Category Archives: Shameless Filler

Who Knew?

Get ready for a shock: men and women have different brains.

Notes From The Underground

We’ll get back to the previous topic in a bit — for now, yes, I think we’ll all agree that the best course has to be some sort of pushback on the part of ordinary Americans, and there are now some heartening signs that more and more of us are starting to realize this. Perhaps […]

All The News That’s Fit To Flush

The New York Times, fresh from beclowning itself over the weekend with a shameless (and journalistically indefensible) partisan attack on Brett Kavanaugh, gave further evidence today that the once-respected paper is truly in the toilet: a “woke” piece about the oppression of women by — I am not making this up — the “poo-triarchy”. Here’s […]

Hair piece

It’s a dreary day here, and I find myself at a loss for anything interesting to say. Instead, then, I give you Russian politician Valentina Petrenko. And her hair.      

E Pluribus Unum

A noble sentiment, but I think we’ve got our work cut out for us.

Veritas

Worried that our culture is in decline? Relax. In fact, the more you can relax, the less this will hurt.

Eastward Ho!

Sorry for the lack of substantial content around here lately. From time to time I become so weary of the passing scene that I hardly know what to say about it. I’ll be back to normal soon, I expect. Meanwhile: Diplomad is kissing California goodbye. Can’t say I blame him.

The Wrathful Sky

Beautiful, beautiful time-lapse storm footage, here. Watch in ‘full screen’.

You May Say That I’m A Dreamer…

If I may, readers, I beg you to allow me a momentary departure from our customary rigor and gimlet-eyed realism: Conjure this up in your mind’s eye: a nickel-iron meteorite, ten or twenty meters in diameter, plows into the National Mall at high velocity on a busy autumn weekday. In stroke, it’s all gone — […]

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

We still have music. And dogs. And musical dogs.

Time Out

It’s been a busy few days, with little time to write. (Nor, to tell the truth, have I had much I’ve wanted to say.) I spent the weekend playing music with friends, which is a much healthier pastime than brooding on the great sucking vortex that forms the current, crepuscular era of Western culture and […]

Posterity

Okay, enough doom and gloom. Here’s a picture of my grandson Liam, who is, if I am not mistaken, the cutest child that ever lived.   Ladies?

Poe’s Law

We were treated to some grandmaster-level trolling at the Guardian yesterday, by one Godfrey Elfwick. Here.

The Underdog

If you haven’t seen this clip, I think you’ll enjoy it.

For All You Logolepts

With a hat tip to our man Mangan, here’s a little vocabulary test.

The Generic Version

Here’s a video that will change the way you look at… videos that will change the way you look at things.

Pleasant Dreams

A shocking story from USA Today.

Death Wish

Here’s another video clip: a hair-raising tornado chase.

April 13th

We note, as always on this date, the natal day of Guy Fawkes, Thomas Jefferson, F.W. Woolworth, James Ensor, Butch Cassidy, Sir Arthur “Bomber’ Harris, Robert Watson-Watt, Samuel Beckett, Harold Stassen, Stanislaw Ulam, Eudora Welty, Howard Keel, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Ken Nordine, Don Adams, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Seamus Heaney, Paul Sorvino, Jack Casady, Tony Dow, […]

Misc.

Sorry — the little grey cells are resting tonight, so all I have is a few small items. ‣   The State Department recently announced that it would not be releasing some of the emails taken from the private, unsecured server Hillary Clinton kept in her bathroom in Chappaqua, because they are too secret. Former […]

Open Thread 12, Etc.

I’m still way too fuzzy to write, so just a couple of links: First, an amusing little allegory posted at Gates of Vienna (with a h/t to Bill Keezer; I’ve been offline a lot this week, and hadn’t visited GoV in a few days). Second, I think a recent podcast by John D. on the […]

Separated At Birth?

Just saying…  

Crickets

Quite the firestorm of liberal outrage over that mass shooting in New Orleans, eh? (At a playground, no less.) We’ve hardly heard about anything else since it happened.

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 […]

Four Concentric Circles

This is just the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. I can hardly focus my eyes on it.    

Search Me!

Every January or February (depending on when I remember to do it) I present a sampling of the search keyphrases that brought visitors to this site during the previous year. Here’s the 2014 selection. This year’s winner was the mysterious phrase “lwica lwica”, which occurred 318 times. You may also notice some perennial favorites. compelling […]

Plug

You may recall that my son Nick, a baseball analyst and former college pitcher, launched a wildly popular website last year called PitcherGIFs. In it he presented animated GIFs of every pitcher in the majors throwing every pitch they had, along with Nick’s insightful analysis. The site was taking off like wildfire, until a dispute […]

Up And At ‘Em

I’ve recovered considerably from Monday’s little indignity, and although I haven’t had time or energy to comment on the big stories of the week, I should be back in fighting form soon enough. Just a couple of little items for tonight: At the conclusion of all the injecting and slicing and yanking and scraping and […]

Scoop!

