We’ve been off the air for a few days: the lovely Nina and I flew down to central Florida on Wednesday evening to spend a few days with our son, who pitches for his college baseball team and is down here for an early-season tournament. (He goes to school some distance away from our home [...]
I’m back in town briefly, but having got home after midnight from a 13-hour day at work, I have no time for writing. But…
Remember our piece a while back about the “Monty Hall problem”? Well, reader J. Kapok has now sent along a dispiriting item about the relative mathematical capabilities of people and pigeons. Here.
We’re [...]
Starting tomorrow morning, I will be traveling a fair amount for a week or so, and things may be quieter than usual around here.
For tonight: an essay from Mark Alexander on the Second Amendment case now making its way through the Supreme Court. Here.
Also, there is a new website, Alternative Right, that has been attracting [...]
The big political question at the moment is whether the Democrats will try to force their health-care bill though Congress using a procedural shortcut called “budget reconciliation”. This parliamentary loophole was put in place in 1974 for the sole purpose of making it easier to legislate the many adjustments that go into harmonizing a budget [...]
Small changes in the relative timing and rates of growth of an animal’s parts — a concept called heterochrony — can make an enormous difference in the adult animal’s morphology. For instance, crabs and lobsters are built of essentially the same parts, but in the development of a crab the carapace [...]
Amphibian populations have been declining sharply for years now, around the world. An item in today’s Science Daily suggests that the cause may be a enormously popular weed-killer, atrazine, which apparently “chemically castrates” most of the males that come into contact with it, and turns the rest into females.
You can learn more here. (I [...]
Here’s an interesting item: Iowa State University Distinguished Professor of Psychology Craig Anderson claims to have demonstrated conclusively that playing shoot-’em-up video games “increases aggressive thinking and aggressive affect, and decreases prosocial behavior.”
This is, of course, what various concerned sorts have been saying all along, although I had for some reason thought that the idea [...]
February 28, 2010 – 6:52 pm
As you all know, the global-warming community has been under a great deal of pressure lately. Its Pontifex Maximus, Albert A. Gore, published a lengthy riposte in the Times today. You can read it here.
It is about what you would expect: a reminder that even if the scientific claims of the global-warming industry are [...]
February 26, 2010 – 9:50 pm
Here’s a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America:
The sovereign extends his arms over the whole society; he covers its surface with a web of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls are unable to emerge in order to rise above the crowd; it does [...]
February 25, 2010 – 10:37 pm
After working all day, teaching class this evening, staying after to practice a little Iron Wire, trudging home in a blizzard, and shoveling the walk and stoop, I’m whipped.
So for tonight, then, here’s a pungent little rant about the sorry state of my former homeland, from Mark Steyn.
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February 23, 2010 – 11:39 pm
In a post over at VFR, Lawrence Auster comments on an essay by Stanley Fish in which Professor Fish remarks on the inability of pure “secular” reason, bereft of normative bedrock in the Divine, to provide any “oughts”. This is catnip to Mr. Auster, who is, despite having various admirable qualities, a crusading anti-Darwinist.
The argument [...]
February 22, 2010 – 11:37 pm
lich: southern dialectal survival of O.E. lic “body, dead body, corpse,” cognate with O.Fris. lik, Du. lijk, O.H.G. lih, Ger. leiche “dead body,” O.N. lik, Dan. lig, Goth. leik, from P.Gmc. *likow.
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February 22, 2010 – 11:13 pm
As far as nifty gadgets go, it would be hard to top the computerized anti-mosquito laser cannon we showed you a few days ago. But a German tinkerer has certainly come up with an impressive little toy. Video here.
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February 21, 2010 – 11:51 pm
There’s a lively chat going on over at Mangan’s about how people react to the growing body of data about the diversity of various human groups with regard to IQ and general intelligence. That such differences actually do exist is at this point uncontroversial amongst those who study psychometrics, but it is of course a [...]
February 20, 2010 – 9:54 pm
A week from tomorrow begins the Jewish festival of Purim, which celebrates the success of the Jews living under the ancient Persian Empire in reversing a plot to annihilate them.
The tale is told in the Book of Esther, also known as the Megillah. Summing up briefly:
During a feast, a drunken King Ahasuerus [likely Xerxes] commands [...]
February 18, 2010 – 11:05 pm
Having got home rather late from teaching class, I’ll leave you this evening with a brief but truly uplifting item: about the implementation, finally, of a technological fantasy I’ve been entertaining for decades.
Seriously, this is outstanding. Have a look here.
