ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

To the very north: This is a suitable musical accompaniment to the picture

These news seem to have turned into a series, all about the problems with a gun nation.  It's not a polite nation and it's not a sa...

The New York Times t ells us that French troops have arrived in Mali, to fight the Islamist takeover of the northern parts of that count...

It's very good of the Republicans to keep that war as clear as possible, because otherwise we with the fleeting memory ca...

Provided by Bobby Jindal, Louisiana Governor and one of the Republican hopes for one-day-president of this country.   Jindal has proposed s...

1.  What's the saying about those who grab the sword getting pierced by it?  Whatever it is, it appears to apply to this recent homicid...

Given the recent appointments of the Obama administration, including that today of Jacob Lew for the 76th US Treasury Secretary, some are ...

How many newspapers or newspaperish websites have a labor section?  How many have a business section?  And what do we learn from the compa...

From Washington Post 's Wonk Blog: It's an impressive looking graph.  Too bad that the actual numbers are trickier to inter...

I came across two stories about attempts to regulate what women may wear.  The first consists of the specific instructions one rather stri...

These are  real poems, not my jokey bad pomes,   by Edith Södergran, a Swedish-speaking Finnish poet: I I am a stranger in this land 
t...

Not the elephants Hannibal is said to have used to cross the Alps but invisible elephants of a particular type:  The tremendous military ex...

Why isn't "it depends" or "whatever" an interesting opinion?  Why are only strong and extreme opinions viewed as wo...

Content note:  Sexual violence. E. J. has written an interesting piece on the connection between purity and rape, in terms of cultural be...

You should listen to this clip where a former NRA (Guns R Us) president Marion Hammer is interviewed on gun control, not only because she ...

I don't have a proper link for this one, sorry.

That's a snow-covered river.  The silence of the snowy night. This post is intended as one of those tidbits in a Victorian lon...

Fat.  It's one of the great fears of today, both in the foods we eat and on our bodies.  Even talking about fat always creates a debate...

This: Congress had a lengthy to-do list as the end of the year approached, with a series of measures that needed action before 2013 bega...

The New York Times has had a series of pieces as a debate about women and makeup.  The topic : Some would argue that makeup empowers ...