March 31, 2012 – 10:36 pm
Oh, my. For a truly startling, completely unforeseeable turn of events, check out this item from the Times: Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt CAIRO ”” The Muslim Brotherhood nominated its chief strategist and financier Khairat el-Shater on Saturday as its candidate to become Egypt’s first president since Hosni Mubarak, […]
More nanny-state idiocy from the Feds. Here.
In the comment-thread of a recent post, I’ve been arguing with our resident gadfly The One Eyed Man about the Constitutional legitimacy of Obamacare’s individual mandate — part of a broader disagreement about the proper scope of Federal power. After much back-and-forth I wrote: Bottom line: Constitutional law is a fascinating study, combining history, literature, […]
In the past few days Heather Mac Donald has posted two essays on the jarring dissonance between mainstream coverage of race and violent crime and the underlying realities thereof. We hear all the time about the need for a “frank discussion of race in America”; perhaps this will help. Read them here and here. The […]
March 29, 2012 – 10:36 am
Here’s a cogent item on the death of free speech in Britain, by Charles Cooke.
March 28, 2012 – 12:09 pm
The New York Times opines today about yesterday’s Obamacare arguments in the Supreme Court. Predictably, the editors seem to believe that the effects of the Affordable Care Act are of sufficient national importance to trump its Constitutional audacity, and so they are willing to brush aside yesterday’s sharp questioning by conservative Justices as mere tendentiousness: […]
March 27, 2012 – 11:51 pm
It was a big day at SCOTUS, and long awaited: the Justices heard oral arguments about the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate, and the buzz seems to be that it was rough sailing for the Solicitor General. Transcript here. Decide for yourself. Tomorrow: severability. If the mandate falls, does it take down the whole rotten […]
March 27, 2012 – 10:44 pm
Here’s Richard Feynman explaining, with trademark clarity and simplicity, how science works. (Would that the video clip were as clear, but it’s worth watching anyway.)
Among the people I follow on Twitter is the popular comedian and writer Andy Borowitz, winner of the first National Press Club Award for humor. He pops up all over the place: you can read him in The New Yorker, at the Huffington Post, and in syndication in many major newspapers. He’s contributed to lots […]
March 26, 2012 – 12:46 pm
The story making the rounds today concerns Barack Obama’s remarks to Vladimir Putin’s proxy Dmitri Medvedev, as detected by some open mics: President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space. President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message […]
March 25, 2012 – 11:35 pm
An object at rest tends to remain at rest, I’m told, and I’ve been providing experimental confirmation for the past few days. Have no fear, though: just because we haven’t been chronicling the collapse of Western civilization as attentively as usual here at waka waka waka doesn’t mean it isn’t proceeding apace.
March 23, 2012 – 10:12 pm
The lovely Nina and I, having pried open a tiny gap in our routine of ceaseless toil, made the five-hour drive back to the Outer Cape late last night. We arrived sometime in the “wee small hours of the morning”, and awoke to a clear blue sky, fragrant sea breezes, and warm golden sunshine — […]
I follow a lot of different accounts on Twitter, but one of my favorites is @NASAVoyager2. Here’s the latest: I am currently 13 hrs 37 mins 31 secs of light-travel time from Earth (2012:081:2L) That’s it: cool, calm and collected. I’ve been a follower for months now, and never once have I seen this thing […]
Here’s a thoughtful new item by Sam Harris called Islam and the Future of Liberalism. A sample: As I tried to make clear [in a recent podcast], we know that intolerance within the Muslim world extends far beyond the membership of “extremist’ groups. Recent events in Afghanistan demonstrate, yet again, that ordinary Afghans grow far […]
Here. I assume the Royal Navy has a carrier on the way.
Here, courtesy of VFR, is another illustrative account of the myriad blessings that the cult of Diversity showers upon us all. As anyone with a realistic understanding of history and human nature knows, high diversity erodes social trust and cohesion, and this story has it all: ethnic conflict, identity politics, race-hustling lawyers enriching themselves by […]
Still swamped here, with no time for a long post. At the top of the list of topics on my mind, though, is that insane Dharun Ravi thoughtcrime trial and verdict — in which an (admittedly unlikable) young man is facing 10 years in jail, a permanent felony record, and possible deportation for committing … […]
March 17, 2012 – 12:35 pm
I’m still sweating bullets this weekend trying to solve a baffling work-related technical problem, so here’s a new site for you to have a look at: Lists of Note. I’ll start you off with this list of predictions for the year 2000, made in 1949 by Robert Heinlein. You can take it from there. Heinlein […]
I’ve been grappling for three days with a difficult problem at work and an impending deadline, and so have had no opportunity for writing — though Lord knows there’s a lot going on right now I’d like to comment on: Afghanistan, the Dharun Ravi verdict, the man who was buried alive by pinto beans, etc. […]
March 14, 2012 – 12:32 pm
Anyone have experience with Movable Type upgrades? I have a friend who needs some assistance.
