Category Archives: Rubbish

Krugman vs. Krugman

“One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.” – Eric Hoffer With that observation in mind, have a look at this item from Michael Lind.

Excelsior!

I know that many of you may have been worrying lately about the possibility of some sort of national, or even civilizational, decline. But you should always remember that, as bad as things may seem economically and politically, our popular culture continues to raise the bar for excellence in the fine arts. So, to lift […]

The Relativity Of Principle

Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella links to two contrasting articles. The first, by Binyamin Applebaum, an editor at the New York Times, is a panegyric on the presidency of Joe Biden. The second, by Peter van Buren at American Conservative, is a jeremiad called “Evening in America”. It’s a stark and fascinating juxtaposition. In […]

I Bet It’s Only Because She’s Gay

Well, Claudine Gay has stepped down as president of Harvard. She was already listing badly after her embarrassing testimony before Congress about antisemitism at Harvard, and Christopher Rufo’s withering barrage of examples of her chronic plagiarism finally holed her below the waterline. Needless to say, in her resignation letter she made no apology for her […]

Not To Worry!

If, like me, you’ve been worrying about the threat of runaway artificial intelligence, well now you can relax: the government is here to help. The formidable polymath Kamala Harris, fresh from her successful remediation of our troubles at the southern border, is now the Biden administration’s AI czar. What a relief! It’s good to know […]

Code Review

Here’s another item over the transom from our e-pal Bill K. — a software engineer’s look at the modeling software that was relied upon to shut down the West. (As a former C++ developer myself, I can say that it sounds awfully bad.)

Hard-Hitting Journalism From The Beeb

Commenting on our previous item about immigrant gangs in Sweden, and the wave of bombings and shootings they have brought to that previously peaceful nation, reader “Whitewall” offered up this link, from the BBC: Sweden’s 100 explosions this year: What’s going on? The first subheading asks: Who is to blame? If you thought they might […]

Oh, Lay Off It Already

I’m getting awfully tired of powerful and successful people who, upon receiving some award or other, take care to inform us how “humbled” they are by it. Hogwash. Nobody is ever “humbled” by this sort of thing. In truth it makes any normal man purr in happy assurance of his own excellence, and causes his […]

The Marshmallow Diet

Over at Kakistocracy, Porter tosses and gores one Jessica Wood, a Ph.D. student at the university of Guelph, who has written a report that arrives at the following conclusion: “We found people in consensual, non-monogamous relationships experience the same levels of relationship satisfaction, psychological well-being and sexual satisfaction as those in monogamous relationships… This debunks […]

The Naturalistic Fallacy

Over the transom today: It’s “ethically inappropriate’ for government and medical organizations to describe breastfeeding as “natural’ because the term enforces rigid notions about gender roles, claims a new study in Pediatrics. “Coupling nature with motherhood”¦ can inadvertently support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family (for example, that […]

The Rake’s Progress

Google honors the Egyptian roué and occasional actor Omar Sharif with one of its worshipful “doodles” today (because “diversity” or something, I guess). Here’s a recap of his life.

Izzat so?

Here’s a response, by Stephen Moore and Arthur Laffer [cue ad-hominem attack in comment thread in 3…2…1…], to Hillary Clinton’s insulting remarks the other day about winning the “dynamic” states, and losing the backward ones. I will confess that I hesitated before mentioning That Woman’s name in print. As Richard Wagner is said to have […]

The 9th Circus

Yesterday the 9th Circuit Court Of Appeals allowed a children’s climate-advocacy group to proceed with a lawsuit against the Trump administration for not preventing global warming. The suit argues, with a straight face, that inaction by the Federal government to produce what the plaintiffs believe to be necessary carbon-reduction policy violates the children’s Constitutional rights […]

Goodbye, Columbus

Everywhere you look, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea is out, and Indigenous Peoples are in. (Well, the indigenous peoples of Europe, not so much…) Those of us who don’t get all our history from Howard Zinn, however, know that the Noble Savage was a good deal more savage than noble. Some details here.

