Concrete Achievements

Blog

  • Turn-around time

    Barry Goldwater, arch conservative, speaking in 1964, and quoted on Fierce Planet:

    “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’”

  • Well, duh.

    Inside Mac Games has published a selection of the dimmer correspondence they’ve had recently. My favourite:

    I like to know if play game Medal of Honor possible on iPod? (sic)

    Er… no.

  • Cultural Revolution Redux

    Similarities between the cultural revolution on America’s campuses, and the Cultural Revolution.

  • Never let the facts…

    If you ever doubt that the wingnuts are really nuts, listen to the discussions on the Schiavo autopsy over at Free Republic. (Comments are below the tendentious news story).

  • Truth will out

    Terri Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state, it seems, and Michael Schiavo hadn’t physically abused her. Humble pie all round.

    More discussion chez Margolis.

  • The drugs don’t work

    This may be the most amusing advert ever made on the topic of release of clinical study data. At JibJab, of course.

  • Erk

    This article in the Washington Post is fairly interesting, but only worth blogging because of the existence of the Democratic Erk Party of Uzbekistan. Actually, it’s the Democratic ERK Party (Erk == Liberty, apparently), but I did have an interesting few minutes wondering what a British Erk Party would be like.

    (I’ve just wasted five minutes looking for a definition of erk. So here’s some RAF slang).

  • Understanding house prices

    Evan Davies writes an interesting article about how house price rises and falls actually work, and who benefits.

    The line:

    The people who lose out from falling house prices are not house-price obsessives, but those who are elderly, about to trade down, or emigrate.

    gave me a moment of clarity as to why the Daily Mail is so obsessed with house prices.

  • New Cabinet Secretary

    Congratulations to prominent Manchester United fan Gus O’Donnell, who has been appointed Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of The Home Civil Service.

  • Ichabod, the glory is departed

    Jonathan Crowe over at the Map Room covers the second volume in an atlas of the 1946 US railway network, which sounds fascinating – if depressing in the light of Amtrak’s current woes.

    For a similar view of Britain’s railways, past and present, you could try: