Links-mostly controversial

It looks like Obama spied on Trump and his campaign, as he also apparently did on reporters like Sharyl Attkisson. There should be outrage from all sides on this, but we're past the point where anything but results matters to the Left.

A fun little plaything-CodePen chord progression arpeggio generator. I've wasted hours with this.

Ray Fair, an economist famous for his election models, shows you here how fast you'll decline in chess and sports as you age. It's not pretty.


Buying the iPhone X-an exercise in irrationality. 

Want to know exactly what Bob Dylan played on his XM Satellite and Sirius XM radio shows? Now you can, or at least "the Best of".


Cardinal Dolan wants liberals to like him a little too much. Bending over backwards to avoid the dreaded label of "Islamophobia" doesn't show much spiritual leadership, but then again most of our American bishops act more like administrators than spiritual leaders.

Beautiful women and mountaintops-the uses and abuses of technology

Here is a nice picture. We see a beautiful woman sitting on a mountaintop, enjoying a magnificent view. She's reveling in the splendors of nature in all their glory. A true, ahem, mountaintop moment.

One problem, though-she isn't enjoying the scene at all. It might be hard to see in the image as uploaded, but her eyes are closed. She's having a wonderful time, but it's due to the music she's listening to, music she could just as easily listen to at home.


This is an ad for headphones, as you may have suspected. The evident message from our corporate overlords benefactors is that we now need headphones, smart phones, devices, everywhere and anywhere. All situations call for the injection of at least a little virtual reality, lest the real thing bore us, trouble us, or fail to entertain us adequately, as in the case of this woman and her mountaintop view.

You half-expect to hear of people watching their devices while having sex. As a means of enhancing the experience, you watch OTHER people having sex!

Technology can be used, has been used, to improve people's lives, but are we past that stage now?

A few good links

Some worthwhile reads:

Lynn on enjoying the eclipse, and also enjoying things that we see every day. Which makes me think of this: click it! (TY Dustbury.)

Ann Althouse on the outrageous Trump. 


Terry Teachout names his favorite big band tracks. Well, there are no tracks by Maynard Ferguson, Don Ellis, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Buddy Rich, or Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, but it's still a nice grouping.

Edward Feser and Joe Bessette present the Catholic case for capital punishment. It's impossible to argue, from a Catholic perspective, that CP is intrinsically wrong, like abortion or euthanasia.


Megan McArdle-"As a woman in tech, I realized these are not my people". Reflections on the Google memo.

Cartoons can be useful. 

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another"-Hamlet. The Bard might wonder at some current lunacies, like presto-chango sexes.


Father Mitch Pacwa, no longer SJ, is tossed out of the Jesuits after being caught with a Catechism.



538 has the Dodgers getting to 114 wins, two shy of the record.