Monthly Archives: August 2015

Lucky Us

To a first approximation, every species that ever was is extinct. It is within a rounding error to say that every ancestral lineage that ever began eventually petered out. Imagine Nature as a machine-gunner firing into a crowd. The fact that you and I exist means that for four billion years, our personal ancestors have […]

Open Thread 9

It’s the least I can do.

Service Notice

It’s August, and as I do every year I am going to disconnect from the Internet a bit. It’s necessary therapy — particularly so this year, I think, as I think the quality of recent posts has been noticeably off. I also need to take some time to think about just what I want to […]

Chuck Bucks

Well, this is interesting: Senator Charles Schumer has decided to oppose the Iran deal. From the New York Times: Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed,’ Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a lengthy statement. “This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult […]

535 Days

I don’t often link to WSJ editorials, but their comment here on President Obama’s latest regulatory audacity is worth reading. The gist: the States should simply refuse to be bullied in this way. The WSJ’s idea is that the Court will, rightly, strike this thing down as a usurpation of the law-making power of Congress […]

Things Have Never Been So Awful

The inescapable Neil deGrasse Tyson informs us that scientific illiteracy is “a tragedy of our times”. Not “the” tragedy of our times, mind you, just “a” tragedy of our times. There are, you see, just so many of them — so many, in fact, that it’s becoming hard to keep track of which ones to […]

“I Did Everything Superhumanly Possible”

I’ve just read a book I must recommend to you all — Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, by Michael Malice. The book is extraordinary in that it captures, with frightening accuracy, not only the near-solipsistic narcissism of the fully developed totalitarian dictator, but also the seductiveness of the expertly managed personality […]