Monthly Archives: April 2012

Seriously?

April 30, 2012 – 10:34 pm

Here’s an item from NightWatch‘s Robert McCreary: Iran: For the record. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei provided the following guidance in response to a question about whether it was sinful to use social media. “In general, the use of social networking websites (such as Facebook, FriendFeed, Orkut, etc) is impermissible if their use entails a corrupt […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion | Comments (1)

Too Much Information

April 30, 2012 – 6:15 pm

Here’s a hilarious newspaper clipping, sent to Lawrence Auster by a reader: Read the caption carefully.

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (7)

First World Problem

April 30, 2012 – 6:04 pm

Here we are in 2012, and the most advanced technological civilization that has ever existed is stymied by three tons of meat in a log cabin. What was it that Emerson said about hobgoblins?

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

The Call Of The Wild

April 26, 2012 – 10:09 pm

First thing tomorrow I’m driving down to Milburn Landing State Park, near Pocomoke City, MD, for a weekend of camping with some boyhood chums: a long-overdue reunion inspired by a weekend we spent there 40 years ago this summer. One of us lives in San Diego, one in Minnesota, one in Cincinnati, and one in […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

News You Can Use

April 23, 2012 – 9:37 pm

Sitting for a portrait? Keep this in mind. Going on a date? Head for Peter Luger’s. Last, but not least: there’s no need to be glum just because Earth Day’s over. Not until you’ve read Iowahawk’s annual homage to Gaia, anyway.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Noose And Weather

April 23, 2012 – 4:05 pm

Here’s some murderous rage from Forbes contributor Steve Zwick, who is scouting out lamp-posts for those who refuse to fall in line with his views on anthropogenic global warming: We know who the active denialists are — not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Global Warming | Comments (8)

Get Rich Quick

April 22, 2012 – 8:27 pm

Nothing to it.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Mightier Than The S-word

April 22, 2012 – 8:19 pm

Well, it appears that Marine le Pen will be the kingmaker in France this time around, having attracted fully a fifth of French voters to her National Front party in today’s election. This was nearly double the turnout for her opposite number on the Socialist far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Assuming that National Front supporters will […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (6)

Spring Break

April 21, 2012 – 10:25 pm

Sorry, haven’t had much to say since getting back, and it might be quiet here for a few more days. I need a little recess while I think about things.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Levon Helm, 1940-2012

April 19, 2012 – 3:58 pm

Anyone of a “certain age” will be saddened by the death of Levon Helm, who has succumbed to cancer at age 71. His rustic voice was a big part of the soundtrack of our youth, and it hurts to see it silenced.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (0)

Plenty of Room

April 19, 2012 – 12:09 am

Longtime readers will know that I’m a big admirer of Richard Feynman. In the nanotech discussions last week at SU, there was frequent mention of his visionary 1959 lecture There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, which is widely regarded as the genesis of the field. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can read […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

That Was Fun

April 17, 2012 – 5:07 pm

I’m back from my trip to Singularity University, and I’ll just say it was one of the more remarkable experiences I’ve ever had — something like a futurist’s boot-camp, in the company of a hundred or so very smart people. The days’ events began at about 8 a.m., typically didn’t let up until midnight or […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Service Notice

April 10, 2012 – 11:43 pm

I’ll be away for a few days: my friend Salim Ismail has invited me to participate in a program this week out at Singularity University, so I’ll be flying to San Francisco early Wednesday morning. I’ll be posting when I can — this looks like it’s going to be a fascinating experience — but the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (12)

Fool On The Hill

April 10, 2012 – 10:36 am

Life is a risky business. To reach a comfortable dotage, one must thread one’s way past such omnipresent mortal hazards as cancer, auto wrecks, random assault, falling objects, air disasters, bullets stray or otherwise, atherosclerosis, capsizings, snakebite, cyclones, suicidal depression, carbon-monoxide leaks, cerebral haemorrhage, defenestration, shark attack, overdose, industrial accidents, poisoning, autoerotic asphyxiation, crib death, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (3)

NATO’s Chickens: Home To Roost

April 8, 2012 – 10:46 pm

Armed with weapons purloined from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal, Tuareg fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb give us what I think is referred to around Washington these days as a “teachable moment”. Today’s lesson? The law of unintended consequences.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (1)

Whither The Buck?

April 6, 2012 – 10:44 pm
This entry is part 13 of 15 in the series Free Will

Sam Harris, the neuroscientist who made his bones as an anti-religious gadfly and member of the atheist “Four Horsemen” (now down, sadly, to three), has been writing and speaking lately about “free will”. The expression is rendered in scare-quotes because in Dr. Harris’s view “free will”, as generally imagined, is an illusion, and less: it […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Free Will | Comments (3)

Google Glasses

April 6, 2012 – 12:20 pm

So: here’s the latest inevitable step toward having our brains permanently jacked into the Internet. Are you going to want a pair of these? In this demo the user talks to his glasses. But what’s the endpoint here? Once the interface is fast and intuitive enough, so that we can send and receive data as […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Man Is the Only Real Enemy We Have

April 5, 2012 – 9:38 pm

Here’s Eric Hoffer, writing in 1975: After all that we have seen with our own eyes there ought not to be a grownup person who is not contemptuous of the gibberish about an ideal society and does not look for the lineaments of a commissar in the features of an idealist loudmouth. The trouble is […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (2)

Gloves Coming Off

April 3, 2012 – 10:18 pm

In case you’ve been shackled to a drainpipe for the past couple of weeks, there’s been an escalating tension in the air over the fate of Obamacare, now that the Supreme Court has heard the case. President Obama, warning the other day that he would view a negative ruling by the Court as “judicial activism”, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (8)

Sign Me Up

April 3, 2012 – 6:02 pm

For one of these.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Too Much Information

April 2, 2012 – 4:48 pm

Our friend David Duff posted an item today in which he quoted an article from James Bamford at Wired about a new U.S. data-storage facility: Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (14)

Service Notice

April 1, 2012 – 11:59 am

No posting today: I’m heading off to Ephrata, PA, for the annual banquet and awards ceremony of the national quilter’s association I’ve been sewing with since my early twenties. (I’ve been quilting since I was a boy; I should post some photos of some of my work sometime.) My latest piece, which expresses the deepening […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)