CNN Delenda Est

Here’s RamzPaul commenting on CNN’s publicly threatening to dox a meme-creator they don’t like. Normally I wouldn’t pay an awful lot of attention to this sort of thing — it is simply a given that mainstream news outlets like CNN are Cathedral clerisy, and will say and do whatever they believe advances their religious hegemony […]

Damned If He Does, Damned If He Doesn’t

Here’s yesterday’s headline from the New York Times, delivered apparently without irony: Syria Strike Puts U.S. Relationship With Russia At Risk The nice thing about propaganda is you can turn on a dime to keep the target in the crosshairs.

Quite Possibly The Stupidest Thing Ever Said

I heard it again just the other day. It’s from some sappy movie a few decades back: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” What idiot wrote this? Love means constantly having to say you’re sorry.

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like “End Of Fiscal Year”

Do you go out of your way to avoid the word “Christmas” when greeting people at this time of year? (I hope not, but maybe you do.) Perhaps, seeking to remain employed, avoid stupid arguments with pugnacious “social-justice” busybodies, or just generally toe the line, you wish them enjoyable “holidays” instead. Well, that line keeps […]

TOTD

Retweeted today by Christina Hoff Sommers:  

Blue, Red, Black

I’ve often mentioned a popular neoreactionary metaphor, the “red pill” (in fact I did so just two posts ago). Now, with a hat-tip to the latest edition of Nick Steves’ weekly roundup, we offer you an essay by Brett Stevens about another existential medicament: the black pill. What is the black pill? In a word, […]

Energy Is Life

I’ve mentioned the fossil-fuels advocate Alex Epstein several times in these pages, most recently back on April 13th. Here he is making his case last week before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Note in particular the odious, and evidently wholly unlettered, Senator Barbara Boxer mocking Mr. Epstein (at 7:20, and again at the […]

I Kid You Not

Feminist glaciology. Not a parody. Here.

Signs Of The Times

The New York Times today did something it had not done since the Harding administration: it published an editorial on the front page. It did so not because it had a rational argument to make, or a useful policy to advance — it had neither of those things. Why, then, would the Times make such […]

Hold Your Nose And Click

I think it’s safe to say that this The New Republic article — The White Protestant Roots of American Racism — is the worst piece of “journalism” you’re going to see all day. I was about to give it the severe beating it deserves — particularly with respect to Puritanism, Calvinist soteriology, and the central […]

That “Science” Guy

John Derbyshire give Bill Nye’s nose a tweak, here.

When One With Honeyed Words But Evil Mind Persuades The Mob, Great Woes Befall The State

Yesterday President Obama gave a commencement address to the Coast Guard Academy. He devoted much of it to brazen propaganda about “climate change”, including even going so far as to make it a scapegoat for Islamic violence and political chaos in the Mideast and Africa. We’re all well-accustomed (perhaps “inured” would be a better word) […]

Tweet of the Day

can someone give this man an advil? pic.twitter.com/fvwOsoOzV0 — The Friendly Asshole (@FriendlyAssh0le) April 9, 2014

Ugh

The world is aflame with war and pestilence. The nation’s borders are dissolving. Our ancient and implacable enemies are ascendant in every quarter. Yesterday I received this email from OFA, Barack Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda: Malcolm — Here’s something you might not know about President Obama: The man really loves pie. And for as long […]

A Dead Giveaway

Our old e-pal, the estimable Deogolwulf, appears to have caught the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek in a spot of plagiarism. Žižek is something of a “rock star” in certain Continental circles, and so the affair has attracted some attention — so much so that Newsweek has now run an article about it all. That the […]

Not A Smidgen Of Corruption!

