Miniver Cheevy

James Howard Kunstler sings the praises of rail travel. After sitting on airplanes for two days, like a mummy in a casket, I took the Amtr...

Shakespeare, Pericles Prince of Tyre II.4 Go search like nobles, like noble subjects, And in your search spend your adventurous worth V...

Holy Georgia O'Keefe, Batman! Eros ex Mathematica is a series of pictures that are not safe to view at work. Yet the description on t...

Brad DeLong quotes an article about politics and economics which offers an interesting explanation for the development of Europe's curr...

Tom Disch reports that Paddington Bear is ready to take on a thrilling new adventure. I have been talking with Paddington, who has just ...

That's how much the world spent on militaries last year. One Trillion Dollars. The United States was responsible for just shy of half...

From time to time I dream of making my living as a bartender. Many folks say I have the right temperament for it, for some reason. One dete...

Lindsay “Majikthise” Beyerstein kicks off her review of An Inconvenient Truth with this little story. My friend Ryan's dad is a famou...

For the record, I would be delighted if someone would buy this for me.

Via MKB, I learn that Garrison Keillor has a nice little rant worth suffering the ad at Salon. It largely concerns a defense of the virtue...

Happy midsummer! Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu. Sumer is i-cumin in, Lhude sing, cuccu! Groweth sed and b...

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings has a terrific post worth reading in its entirety, which starts from pundit Peter Beinart’s failure to see that...

I almost forgot: it's Juneteenth today, marking the end of slavery in the US. The history of the holiday is itself interesting. ...

As part of ongoing drinking game coverage here at Miniver Cheevy, I have a new offering from Stephen Colbert, via Monkeyboy's Link...

Microsoft's choices in advertising are notoriously hapless, but this is a little masterpiece. Via Monkeyboy's linkblog.

I don't think that this is quite a story about torture. But it's definitely a story of the US being in the evil business. Hilzoy at ...

In honour of net neutrality, I offer the cute little song “God Save the Internet.” I am guessing that some of my readers will want to cli...

Alter S. Reiss makes some observations about Spiderman's rogues gallery. ... just about everyone who had any sort of contact with Pete...

Dear Jonah Goldberg — Folks in Left Blogistan often poke fun at you. I've never taken much interest in the practice myself. But I ...

From Paul Erdös: A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. One can imagine a number of variations. “A programmer is a ...

Wil Wheaton observes another example of the music industry not only circling the drain, but paddling directly toward it. Someone at the RI...

Never before have I wanted to let a nickel of my money fall into the hands of the publishers of the National Review , but right now I'm ...

Robert Newman's History of Oil is a witty, fun, radical one-man cabaret show that talks about Western imperialism in the Middle East, ...

Have £2500 lying around? Then you can earn my envy by owning a watercolour by Frieda, Lady Harris of the Fool card for the Thoth tarot deck ...

For those of you who have never seen Royskopp's cunning video for their song “Remind Me,” check it out. It's a cavalcade of faux in...

Stephen Crane is mainly remembered today as the author of The Red Badge of Courage , which you likely had to read in high school. But Ste...

Warren Ellis retells a legend about George Lucas and Akira Kurosawa which is almost certainly not factual, but is certainly true.

The New York Times reports that contemporary mixology is truly an -ology in that it's full of Big Science. Mr. Cantu uses a grade-sch...

If you're the kind of person who is fascinated by close analysis of polling data— and who isn't? —then you'll love this post ...

Wow. A particularly charming optical illusion. Read the directions in fine print at the top.