Volume 266 | No. 14

Mon, March 28

2007—Phyllis Schlafly explains to Bates students that a married woman “has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.” 2003—Two U.S.A.F. A-10 “Warthogs” mistakenly strafe British tanks in Iraq. One soldier is KIA. 2003—“The enemy we’re fighting [in Iraq],” General William S. Wallace admits, “is different from the one we’d war-gamed against.” 1979—After a stuck valve dumps too much coolant, an emergency cooling system kicks in, but it’s overridden by operators who fail to see a hidden indicator light. The nuclear reactor core at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania partially melts, releasing 43K curies. 1967—The RAF bombs the Torrey Canyon to …

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What Is a Bayonet? or, Who Wins and Who Loses?

by W.D. Ehrhart Lately I have been revisiting one of my favorite writers, Stephen Crane. Most famous for his novel of the American Civil War, The Red Badge of Courage, his collected writing—fiction, poetry, and journalism published by the University of Virginia Press—runs to ten full volumes. So enamored of his poetry was I that I still have a slim volume of his poems I “removed” (stole would be more accurate) from the Pennridge High School library back in 1965 or 1966. (In my defense, the town I grew up in didn’t even have a bookstore, and I wanted to possess those poems.) The best …

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Burning the Earth at both ends

[Muttering in the newsroom: “If only we could think up a clever way to put this…maybe that would make it more palatable. On the other hand, there’s much to be said for brutal honesty. Have to check with Legal, and see if there’s any case law on criminal liability for printing news that’s just too godawful to be read safely….”] Oh, pardon us, dear reader. We were just trying to decide whether to continue publishing this newspaper, or to don sackcloth and ashes, join a mendicant pilgrimage, and walk barefoot to…. Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Where the hell do you go when Earth …

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A Sermon From the Printer’s Devil

Brethren and sisteren, &c., we take our text today from Twitter, the Book of @KateAronoff, Chapter 3/15: “one sign of a thriving democracy is that a coal baron elected by less than 300,000 people gets to take a sledgehammer to everything.” We are shocked—shocked—our own selves to see these disparaging words on the screen before us. They appear, it would seem, of their own volition, in spite of our intention to inscribe on these pages only the most wholesome advises and dispatches, suitable for all readers. We can only have been possessed—possessed by the Printer’s Devil.* With 265 years of tradition driving us, though, go …

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Sun, March 27

2014—The UN, bringing receipts, says the U.S. civil rights record stinks. 2003—Iraq “can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon,” U.S. Undersecretary for Defense Paul Wolfowitz tells Congress. “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money.” 1986—Congress slashes welfare while approving $100 million for a drug gang called “The Contras.” 1980—The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea: of 212 aboard, 123 perish. 1964—History’s 2nd largest earthquake hits Anchorage; 115 die. 1956—Alleged Christian Billy Graham advises Ike to ignore civil rights. 1943—So that forged IDs may avoid Nazi detection, openly gay …

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