Keith Burgess-Jackson

Has anyone had experience with a Bose Wave Music System? My Philips CD player stopped playing recently and I need to replace it. I’ve heard great things about the Wave Music System, but don’t know whether they’re true. How can a unit without detached speakers produce high-quality stereo sound? Any feedback you can provide is appreciated.

Addendum: I got lots of feedback on this post, both in the comments section and by e-mail. Thanks. I came within one click of ordering the Bose system the other night, but decided to wait and look around. By the way, I’m searching for a CD player for my study (where I work at the computer), not for my living room. I have a good system in my living room.

Here is Mitt Romney’s presidential announcement.

Here is Russell Baker’s review of several new books about Ronald Reagan.

See here.

Paul Krugman won’t like this.

See here.

This man is not ready for prime time. It’s going to be interesting to watch Hillary (and Bill) Clinton pick him to pieces.

Here.

He’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him.

I love reading Dick Morris’s columns and watching him on the Fox News Channel, where he is a frequent guest. Morris knows American politics inside and out. He’s not always right in his predictions (who is?), but he’s always insightful and provocative. In his latest column, Morris says that Newt Gingrich is coming on strong among conservatives. I’m glad to see it. My choice for president is Mitt Romney, but I would be happy to support Newt against the likes of Rudy Giuliani, who is a closet progressive. Wouldn’t it be great to see Newt take Hillary Clinton apart? He’s twice as smart as she is, and far more articulate.

2-14-87 . . . Finally, the state of Arizona marks its seventy-fifth anniversary today. On 14 February 1912, President William Howard Taft issued a proclamation admitting Arizona as a state. Before that, it had a long history as a territory. According to news reports this evening, there were plenty of parades and celebrations around the state. I saw balloons being released this morning as I walked to the Harvill Building to teach the LSAT course. Happy birthday, Arizona!

Here is a New York Times story about Intrade.

Breaking the Spell is a thoroughly tendentious book and in a rather vicious way, for Dennett’s ultimate aim is to propose certain social policies of a distinctly dictatorial sort. For instance, he sympathetically cites the view of Richard Dawkins and others that religious indoctrination of children should be considered a form of child abuse, and he suggests that we might need to consider what measures our society should take to protect children from their parents’ superstitions. He also pompously proclaims that we cannot as a society tolerate certain Catholic or Mormon teachings.

This, no doubt, partially explains his devotion to the concept of memes, for it gives him license to indulge a small taste for the totalitarian without any undue stress on his conscience. If, after all, the only beneficiaries of memes are memes themselves, and if religious memes are an especially toxic strain, then surely it is nothing but prudence and benevolence to seek the extermination of these parasites, ideally by preventive measures. And it hardly matters that the argument by which Dennett reaches his conclusions is patently absurd. He can assume the credulity of a compliant journalistic class and the tacit collaboration of his ideological allies, and he is convinced of the stupidity of his religious readers. His book’s digressions and longueurs, its coarse jargon and fraudulent tone of authority, and its parodies of logic and science are all part of an immense and ponderous obfuscation, behind which is concealed a thoroughly authoritarian agenda. And behind that is concealed only ignorance and apprehension.

(David B. Hart, “Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark,” First Things [January 2007]: 30-8, at 35-6)

Dr John J. Ray has given his blog a facelift. See here.

To the Editor:

Re “Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules” (front page, Feb. 12):

Marcus R. Ross, the “young earth creationist” who received a Ph.D. in geosciences from the University of Rhode Island, is certainly entitled to believe whatever he wants about the origins of the universe, even if his acceptance of the Genesis myth as historical fact puts him in a tiny minority in the scientific community.

What I find deeply disturbing, however, is that Mr. Ross could believe that the earth was created 10,000 years ago, but nevertheless write in his dissertation that mosasaurs, or marine reptiles, existed more than 65 million years ago. And the University of Rhode Island condoned this academic sleight-of-hand by conferring an advanced degree on him.

As a graduate of the University of Rhode Island, I would have expected that it require a student to display some basic level of intellectual and academic integrity before conferring a degree on him.

John S. Foley
Tiverton, R.I., Feb. 12, 2007

Note from KBJ: Can’t Dr Ross believe what he wants on his own time?