Tuesday, June 13, 2006

I Wish I'd Said That

A few choice bits from today's reading:

Skating on the floor of the roller rink is an example of what Friedrich Hayek called spontaneous order. The process is beneficial and orderly, but also spontaneous. No one plans or directs the overall order. Decision making is left to the individual skater. It is decentralized.

-- Daniel B. Klein, "Rinkonomics: A Window on Spontaneous Order," The Library of Economics and Liberty


Killing the #2 man in al Qaida just means everybody in the organization moves up one notch. The former #3 guy is the new #2 guy, the former #10 guy is now the #9 guy, and the new #48 guy is Howard Dean.

Just so you know, I'm ashamed that the Dixie Chicks are from America.

-- Ann Coulter, in an interview at FrontPageMag.com


If the fact that a man who regards his son's butcher as a better man than the American president is rewarded with a party's nomination to Congress does not tell you all you need to know about the morally twisted world of the Greens, nothing will.

-- Dennis Prager, writing of Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, at FrontPageMag.com


The beauty of doing nothing is that you can do it perfectly. Only when you do something is it almost impossible to do it without mistakes. Therefore people who are contributing nothing to society except their constant criticisms can feel both intellectually and morally superior.

""We are a nation of immigrants," we are constantly reminded. We are also a nation of people with ten fingers and ten toes. Does that mean that anyone who has ten fingers and ten toes should be welcomed and given American citizenship?"

-- Thomas Sowell, "Random thoughts," Townhall.com


After the London tube bombings, Angus Jung sent the Aussie pundit Tim Blair a note-perfect parody of the typical newspaper headline:

"British Muslims fear repercussions over tomorrow's train bombing."

An adjective here and there, and that would serve just as well for much of the coverage by the Toronto Star and the CBC, where a stone through a mosque window is a bigger threat to the social fabric than a bombing thrice the size of the Oklahoma City explosion.

-- Mark Steyn, "You can't believe your lyin' eyes," Macleans.ca