October 1, 2015 – 9:43 am
Here’s a tart (and uncharacteristically brief) item by Mencius Moldbug that, despite being several years old, seems apropos.
September 30, 2015 – 6:01 pm
Big day in the Mideast: now that the Iranian deal is done, Russia is swiftly consolidating its control over Syria, and is demanding that we leave. As reported in the Jerusalem Post, the Russians are busily establishing a secure zone in the eastern Mediterranean. It appears that they are also mounting airstrikes, but not against […]
September 30, 2015 – 10:02 am
Here’s another story from the Times, and for me, it’s a mighty sad one: The Music May Stop at a Storied Manhattan Studio The facility in question is Avatar Studios, which has for almost forty years been one of the finest recording studios in the world. It is now up for sale, and if history […]
September 29, 2015 – 8:32 pm
Here’s a headline from the New York Times: Rise of Austrian Right Lengthens Shadow of Nazi Era The article comments on the rise in Austria of anti-immigrant sentiment. What is remarkable, although not surprising, is that the entire continuum of political opinion on the question of immigration and and of the ethnic and religious composition […]
September 28, 2015 – 9:33 pm
Well, we’re back. It had been decades since I’d been to Vienna, and I’d forgotten what a lovely city it is. Gracious, orderly, and physically beautiful, it is a perfect embodiment of the sublime cultural achievements of a great civilization at its apex. (That apex is of course long past, but for now the order, […]
September 21, 2015 – 2:52 pm
Having passed a lovely weekend in Vienna, the lovely Nina and I are now in Istanbul. We’ll be back home, and this long-neglected blog will be beginning to get back to normal, early next week. I must say, there is a certain something about seats of empire. Even when the thing has thoroughly run its […]
September 15, 2015 – 9:04 pm
I’ve written several posts about the culture of victimhood and microaggression now hegemonic in academia and elsewhere. Among other points, I’ve noted that such a culture of perceived oppression is actually made possible only by the clemency of the ambient culture: It is as if the grievance culture is a little “virtual machine” running inside […]
September 10, 2015 – 11:09 pm
Even though we’ve only just reopened the storefront here, the business may be mostly shuttered again for the next couple of weeks — this weekend we are off to a musical retreat in the Isles of Shoals, and then we’ll be getting a firsthand look at the European situation for the rest of the month. […]
September 7, 2015 – 10:20 pm
With the migrant crisis in Europe at full boil, immigration is a hot topic. I’ve just had another round with our multiculturalist gadfly in the previous post’s comment thread, but of course we’ve been over all of this before. I invite readers to review, in particular, the long and patient discussion we had here, which […]
September 4, 2015 – 10:46 pm
Though it’s September, and time to get back to business around here, I haven’t had enough quiet time over the past few days to do any serious writing. (Though you may find it hard to believe, it actually takes me rather a long time to produce a substantial post — and then there’s coming up […]
September 2, 2015 – 9:52 pm
Something I hear a lot, in the ultra-blue precincts I haunt, is that the Second Amendment is a superannuated relic, an eighteenth-century atavism, and has no place in modern America. I hear mutterings about flintlocks and muskets, and become aware of a prevailing sentiment that the thing simply ought to be chucked. Well, have a […]
September 1, 2015 – 9:36 pm
It’s September, and time to get back in harness. Have I missed anything? I have nothing prepared for tonight, but the little grey cells should be back in writing order again sometime in the next few days. Meanwhile, here’s a fantastic drum solo, some solid climate heresy, a video clip I find amusing, and some […]
August 22, 2015 – 11:22 am
To a first approximation, every species that ever was is extinct. It is within a rounding error to say that every ancestral lineage that ever began eventually petered out. Imagine Nature as a machine-gunner firing into a crowd. The fact that you and I exist means that for four billion years, our personal ancestors have […]
August 9, 2015 – 12:43 pm
It’s August, and as I do every year I am going to disconnect from the Internet a bit. It’s necessary therapy — particularly so this year, I think, as I think the quality of recent posts has been noticeably off. I also need to take some time to think about just what I want to […]
August 7, 2015 – 12:17 pm
Well, this is interesting: Senator Charles Schumer has decided to oppose the Iran deal. From the New York Times: Advocates on both sides have strong cases for their point of view that cannot simply be dismissed,’ Mr. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a lengthy statement. “This has made evaluating the agreement a difficult […]
August 4, 2015 – 12:28 pm
I don’t often link to WSJ editorials, but their comment here on President Obama’s latest regulatory audacity is worth reading. The gist: the States should simply refuse to be bullied in this way. The WSJ’s idea is that the Court will, rightly, strike this thing down as a usurpation of the law-making power of Congress […]
August 3, 2015 – 10:36 pm
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 […]
I’ve just read a book I must recommend to you all — Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il, by Michael Malice. The book is extraordinary in that it captures, with frightening accuracy, not only the near-solipsistic narcissism of the fully developed totalitarian dictator, but also the seductiveness of the expertly managed personality […]
With a hat-tip to our reader and commenter Libertybelle, here’s a strong piece by Mark Steyn on the way things happen.
