Alex Massie

Further proof that the British economy remains better placed than any other to weather this turbulent, tempest-ridden economic sea: the Bank of England cuts interest rates to 1.5%, the lowest rate in more than 300 years. Obviously that's a tribute to the government. Meanwhile, the government prepares to print some more money. This too demonstrates the extent to which the government has everything in hand. I don't think you need to be an economist to sense that this mob - Brown and Darling, that is - are making it up as they go along.

At a recent debate, every single one of the candidates hoping to be the nest chairman of the Republican National Committee named Ronald Reagan as their favourite Republican president. In one sense this is hardly surprising, given the extent to which the Cult of Reagan - or more precisely, the Cult of the Idea of Reagan - has come to define the Republican party; still, Kevin Drum wonders why no-one dare stick their neck out and admit to admiring some other GOP luminary. As Kevin notes, it is striking how many Republican presidents have been expelled from the Conservative canon. Eisenhower, Ford and George HW Bush are viewed with suspicion as "Republicans in Name Only," Nixon was a closet liberal too and, like Harding, a crook to boot.

Many, many, many. If the GOP increasingly suffers from a suffocating orthodoxy, the libertarian movement (if that's not an oxymoron) is amusingly/alarmingly/pedictably/irrelevently heterodox. As Brian Doherty explains: Joining the former, and previous more or less useful classifications such as anarchist and minarchist, paleo and cosmo, utilitarian and natural rightsers, is the division between "policy libertarians" and "structural libertarians," explicated by Jacob Lyles over at "Distributed Republic." Then again, since libertarianism is as much a sensibility as anything else, it's scarcely surprising it should be such a divided house. UPDATE: Dave Weigel has a characteristically good - and entertaining!

Rod Dreher asks: Why are the New Atheists so preachy Well that's easy: because, on the subject of religion they are crashing bores. More so, in fact, than their religious counterparts. After all, the latter generally confine themselves to arguing that you are wrong (and, of course, damned) whereas Dawkins et al also demand that you acknowledge they are right. Worse still - and I say this as someone with a faith deficit - they insist upon going on and on and on about it. We get it, chaps.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were defenders. What's this, you ask? Just a map of the pair's wanderings on the moon, superimposed onto a football (soccer) pitch. As best one can tell the Moon XI liked to attack down the right-wing, forcing the intrepid astronauts to play a rugged, hoofing, defensive game. Aldrin never made it out of the Earthlings' half, while Armstrong only ventured a single foray towards the opposition penalty area. Of course, we were playing away from home and it always takes some time to acclimatise to, let alone deal with, the intimidating atmosphere at Moon Park. James Hamilton - who, for reasons that remain a mystery, is still not writing about football for "Big Media"  - draws the correct conclusion from the fact that NASA created this map.