I was reading [Sic!] (pretty much the only thing that isn’t Gary Brecher I read there) in the exile and came across a final snarky respone linking to this Amazon page. Is it for real? I don’t know. If it is, I’m glad. For all his jokes, “Gary Brecher” is a better commentator than any talking head you’ll find on tv. Online I’d also say he’s better than Tom Barnett, Coming Anarchy, Zenpundit, tdaxp and Chicago Boyz, to name some blogs that discuss similar matters and commonly link to each other.
I was reading the site because my RSS feed brought up this, which was supposed to be about the use of the mentally challenged as suicide bombers, but brought up a blank page. I was really annoyed when they switched to their 2.0 format that doesn’t have a page linking to every War Nerd article and also breaks the individual articles into multiple pages. This may just be another artifact of that stupid change. I think he was off in saying that brains aren’t important for a terrorist. Terrorists tend to be well-educated engineer types rather than the rabble that Mr. Nerd points out made up much of the conscript armies of the past.
In completely unrelated news, Matt McIntosh at GNXP has a good post on how the immuno-suppresants that protect a fetus in the placenta may have been inherited from retroviruses. It reminds me of an earlier post on mother-child conflict in the womb. UPDATE: This post with a video program on wasp vs bee fights is quite excellent as well. I agree that it should be shown in classrooms to get kids interested in science.
Entitled to an Opinion 
February 8, 2008 at 9:23 pm
You, sir, are using fighting words!
Looks like a fun book tho, I’ll definitely check it out. My only comment would be that, if the self-described war nerd “knows he’s not alone, that there’s a legion of fat, lonely Americans, stuck in stupid, paper-pushing desk jobs, who get off on reading about war because they hate their lives,” that would put him in a different category from the contributors at CA, who are gallavanting around various parts of the globes, living thousands of miles from our home towns, writing about stuff that genuinely interests us. And I’m a crap humor writer too.
February 8, 2008 at 10:46 pm
LOL! War nerd may be a better writer but I won’t cop to the charge of obesity.
February 9, 2008 at 10:10 am
Wonderful news! Could account for the absence of recent columns by Gary Brecher…and John Dolan.
February 9, 2008 at 11:44 am
I’m starting to suspect that ETaO must be a group blog operating under one profile, (except the “voice” is so consistent). I don’t see how you can be all over the web so quickly and still find time to also write anything, let alone get called out for excessive commenting. Don’t you sleep? I can only assume you’ve got a personal web crawler or that you’ve gotten RSS to work the way it’s supposed to. I use google reader to get the same junk three times from six different sources, but at least I know a lot about Britney and Chelsea.
I’m surprised you aren’t more into the eXile. I originally came for the Nerd, but now I read everything except the club and restaurant reviews which wouldn’t interest me even if I lived in Moscow. I love the snotty overall tone, but I sure wouldn’t want to get on their [SIC!] side. You don’t need to purchase the book, although it’s pretty cheap; it’s all archived going back to 2002. I’d recommend (and have done so) reading the whole thing. If you have any extra (!) time.
February 9, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Curzon and Zenpundit, “Gary Brecher” is a fictional persona created by someone else, possible Mark Ames but most likely John Dolan.
I’m starting to suspect that ETaO must be a group blog operating under one profile, (except the “voice” is so consistent).
Nope. I’d be willing to let others join in as contributors though. I think Michael S at UR needs a blog, so perhaps I’ll ask him if he wants to join.
I don’t see how you can be all over the web so quickly and still find time to also write anything, let alone get called out for excessive commenting.
I have gone for some long stretches without any posts here, and my posts tend to be heavy on links and light on original commentary. What impresses me is Ilkka Kokkarinen. Though since switching from Sixteen Volts to the Fourth Checkraise his posts have been limited to single paragraphs, he does it quite frequently and visits a lot of sites, as testified by his numerous link-roundup posts. Since he’s a fan of the Danimal, I guess he also spends a lot of time on Usenet.
Don’t you sleep?
Very little. I’ve been an insomniac ever since I was a kid and it’s only gotten worse. I self-medicate with bourbon when I know I need to knock myself out and get a decent amount of sleep, but I’ll eventually have to do something more serious about it, which will likely cut into my dicking-around-on-the-internet time.
I can only assume you’ve got a personal web crawler or that you’ve gotten RSS to work the way it’s supposed to. I use google reader to get the same junk three times from six different sources, but at least I know a lot about Britney and Chelsea.
I use Google Reader as well. My subscriptions are to the War Nerd, EconLog, original GNXP, Hopefully Anonymous, Marginal Revolution, Overcoming Bias, Steve Sailer, The Agitator, the Hoover Hog, Volokh Conspiracy and Unqualified Reservations. I don’t know much about web-crawlers and don’t know who Chelsea is.
February 12, 2008 at 3:48 am
Solid exercise is the only cure.
February 12, 2008 at 10:19 am
As long as it doesn’t require any time or effort I’m game for that.
February 18, 2008 at 7:50 am
I am not going to but it if it doesn’t contain a healthy amount of new material.
I did buy Dolan’s book and found it a very good read. Kind of a Catcher in the Rye type of thing.
March 26, 2008 at 1:09 pm
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