Well! It appears the IRS has “lost” two years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails. Golly, what an unlucky coincidence. Especially considering that the NSA has copies of every email every American citizen has ever written, backed up redundantly in hardened underground bunkers scattered across all fifty states. Allahpundit just remarked: This is the Platonic Form […]

Caudillo

Got two items in the mail today from Barack Obama’s Ministry of Truth, shortly after learning that He had decided, on a whim, to change an explicitly articulated (and politically damaging) proviso of the healthcare law until after the upcoming elections. Make sure you read the letter from ‘Cathi’, which I’ve pasted in below the […]

Be Very Afraid

The psychotic, pestiferous torrent of cultural-Marxist sludge excerpted below is, apparently, what a college education in the humanities produces nowadays. This is the moment when you make of your fist the same clench in your teeth, make of your tongue all the textbooks your school was not funded enough to provide you with, make of […]

Like A Rug

Well, political junkies, here it is: Politifact’s Lie of the Year. (One could bicker about which year it really belongs to, but it’s certainly a whopper, and had a major effect on the course of events.) Of course there are far bigger specimens out there — submerged monsters big enough to affect the very currents […]

Happiness Is Just Around The Bend

In case you missed it: here’s a lesson in political philosophy from one Russell Brand, who is apparently a British entertainer of some sort. His plan appears to be:     Phase 1: Revolution!     Phase 2: ?     Phase 3: Justice! Should work. He’s obviously given it a lot of thought.

Things Are Tough All Over

Here’s the academic Left descending ever deeper into self-parody. Racism collides with sexism in a self-pitying pissing-contest of the microscopically oppressed. One would have to have a heart of stone to read this without laughing.

A Spontaneous Reaction

Just in case you missed it the first time around: here’s Susan Rice on Meet The Press, Sunday, September 16th, 2012.

Glass Half Full

Readers, as bad as things may be getting over here — and anyone with any sense can see they’re going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better — at least we don’t have to endure some of the unspeakable horrors that afflict other, less fortunate nations. So be of stout […]

Artificial Inanity

I’ve mentioned the incomparable Deepak Chopra in these pages a time or two in the past. The man is of course the world’s greatest living mountebank, and has made a fabulous living hawking 24-carat flapdoodle to swooning suckers. You have to admire talent like that. As it turns out, somebody admires it enough to have […]

Then And Now

Barack Obama vs. Barack Obama on the debt ceiling. Here.

Tweet

From June:

Eat Your Peas!

Uh-oh — according to Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, maybe we’d better not. We reserve comment.

1/13/12

Well, here it is again: Friday the 13th. I consider them auspicious, but I’ve already written about that several times (such as here and here), so for today I’ll just note the event en passant, and get on with other things.

Destroying Civilization, By Degrees

Here.

‘Furrier New’, Or Perhaps ‘Hairial’

Busy today, so just a brief item. Leg-Hair Font.

Bad Lip Reading

I know I’m way behind the curve here, and you’ve probably already seen it, but this stuff just kills me. See Rick Perry, here, and Mitt Romney, here. Homepage here.

That’s Rich

On Piers Morgan’s show last night, the pinguid propagandist Michael Moore insisted that that he is not a member of “the 1%”. According to IRS data, in 2009 the top one percent of earners reported an adjusted gross income of $343,927 or more. Mr. Moore is worth an estimated $50 million.

In The Ocean Of The Blind…

…this guy‘s the king.

Whoops!

As the markets begin to totter in anticipation of the coming global collapse, investors are naturally wondering where to put their money. According to the latest data from NASA, I’d say definitely not the beach-umbrella or swimwear sectors. Maybe coal-mining and hockey equipment.

Master Of Disguise

I hardly know what to say about this one: Police arrest goat accused of armed robbery Hat tip to hbd chick.

Units

How one thing leads to another! With my glory days as a globe-trotting big-shot recording engineer behind me (for now at least), I earn my daily crust in a small cubicle in midtown Manhattan, writing C++ code for a medium-sized global corporation. It is now 9:15 P.M., and as is so often the case, I […]