I see that the Times is laying off another hundred newsroom workers. Take heart, though: good journalism will live on.

Phoning It In

I’m still working long hours, and haven’t been able to keep up with the growing backlog of interesting things to comment on. In particular, there have been a slew of Supreme Court decisions I’d like to dissect a bit (today’s unanimous ruling rejecting the President’s egregious “recess” appointments was particularly gratifying, but I still want […]

Geodesy And Skullduggery

I’m working late tonight, so here are two items to keep you from going away empty-handed: a little item about map projections (sent our way by the indefatigable JK), and, to keep you up wondering about things, some very interesting reading about Benghazi, Syria, and ISIL. (As for the second item, caveat lector: I make […]

Too Pooped To Post

After working long hours the past three days (including an all-nighter on Tuesday), and teaching class tonight, I am utterly flogged. All I have to offer you is this.

Links

Sorry for the meager output over the past few days. The muse has been silent. Back soon. Here are a few items that have piled up: — Goodnight Dune. — An outstanding reactionary essay by Richard Weaver. (Worth a post of its own, when time permits.) — Tornado passing through. — A handy chart. — […]

Memo To Mo

Making the rounds today is a rant by one of the online community’s preeminent dyspeptics, Fred Reed. In it he responds to the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s opinion that men are no longer necessary. Ms. Dowd sums up her little idea as follows: So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and […]

Pale Blue Dot

On October 13th, NASA’s Juno probe, which is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on Independence Day 2016, made a ‘slingshot’ flyby of Earth in order to boost its velocity. Using some low-res calibration cameras, it took a time-lapse movie of its approach to the Earth-Moon system. I don’t know why NASA is bothering with Jupiter, […]

Solitude

It’s a long day at work for me today — 11:35 p.m. and I’m still at it. All I have to offer is this little item from XKCD, which I happened on earlier today, in an idle moment. Back soon.

Keepin’ It Real

OK, everybody, I think we all need a little cooling-off period. Time to set aside our partisan differences and watch a bear play tetherball.

Links

— Not of this Earth? — Steve Sailer on amnesty and fertility. — New book on the way about the Matthew Shepard story. — A great Burgess Shale website. Drill down for the animations. — Speaking of exotic fauna, longtime readers may remember our mentioning the tardigrade, here and here. Now, an amazing photo, here. […]

Sunday Salmagundi

Sorry — no time for a post today. Some links: — Natural selection in action. — A Chinese guide to the West, c. 250 A.D. — Sheep and bull. — Japan is just… different. — Steve Sailer on American exceptionalism. — Postcard from Mars. — BHO vs. BHO, from VDH. — Murder in America. — […]

Falling Rock Zone

Here.

Potpourri

We’re still a week or two away from resuming normal operations here at waka waka waka; all of our staff are on holiday, and our offices are shuttered, both here and abroad. We invite you to browse our archive, or to try the “View a Random Post” link at upper right. To boldly go. Well, […]

Bludgers

Here are some fascinating mug-shots from 1920’s Australia. The first thing I noticed was how well-dressed everyone was. They may have been thieves and grifters, but at least they looked like grown-ups.

This And That

I’ve been working like a dog all week, and between earning a crust and winnowing away the chaff in the comment threads, I’ve had no time to pile up a new post. So for tonight, just a few links: — Supermassive object begins to collapse. — The Butlerian jihad begins. — A blue planet where […]

This And That

I’m just whipped tonight, having got home from work at 5 a.m. this morning, and having to get right back up for another long day. A miscellany for tonight, then: — Some Forteana, here and here. — The world’s Tweets, in real time. — From Russia, with love (you might have missed this one). — […]

Thick and Thin

Slideshows (scroll down) here and here, respectively.

The Ol’ Slush Pump, Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

I’m whipped tonight. So here’s… A camera mounted on the slide of a trombone. Oddly entertaining.

Working Late

No time for writing tonight. So here are two video clips: First, here’s the late Christopher Hitchens letting that cad Bill Clinton have it with both barrels. (Why Clinton remains so popular eludes me; the man is a knave and a blackguard.) Second, here’s the one and only Stevie Wonder working his magic, and stealing […]

No Fishes?

This is either some top-notch street magic, or some clever video jiggery-pokery. Worth a look, in any event.

Wild Kingdom

It being a lovely day yesterday, I stopped by the harbor to take in the view. Here’s the vista from Mayo Beach: After a minute or so I noticed that there was some sort of large animal in distress just offshore. All I could see was a single dark flipper lifting out of the water […]

An Old Hand

From about 1580, in fact. Here.