Monthly Archives: May 2014

Who Knew?

May 30, 2014 – 11:16 pm

I haven’t written about martial arts in a while, but coming across a silly little article in Popular Mechanics prompts me to do so today. The article begins with some fawning hyperbole: Forget all those broken boards and crumbled concrete slabs. No feat of martial arts is more impressive than Bruce Lee’s famous strike, the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (2)

Uh-oh

May 28, 2014 – 8:04 pm

Google’s just revealed its workplace demographics. The breakdown for tech workers: 60% white, 34% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% black. Pass the popcorn. Addendum, 5/29: I neglected to add above that the breakdown by sex is: women 17%, men 83%. Nobody should be surprised by any of this. To get through the multilevel Google tech interview, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Technology | Comments (6)

Vox Clamantis

May 27, 2014 – 12:38 pm

Our reader Henry has sent us a link to the latest crop of “Random Thoughts” from Thomas Sowell. Some excerpts: Some people act as if the answer to every problem is to put more money and power in the hands of politicians. * Republicans in Congress seem to be drawn toward the immigration issue like […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

We Can Dream, Can’t We?

May 26, 2014 – 9:04 pm

Here’s George Will outlining the sort of presidential candidate he’s hoping for next time round. I have to say, I think that if someone actually presented himself to the voters as Mr. Will proposes, he’d win by a landslide. At the very least, he’d certainly get my vote.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (4)

Newton’s Third Law

May 24, 2014 – 8:07 pm

Well! Good news from across the Big Ditch, as the “bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” known as UKIP did very well indeed in yesterday’s elections. Here’s a happy reaction from UK blogger ‘Anna Racoon’, in which she writes: So peace finally reigns in the old ‘Muppet show’ studio ‘D’ at Elstree, from where […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (1)

Pedal To The Metal. Headlamps Off.

May 22, 2014 – 11:38 pm

Writing at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald reports on an item from the collection of classified material leaked by Edward Snowden: a report on the ways that “Western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction”. I can’t say that any of it should come as a […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

Stalk Show

May 20, 2014 – 5:27 pm

Here’s something really beautiful: photographs of subtropical fungi by Australian photographer Steve Axford.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (2)

What STEM Shortage?

May 19, 2014 – 2:39 pm

We’ve been hearing for years that the only way America can stay ‘competitive’ is to admit hordes of foreign engineers to supplement our inadequate supply of homegrown STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) workers. The constant influx of these workers on H-1B visas has kept wages in these fields from rising for many years now. But […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Spurious Correlations

May 17, 2014 – 11:25 pm

Just discovered a terrific online resource. Have a look.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Wade In The Balance

May 16, 2014 – 11:06 pm

Reviews and reactions to Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History have been many, and varied. The book is as polarizing as we all expected: for some it is racist ‘pseudoscience’, while for others it is a social and scientific watershed. I linked last week to hbd*chick’s roundup of these reviews; Occam’s […]

By Malcolm | Posted in HBD | Comments (0)

Too Pooped To Post

May 15, 2014 – 9:52 pm

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.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (2)

Pardon The Stench

May 14, 2014 – 8:44 pm

We haven’t been covering political events very closely of late, so here are two items of interest. In the first, we learn that the Executive Branch has been short-circuiting deportation proceedings for thousands of criminal aliens, choosing instead just to let them go. Apparently this cohort, now at large within our borders again, have already […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Wabbling Back To The Fire

May 13, 2014 – 11:29 pm

From Eric Hoffer’s Before the Sabbath, 1975: It is disconcerting that present-day young who did not know Stalin and Hitler are displaying the old naiveté. After all that has happened they still do not know that you cannot build utopia without terror, and that before long terror is all that’s left.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (3)

Links

May 12, 2014 – 11:14 pm

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. — […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (6)

The Incredible Shrinking Man

May 7, 2014 – 11:05 pm

A few days ago we linked to a defiant essay by a young, Jewish college student in which, having been told once too often to ‘check his privilege’, he examined the ‘privileges’ his family had enjoyed in the Holocaust, and during the struggle of its surviving members to build a life in postwar America. Here’s […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reaction | Comments (21)

The Leidenfrost Effect

May 6, 2014 – 3:34 pm

Courtesy of the indefatigable JK. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (2)

Triple-Decker

May 5, 2014 – 8:57 pm

Our pal Mangan directed us yesterday to an interesting item, from Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs, on the idea of ‘political correctness’ as an expression, not of one’s actual beliefs, but as a ‘signaling’ mechanism employed to enhance status. (This is not a new idea, but this is a good treatment of it.) Inside the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, The Economy | Comments (0)

Conservation Of Asymmetry

May 3, 2014 – 9:07 pm

A sharp excerpt from a post by Bryce Laliberte: Equality is alien to nature… Democracy is opposed to order, for it is fundamentally a kind of disorder; order entails the accumulation of capital, material and social, which likewise entails a hierarchy and the attendant high asymmetries of power. Democracy precludes the accumulation of power by […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (0)

Bring It On Home

May 3, 2014 – 2:39 pm

Kevin Spacey: new face of the Dark Enlightenment. Here. (h/t: Nick Land.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (0)