my position exactly on Spitzer’s Sin: “I understand why Spitzer’s alleged hiring of a call girl was stupid, selfish, reckless, immoral and a betrayal of his family. What I don’t understand is why it was illegal. …. Some brilliant lawyer ought to ask the courts why the state may ban […]

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It’s been tough to find the time to blog recently, but so much is happening that I’ve been dying to talk about.
Take Spitzer’s Sin, for example. An LA Times editorial argues that the New York Governor - who is a customer of Kristen the sex worker - is actually “…evidence of a nationwide [resurgence] […]

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Davy Sims reports on a great story: the Dallas County District Attorney finding an old vault in his office stuffed full of previously undisclosed documents and files on the JFK assassination. An even greater part of the story is what he did next: digitise them and turn them over, unarchived and unedited, to […]

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This certainly ranks among the strangest stories I’ve heard lately; a woman who went into the toilet of an Indian train, passed out and woke up to find that she’d somehow given birth to a baby who had fallen from her body through the toilet from the moving train onto the track below. The […]

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Aside from the Pullman interview, I’ve been interested in the following stories today.
2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama is either neurotic on the issue of gun control and the 2nd Amendment or he’s a pathological liar who’s trying to conceal his utter contempt for the concept of individual gun rights under the Constitution as we know […]

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I’ve been reading an article intended for the March 2008 print edition of Reason magazine, in which Cathy Young examines Philip Pullman’s ideology in His Dark Materials, the trilogy from which the first installment, The Golden Compass, was adapted for film last year (to some controversy).
Pullman is an interesting character, forming the third figure of […]

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Bonjour. Je m’appelle Stephen. J’habite à Belfast. J’aime jouer au ping-pong.
With the exception of the, umm, questionable phrases, “votre mère a de grands boobs,” “J’ai eu le sexe avec votre soeur,” and “votre mère suce des pénis” the above pretty much exhausts my grasp of French (a fact proven in a semi-drunken margarita fuelled conversation […]

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Ah, how I’ve longed to write those words. After Dog the Bounty Hunter made this error of judgement, I thought he’d be down for longer. Back in November when the incident happened, I made this bold prediction:
“This will be the last word from A&E on the subject for at least 6 months. After […]

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This is, singularly - patently - the best YouTube video ever.

Now didn’t that brighten up your Tuesday?

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The Iowahawk blog has a hilarious new Archbishop of Canterbury Tale called “Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte“. Here’s an excerpt:
35 The Bishop sipped upon hys tea
36 And sayed, “an open mind must we
37 Keep, for know thee well the Mussel-man
38 Has hys own laws for hys own clan
39 […]

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This is a very ‘libertarian’ initiative, though Marc himself doesn’t describe himself or the project in that way. The Arizona Tax Revolt is a great name, too, and describes Marc’s drive to lower and cap property tax in the state of Arizona.
In Arizona, property taxes are collected on every piece of real […]

 

 Interview: Marc Goldstone: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Andrew Sullivan, eat your heart out. Belfast was covered in a couple of inches of snow last night, icing the cake of our winter vacation in the process and making Melissa very, very happy.

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From Stephen and myself (I’ll presume to speak for him since I’m writing this from Belfast, NI): I’d like to wish you all - in particular our regular readers and contributors - a happy new year and a prosperous 2008. It’s worth pointing out that libertarianism is about being free to pursue happiness, […]

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Isn’t it great? This photograph is one of ten chosen by Wired magazine photographers as their favourites of the past year. It was the accompanying photo for an article I read over thanksgiving weekend in a mountaintop cabin, dealing with cloned cattle and the benefits of cloning for that purpose (oh, and the […]

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