October 29, 2014 – 10:38 am
Here’s Wellfleet Harbor, just after sunset Sunday.
October 28, 2014 – 7:43 pm
Is this: https://twitter.com/MetricButtload/status/527208639833333761 It was posted in response to this item, which explains that behind closed doors president Obama and his staff refer to Mr. Netanyahu as a “chickenshit”. It’s easy, of course, to see what Mr. Obama and his cadre find so galling — and so threatening — about Mr. Netanyahu. He is a […]
October 28, 2014 – 6:07 pm
The comedian Bill Maher has, throughout his career, been a darling of the Left. His smug and odious schtick has for years consisted of taunting and ridiculing conservatives, Republicans, Christians, and pretty much anyone who represents American traditional values. (That he chooses to do so in the coarsest and most vulgar terms imaginable only serves […]
October 27, 2014 – 1:29 pm
Last week at Maverick Philosopher, Bill V. put up a post comparing the introvert with the extrovert: The extrovert is like a mirror: being nothing in himself, he is only what he reflects. A caricature, no doubt, but useful in delineation of an ideal type. This is why the extrovert needs others. Without them, he […]
October 26, 2014 – 4:52 pm
I love autumn in the Outer Cape. Here are a few photos I’ve snapped around Wellfleet lately: Here’s the sky in tatters over Wellfleet Harbor after last week’s storm: And some fall color along Commercial Street: A leaden sky over Cape Cod Bay, looking southwest from Bound Brook Island: […]
October 25, 2014 – 5:29 pm
It is with deep sadness that I must report the death of the great Jack Bruce, who died today in England at age 71. He was a giant to me, and my heart is heavy tonight. You can read about his life, and his long musical career, here.
October 24, 2014 – 9:36 pm
This from Hillary Clinton today: “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” I kid you not.
October 24, 2014 – 9:10 pm
On my bookshelf at home is a massive tome called Gravitation, by the great astrophysicists Charles Misner, John Wheeler and Kip Thorne. I picked it up at a used-book sale about twenty years ago, at a time when I was reading everything I could get my hands on about cosmology and relativistic physics. It was […]
October 23, 2014 – 11:41 pm
This just in: RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson says there’s no evidence of a link between Parliament Hill gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau and Martin Couture-Rouleau, who ran down two Canadian soldiers in Quebec on Monday. No, nothing linking these two. Can’t seem to turn up anything they might have had in common. Well, here’s one thing: they […]
October 23, 2014 – 11:05 pm
More and more over the past decade or so I’ve become convinced that modern, secular, post-Enlightenment civilization — perhaps high civilization in any form, but especially the sort we live in today — operates in such a way as inexorably to extinguish itself. Writing in the early 20th century, the prominent Progressive intellectual and author […]
October 19, 2014 – 11:39 pm
I’ve been neglectful of the blog this past week — it’s been five days since the last post. I’ve been busy, but that’s not all of it; there are times when the well just runs dry, and this has been one of them. It certainly isn’t as if there isn’t a lot going on that’s […]
October 14, 2014 – 9:02 pm
As is usually the case on Tuesdays, I’m working late, so “hie thee hence” to the Maverick Philosopher’s website, where our man Bill has put together an excellent post on this vexatious question. Better yet, Bill has opened the post to comments — a rarity these days — so if any of our liberal readers […]
October 14, 2014 – 12:05 pm
The Pacific Northwest has been getting a little warmer over the past century or so. As reported by the New York Times, however, a new (“and”, the Times hastens to add, “most likely controversial”) study shows that this appears not to have been due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Story here.
October 13, 2014 – 9:55 pm
In middle age, after a youth of unreflective atheism, I began to have a serious interest in the role of religion in human affairs, and in the doctrine and philosophy of the great religions. I determined to educate myself, with a particular focus on the history and teachings of Christianity and Islam. I’m still an […]
October 11, 2014 – 10:05 pm
I’m sorry to see this: Paul Revere, of the 60’s band Paul Revere and the Raiders, has died. Geoffrey Holder, too. Man, I’m starting to feel old.
October 9, 2014 – 8:30 pm
Most of you have likely heard of the ‘Fermi Paradox’: the puzzling fact that, despite the uncountable multitudes of stars in the sky, and the overwhelming likelihood that myriads of them have habitable planets, we have never seen any conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life. Why is this? Given the immense age of the Universe, and […]
October 9, 2014 – 7:32 pm
If the U.S. is going to be involved at all in the Mideast snake-pit — and it appears that it is — then there is one party that stands out as being worthy of our trust and support, namely the Kurds. They are currently being exterminated, while we shift from foot to foot, inspect our […]
October 9, 2014 – 1:26 pm
Given that global surface temperatures haven’t warmed for the past twenty years or so, our minders have been telling us for a while now that the reason is that all that excess heat’s been going into the deep oceans. (Nobody predicted that, but never mind.) Whoops! Not so, according to NASA. More here.
October 8, 2014 – 12:32 pm
Here’s withering essay on homeschooling from NRO’s Kevin Williamson. I have to say that Mr. Williamson is anomalously forthright and frank for an NRO staffer (see, for instance, this item from a week or two ago). Sooner or later (sooner, by the look of things), he’s going to earn himself a Derb-fenestration, methinks.
October 7, 2014 – 11:05 pm
I’m working late tonight — so for now, here’s some Q&A about that “impossible” spaceship drive I mentioned a while back. Also, here’s one person’s attempt to model the cultural manifold that will provide the context for the next civil war. I’ll say also, just in passing, how surprised I am that the Supreme Court […]
October 5, 2014 – 10:02 pm
Sir Henry Sumner Maine on the locus of power in democracies: Political liberty, said Hobbes, is political power. When a man burns to be free, he is not longing for the “desolate freedom of the wild ass”; what he wants is a share of political government. But, in wide democracies, political power is minced into […]
October 3, 2014 – 10:32 pm
We heard some crowing today about the latest jobs report. What you didn’t hear is who got those jobs. It turns out that all of the gain went to people aged 55 and older, who picked up 230,000 jobs. (You can imagine what sort of jobs those are.) Meanwhile, those in the prime earning years […]
October 1, 2014 – 11:33 pm
I see that the Times is laying off another hundred newsroom workers. Take heart, though: good journalism will live on.