I recently had the chance to write an op-ed for the Babylon Bee titled “Why Does Satire Keep Coming True?” It’s in the subscribers-only premium section, so if you’re a subscriber head on over and enjoy. If you’re not a subscriber, here’s just a taste of that sweet, sweet semi-serious content that could be yours … Read more
I want everybody to remember that there were voices from the beginning saying “don’t freak out,” and those voices were silenced and ridiculed. And they were right.
These are not necessarily facts; they’re just things that seem obvious to me. But I feel like I still need to point them out, because obvious things just aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
John P.A. Ioannidis points out that data is important, and we don’t have enough of it yet to justify making the world-altering decisions we’re currently making: Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless. Patients who have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 are disproportionately … Read more
Well, I was going to provide a link to an article about the overreaction to the Wuhan Flu that was jam-packed with statistics and graphs and rational arguments. But I checked it this morning and, whaddaya know, it’s gone: https://medium.com/six-four-six-nine/evidence-over-hysteria-covid-19-1b767def5894 Replaced by a message that says, “This post is under investigation or was found in … Read more
There are more than a few smart, respectable, level-headed conservatives saying that we have to vote for Trump because that’s the only way to keep the Supreme Court out of Hillary’s hands. It’s an inversion of the “devil you know” argument: the devil we know is the most horrible thing imaginable, so anything else must be better. … Read more
Occasionally it happens that something you’ve never heard of before suddenly becomes the most important thing in the world. It happened the first time you heard the word “McGriddle,” and now it’s happened again with “Brexit,” which, it turns out, is not the brand name of a Depression-era snack cracker, but rather the decision of … Read more
The Powerball jackpot is now up in imaginary number territory — $1.6 billion. And according to early reports, there appear to be three winning tickets in California, Tennessee, and Florida. Whenever lottery payouts get crazy high there’s always a flurry of news stories about it. All the local Stop’N’Gulps are swarmed by reporters interviewing the hopeful … Read more
If I turned on the faucet to brush my teeth and, instead of flowing down into the basin, the water flowed up to the ceiling, I would say, “Hmm, there must be something wrong with gravity.” If clouds gathered over my house and then started to rain hot dogs, I would, after squealing with delight, … Read more
I’m a little late to the party on the Brian Williams thing, but that’s because I can’t really bring myself to care that much about it. Because people stopped caring about the truth a long time ago. Back when I first started blogging, I liked debating issues of the day, because it felt like, by working … Read more
Everybody’s calling for investigations nowadays, but not a lot is getting investigated. When was the last time anything good came from calling for investigations? Have you, like me, decided that “calling for investigations” is just political-speak for “looking busy until the public forgets about it”? Benghazi, the VA, the IRS, and now the shoot-down of … Read more
I realize this is a delicate situation to talk about, because it involves the lives of 200+ passengers and crew, and by extension all their families and friends. But let’s be real here: people love crazy speculation about strange stuff like this. And the longer we go without answers, the crazier the speculation gets. So … Read more
Matthew Continetti on Jeff Bezos’ purchase of The Washington Post: When the sale of the Post was announced, writers, editors, and producers sought to determine Bezos’ politics for a simple reason. How the media judges one’s billions determines whether one will be celebrated or scrutinized. Which sort of rich person is Bezos: a Bloomberg (good) … Read more
We started off the week on kind of a bad note, so let’s try to finish on a good one. Paula Bolyard makes a herculean effort to pull together some things to be optimistic about, and by golly, I want to applaud her for the effort before I stick my head back in the oven. … Read more
As highlighted by James Taranto in the WSJ, a lot of journalists have been expressing their dismay that the new pope is, in fact, Catholic. Apparently, newsrooms around the country are rife with shock and astonishment the the man who has dedicated his life to Christ and ascended to the highest post in the Catholic … Read more
Bearing in mind that he’s probably discouraged from using a lot of profanity in his column, Rod Dreher is juuuust about the right amount of angry about the story in the Washington Post that asks, “What role does Christianity play in the murder of the openly gay mayoral candidate in Mississippi?” Notice that the Post didn’t … Read more
They’ve both been in the news a lot lately, so let’s do a compare/contrast between the two college football sweethearts: A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb Manti Te’o’s girlfriend, Lennay Kekua Physical attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 10 Eleventeen (using Musburger notation) [null set] Achieved fame when… Alabama scored third unanswered touchdown and announcers … Read more
Journalism is in a sorry state nowadays, and it’s not just because journalists are liberal, and it’s not just because they are shameless shills for liberal causes. They seem to have some kind of obstruction in their brains that makes it impossible for them to believe that anyone could disagree with their worldview. Therefore, when … Read more
It’s a bizarre experience, driving down a familiar road where everything looks like it does on every other day, then rounding the corner and seeing a town that looks like it was just attacked by an alien armada. That’s what we have here in central Alabama: the part of the Michael Bay movie you never … Read more
When I first got a whiff of the story about the Philadelphia abortionist’s slaughterhouse, I thought the few details that I heard sounded gruesome. But there have always been gruesome details about the abortion business. America by now seemed pretty thoroughly desensitized to the whole thing. But the story keeps sticking around. And the details … Read more