March 14, 2012 – 10:13 am
Oh, no, this is awful. It looks as if Obamacare is going to end up costing more than the Democrats told us it was going to! Who could ever have imagined that they would deceive us like this? I feel so… used.
March 13, 2012 – 11:02 pm
This in my inbox just now, from info@barackobama.com: Friend — If the general election were held today, President Obama would lose to Mitt Romney — according to the latest poll from Washington Post-ABC News. And then there’s this, from today’s Times: Obama’s Rating Falls as Poll Reflects Volatility Despite improving job growth and an extended […]
Having spent hours on the road this afternoon schlepping back to Gotham from Cape Cod’s outer extremity, and facing the prospect of a long and early day of toil tomorrow, I’m feeling much too lazy to write anything this evening. Fortunately, Bill Vallicella has posted up a link I can steal, and it’s just the […]
It was a lovely day today, with golden sunshine and temperature well into the 60’s, and so I took a walk along Mayo Beach, a south-facing harborside littoral a few hundred yards from our wooded hilltop. Readers may recall that Wellfleet has had a rash of dolphin strandings this winter. As I walked the mile-long […]
Here’s a movie I want to see.
Sad news: Peter Bergman, founding member of the Firesign Theater, has died at 72. His New York times obituary is here. For those of us of a certain age and sensibility, Firesign needs no introduction. For the rest of you, there’s YouTube.
In a comment to yesterday’s post on l’affaire Fluke-Limbaugh, I linked to a pair of blog posts by University of Rochester professor Steven Landsburg (sent my way by Dennis Mangan). In the first, Professor Landsburg wrote: [W]hile Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position ”” which […]
In a comment to our recent post about artificial wombs, I quoted some remarks by Lawrence Auster about the ongoing contraception brouhaha. In his post, Mr. Auster had written that liberal/feminist thought understands the issue along the following lines: 1) Society is a collection of equal persons, all having the right to equal freedom. 2) […]
We’ve been hearing ad nauseam about what a cad Rush Limbaugh was to call Sandra Fluke a “slut”. (I certainly agree that he would have been far wiser not to, for assorted good reasons, not least of which being that it was ungentlemanly.) President Obama was shocked — shocked! — to hear such language, and […]
My goodness: it looks like the long Congressional career of Dennis Kucinich might be coming to an end as a result of tonight’s primary in Ohio.
Well, while we’ve been fussing over such trivialities as the essential principles of American society and the fate of our Republic, we’ve missed the big story of the day: a chicken nugget that looks like George Washington. It sold for over eight thousand dollars.
Matters reproductive have been all over the news lately (with Rush Limbaugh’s idiotic tactical blunder getting the most attention over the past few days). One item that might have slipped under the casual observer’s radar is this one, in which a team of researchers have developed an artificial womb to which a blastocyst can successfully […]
With a hat tip to hbd chick (and to reader JK as well), here’s a little test: how well do you know Sunni from Shia Islam? The British, meanwhile, are soon to be experts. Paul Weston explains.
See for yourself, courtesy of Iowahawk.
Folks my age are old enough to remember, wistfully, the golden age of the American manned-spaceflight program, and have with sadness watched NASA’s long descent into senescence and irrelevance — from the virile pioneer of a “new frontier” that it was in the 1960s, to a sedentary bureaucracy tasked with getting children interested in science […]
With a hat tip to John D., have a tour of Kiyosato, a Japanese ghost town.
Here’s a home-delivery service that loses its customers as fast as it finds them.
Over at Reason, Jacob Sullum comments on Sandra Fluke’s testimony before Congress, and on the newly discovered right to make other people subsidize your sex life. See also our recent post on positive versus negative rights, and the balance between rights and privileges in a sturdy and flourishing society. It seems apt to quote a […]
Shocking news this morning: Andrew Breitbart dead at 43.