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February 18, 2010 – 12:19 am
I’ve been so busy of late spewing vile, reactionary, hate-filled, racist poison (or simple common sense, depending upon your point of view), that I have neglected another topic of critical import and urgency: butt-ugly deep-sea fishes.
No longer. Tonight I invite you to contemplate the stupefyingly unlovely Psychrolutes marcidus, known to bathypiscophiles the world over (you [...]
February 16, 2010 – 6:47 pm
We note with sadness the death, at age 57, of Doug Fieger, leader of the New Wave rock band The Knack, who had an enormous hit back in 1979 with the song “My Sharona”.
I got to know Doug (and even met Sharona!) back in 1981, when I assisted in the mixing of the band’s third [...]
February 15, 2010 – 11:44 pm
In an article just published in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria argues that sympathy for al-Qaeda, and for the most extreme forms of terrorist jihad, is diminishing throughout much of the Muslim world — due in large part to al-Qaeda’s violent excesses against Muslims themselves, particularly in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Certainly the relentless campaign [...]
February 15, 2010 – 9:53 pm
It’s TED Time again. Most of the current talks haven’t been posted as videos yet, but a few of them have. Here’s one that shows what Microsoft is working on for Bing Maps.
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February 15, 2010 – 12:33 am
When singers sing, or players of string or wind instruments sound a note, they almost always apply some vibrato — that familar effect in which the pitch is varied slightly, and rapidly — if the note is to be held for long. It is particularly unusual (in modern times at least) [...]
February 13, 2010 – 11:37 pm
In the essay linked to in our previous post, historian Gerard Alexander discussed the opinion, common amongst liberal critics, that Republicans lack the temperament, or perhaps even the basic intelligence and necessary habits of thought, for focused, critical examination of complex social, political, and philosophical issues. We are pleased tonight to offer a devastating counterexample, [...]
February 13, 2010 – 7:24 pm
Once again it’s been a busy few days, with little time for brooding and writing. For now, then, here’s an essay that has been making the rounds for a week or so: Why Are Liberals So Condescending? It’s by one Gerard Alexander, who teaches politics at the University of Virginia. In it he identifies, and [...]
February 11, 2010 – 11:22 pm
Well, whatever Iran had planned for today appears to have been a bit of a fizzle, at least as far as a “blow” to the West is concerned; indeed even the link I posted yesterday appears to be down. Any heavy blows were apparently reserved for the political opposition, and delivered by the Basiji. Don’t [...]
February 10, 2010 – 11:51 pm
Tomorrow, February 11th, is the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. According to this item at Iran’s Press TV website, the Dear Leader — no, wait a minute, I mean the Supreme Leader; I always get these totalitarian Axis Of Evil types muddled up — has an anniversary present to [...]
February 10, 2010 – 10:31 pm
Many years ago I read a haunting short story (I believe it was called As Never Was, by P. Schuyler Miller), about a curious possible aspect of time-travel. In the story, which I recall only vaguely, there was a museum that sheltered a celebrated artifact: a strange and marvelous knife that had been brought back [...]
February 9, 2010 – 12:27 pm
An article in today’s New York Times describes frustration amongst black activists over what they see as insufficiently preferential treatment from the President. Here’s an example:
On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed irritation that Mr. Obama has not created programs tailored specifically to African-Americans, who are suffering disproportionately in the recession. [...]
February 9, 2010 – 12:01 am
Iran is playing a very dangerous game at the moment, and they are raising the stakes simultaneously on several of their wagers. First, they have now announced that they are planning, despite recent conciliatory remarks, to proceed with the enrichment of nuclear fuel to near-weapons-grade levels (well, 20 percent isn’t 90, but it will mean [...]
February 8, 2010 – 11:09 pm
In Holland, the parliamentarian Geert Wilders is on trial for speaking his mind about the acute existential threat posed to European culture by Islam. Mr. Wilders — who believes, correctly, that Islam is at its core an explicitly totalizing and expansionist ideological system that is utterly incompatible with fundamental Western principles, and therefore [...]
February 8, 2010 – 12:00 am
In the Andaman Islands are several small and long-isolated human populations, including one that is, as far as I know, the most isolated human group of them all: the few hundred people living on North Sentinel Island.
One of these populations, as of last week, no longer exists. The last of the Bo-speaking subtribes of the [...]
February 7, 2010 – 11:45 pm
I have had very little interest in all the fuss about the circumstances of President Obama’s birth. I’m certainly not hoping, as some people seem to be, to have the man pitched out of office on a Constitutional technicality; if nothing else I hardly think it’s in anyone’s interest to have Joe Biden running the [...]
