I predict no. I suspect that most people who read that kind of thing are have already drunk the koolaid. This is lunacy, really:
“A Visit from the Goon Squad,” which tells the story of people connected by the music business, bounces back and forth over time. When it flashes forward two decades, it shows a world that has been altered by climate change. Trees bloom in January. A February day hits 89 degrees.
No one is predicting those kinds of changes that fast. All this does is destroy their credibility.
Though it would be nice to get people reading this book again. Or even for the first time.
Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).
Ahmadinejad may be a short timer, but it’s unlikely he’ll be replaced by anyone sane.
RIP. Like other Reason devotees, I had never met him or even heard of him, though I’m sure that my friend Bob Poole, who took over from him, must have known him. As Virginia Postrel notes over at Facebook, this is probably the most coverage that the New York Times has ever given Reason magazine.
Will the Muslim Brotherhood succeed where bin Laden failed? As Michael Totten writes, “The gradualists–not moderates, but gradualists–in the Brotherhood do have a greater chance of success. Unlike the vicious psychotics of Al Qaeda in Iraq, they won’t alienate their soft supporters until it’s too late.”
