If this is how the Democrats campaign, maybe the Republicans will win after all
With great glee, the Huffington Post reports, Multiple Right-Wing Figures Pranked Into Thanking The Devil For Supporting Trump Several prominent pro-Trump voices have been pranked into thanking “Iblis”...
View ArticleNe laissez jamais une crise se perdre
As President Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said in 2008, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. I mean, it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” The...
View ArticleAnd the lesson for today is…
…from the Second Book of Kings, Chapter 20, Verses 12-19: 12 At that time Marduk-Baladan son of Baladan king of Babylon sent Hezekiah letters and a gift, because he had heard of Hezekiah’s illness. 13...
View ArticleEureka!
In 2012 scientists found the Higgs Boson. In 2015, after fifty years of trying, they finally found gravitational waves. In 2021… Leave camp turned Brexit into a religion to capture votes, study finds...
View ArticleThe Hate Crime (Scotland) Bill is due to pass tonight
In the (Glasgow) Herald, Scottish Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf writes, New Hate Crime Bill extends protection of people Odd headline. Make that some people. This week Parliament will consider further...
View Article“The background and motive of yesterday’s attacks were unclear”
The above is a quote from a Times article with the title “Three dead after knifeman goes on rampage in Bavarian city of Würzburg”. At least three people were killed and several more injured in an...
View ArticleHere we go again
BBC News 17:16 BST: Taliban take over Presidential Palace – reports Conveniently, Afghanistan has had its own Samizdata tag for nearly twenty years. It is interesting, if depressing, to look at the old...
View ArticleIt’s only a bloody song
“‘Arrests expected’ over anti-Catholic singing by group of Rangers fans,” the BBC reports. Police say they expect to make arrests after footage emerged appearing to show Rangers supporters singing a...
View ArticleThere was a time when Scottish universities were havens of free thought
Then: After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was difficult for any but practising members of the Church of England to gain degrees from the old English universities, at Cambridge...
View ArticleWhy the tabloids are the choice of adults
The Daily Mail reports, EXCLUSIVE: Suicide bomber who died when his device blew up outside Liverpool hospital was pizza chef, 32, who fled Middle East and converted to Christianity at cathedral ‘he...
View ArticleIf it is OK to hit someone who insults your wife, is it OK to hit someone who...
The controversy on Will Smith hitting Chris Rock after the latter made a distasteful joke about his wife’s hair loss is interesting because it cuts across party lines. Though most politicians have made...
View ArticleSamizdata quote of the Vaccine Mandate Exemption
As the restrictive form of a poem sometimes forces a clearer expression of a thought than less demanding prose, so the need to present his belief in the scientific process as a request for religious...
View ArticleHow not to change minds on abortion
Last December Meghan McArdle tweeted, “Looking at abortion opinion, it’s actually quite striking how little men and women differ on this question. The whole pro-life is about men telling women what to...
View ArticleHow not to convince people
I am an atheist – I don’t even seek any cover in the “foxhole” of agnosticism, or pull the “religion isn’t true but it keeps the plebs in line” sort of argument that I have sometimes come across. Full...
View Article“By refusing to take part in this collective operation”
Idrissa Gueye is a Senegalese footballer who plays for his country and for the French side Paris Saint-Germain. On Sunday 15th May, Paris Saint-Germain played Montpellier. On that day, players in the...
View Article“In none of these places were any human remains unearthed.”
You have probably heard the shocking story, reported worldwide, of the discovery of mass graves in Canada containing the bodies of what were then called Indian and are now called First Nations children...
View ArticleThe Lady of Heaven did not stay long
It is a film that is “more interesting on paper than in practice”, according to this review: This British-made epic earns a significant accolade: it is the first film to put the “face” of the prophet...
View ArticleThe president offers his condolences, but that’s enough about you
The president of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, offered his condolences over the massacre of worshippers at a church in Owo, Nigeria. News Letter reports, Forty people were killed in the attack at the...
View ArticleIt pays to argue against what your opponents actually believe
They say that the Earth’s magnetic poles swap places every few hundred thousand years. “Roe v Wade: US Supreme Court ends constitutional right to abortion”, reports the BBC. A miracle or a catastrophe,...
View ArticleThe Queen indirectly honours Dr Shipman
HM The Queen today presented the George Cross, the UK’s highest award for bravery not in the face of the enemy, to the National Health Service, (for the response to the covid pandemic etc.), surely...
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