February 7, 2010 – 11:19 pm
Recent correspondence has called back to my attention a perfunctory little post from last April, which despite its brevity led to one of our longer and more entertaining comment-threads. Here.
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February 5, 2010 – 4:30 pm
A commenter here recently said: “Wake me up if Charles Krauthammer ever gets anything right.”
Coffee?
February 5, 2010 – 11:56 am
As I mentioned in the previous post, the Kafkaesque trial of Geert Wilders has been postponed while the schedule is worked out for the testimony of the few witnesses he will be allowed to call. It appears the trial will not resume until July at the earliest.
A discussion of all this is underway at View [...]
February 4, 2010 – 5:53 pm
Yesterday the judge in the free-speech trial of Geert Wilders ruled that only three of the eighteen witnesses Mr. Wilders had hoped to call to testify about the true nature of Islam will be permitted to appear, and must do so behind closed doors. There may now be a long delay while these appearances [...]
February 3, 2010 – 10:56 pm
Roger Kimball shares a few thoughts about Howard Zinn. Here.
February 3, 2010 – 10:49 pm
Thoughtopsy: in which you try to determine what the hell you could possibly have been thinking.
February 2, 2010 – 9:56 pm
Hats off to Sarah Palin. While others are bickering about trivial superficialities — health care, the economy, and other inconsequential distractions — Ms. Palin has seized upon an issue of genuine substance: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s characterization of certain Senate liberals as “f***ing retarded”.
Now some will say that [...]
February 1, 2010 – 11:47 pm
The military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has been in the news lately. President Obama wants it repealed. I agree, though I disagree with him as to why.
January 31, 2010 – 11:57 pm
I’m slowly recovering from whatever it was I had — some sort of virus, I suppose, that triggered a general shutdown of major bodily and cognitive subsystems. Between that and a slip in the snow Thursday morning that caused fresh and debilitating damage to a recent orthopaedic injury, I have spent most of [...]
January 29, 2010 – 11:16 pm
I’m rather under the weather at the moment. Back in a day or two.
January 29, 2010 – 12:01 am
Having absorbed much of the commentary on President Obama’s speech last night, I have nothing to add here that hasn’t been said already by all of the usual bloggers and pundits. I will second a few thoughts though.
First, I thought the president seemed oddly unfazed by recent events. He certainly wasn’t ill at ease; indeed [...]
January 27, 2010 – 11:59 pm
We note that the left-wing polemicist Howard Zinn has died, of a heart attack, at the age of 87.
Professor Zinn, in whose eyes the United States of America was clearly the focus of evil in the modern world, was a familiar sight in my adopted hometown of Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where he was lionized by [...]
January 26, 2010 – 10:24 pm
It is remarkable how well natural systems can find minimal solutions to mathematical problems. Years ago I was shown, in a simple demonstration, an impressive example.
The problem was this: given several cities on a map, how can one lay out a minimal network of roads connecting them all?
To give a simple example, if there [...]
January 26, 2010 – 8:25 pm
As depressingly as our once-virile American culture may be fettered and enfeebled by political correctness these days, over in Britain things are far, far worse. Below the fold we have an illustrative comparison, courtesy of a Mr. D. Duff, from across the pond.
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January 25, 2010 – 11:57 pm
Last week NASA announced that the decade just ended was the warmest on record. I was a little surprised by that, because everything I’d been reading — including the Climategate material — seemed to indicate otherwise; indeed the inconvenient lack of warming this decade was starting to turn into a [...]
January 24, 2010 – 12:47 am
It’s been a busy Saturday, and what time I’ve had for writing today I have spent commenting here and elsewhere, rather than on the gestation of new posts. So, it being late, and with my computer on the fritz (a new one is on the way), I’ll just leave you with this amusing recent story [...]
January 21, 2010 – 11:22 pm
It is of course ungentlemanly to gloat, but were I that sort of person, today’s doings on Capitol Hill would have provided a rare opportunity. The Democrats today are routed, their fearsome assault repulsed, their Utopian schemes undone. Their mighty socialist war-machine lies in splinters on the battlefield. Their armies broken and scattered, they keen [...]
January 20, 2010 – 9:37 pm
This is a story that keeps popping up: the potential health hazards of the electromagnetic fields our appliances and infrastructure bathe us in. A reader sent along a good example today, which you can read for yourself here; if the danger described in this article is real it is a worrisome matter indeed.
The problem for [...]
January 20, 2010 – 10:41 am
Sometimes, from the ashes of a liberal, a realist — dare I say a conservative — is born. It happened to me years ago, and it is happening across America right now. It gives hope.
To see the process in action, read this fine post by my friend Danny Fisher.
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