Here’s a good item, just posted to an aging comment-thread by the indefatigable JK: Why Does the Republican Party Exist? For some real political geekdom, read the last link in the article, on the highway-bill’s pension gimmick. Also just in from JK: this explanation of Donald Trump’s surging popularity.
Here is an article from Vox about a trans-gendered high-school student, with a female body, who wants to use the boy’s bathroom. The title of the piece is: A federal judge said being transgender is a mental disorder. Here’s why he’s wrong. The piece relies for its argument on the recent (2013) reclassification, by the […]
Here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know about: “anting”. From Gilbert Waldbauer’s What Good are Bugs?: The amazing behaviors by which many birds, including some quail and a multitude of perching birds, use or solicit ants to free their bodies of lice and parasitic mites are known as anting, Birds ant in two quite different […]
OK, this is interesting: ‘Impossible’ rocket drive works and could get to Moon in four hours Some details here.
Here’s a treat: Dick Cavett interviewing the great Oscar Peterson at the piano. And when you’re done with that, check this out.
Here’s a good post by Lewis Amselem, a.k.a. ‘Diplomad’, on race relations in the West. He begins: Let me be blunt: I find that discussions of race quickly get boring, idiotic, inconclusive, and, often, verbally and even physically violent. Race tells you very little if anything about a person and his or her attributes except, […]
On presentism: One of the characteristic mental disorders of our period is an easy contempt for the past. It’s not just that we are taught to hate the past, for one can respect and still detest an enemy. It’s that we despise it. We observe it with an easy, swaggering and thoroughly unquestioned contempt. We […]
This is just the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. I can hardly focus my eyes on it.
High political drama in the Senate today: a blistering speech by Ted Cruz. The blisteree: Mitch McConnell. You’ll be hearing more about this. Here.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A biology professor and two of his graduate students are doing field-work in the jungle. Suddenly they are surrounded by tribal warriors brandishing spears and clubs. They are quickly subdued and taken to a village a few miles away. The Chief appears. He glowers at them and says: […]
It appears that the intellectual and philosophical conclave known as ‘neo-reaction’, or the ‘Dark Enlightenment’, has just made its first memetic inroad into the broader political culture, with the derogatory neologism ‘cuckservative’. The term refers to ‘conservatives’, generally white and male, who, cowed and ensorcelled by the hegemonic multiculturalism and relativism of what neo-reactionaries calls […]
For God’s sake, please, please, just leave us alone.
Here. Also: Bob Corker, who led the Senate’s disgraceful abrogation of its Constitutional treaty power with regard to the Iran deal, is suddenly upset that the President rushed the deal to the U.N. before Congress could complete its 60-day ‘review’ of the treaty — a deal that by the Senate’s own actions had already been […]
This may ring a bell: There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and […]
Busy few days coming up. Back soon.
Here is an excellent piece on why putting women in combat is such a bad idea. I’d post an excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing. See also this older item by Fred Reed. Throughout history, wise societies have realized that women, as the source of, and natural limit to, future generations, are […]
Former Spook ‘Nate Hale’ comments, here.
Here’s a nice item: an undercover video showing Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services, Deborah Nucatola, discussing availability and prices of aborted body parts. I expect you will be hearing more about this. In particular, it will be of interest to hear from Hillary Clinton, who in 2009 received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award. […]
Here. May I also recommend to you an excellent book: The Neglected Sun, which makes a persuasive case that the effect on the Sun on Earth’s climate is significantly underestimated in mainstream climate models and the IPCC’s reports and predictions.
Recently a commenter scoffed at suggestions that, given the sudden anathematization of all things Confederate, statues honoring Confederate heroes might soon be removed. Fast forward a week, and we’re already moving past anything so tame as that — to the actual disinterment of the dead. No announcement yet as to which lamp-post will display the […]
Do you like your little town just the way it is? Does it seem appropriate to you that, as free Americans, our communities ought to enjoy local control of zoning, schools, and other civic concerns? Well, enjoy it while it lasts, you racist, because the Transformer-In-Chief has other plans. Things are moving awfully fast these […]
The other day, in the context of the gagging and grinding-into-the-dust of a dissenting Oregonian baker, I mentioned Tom Nichols’ observation about the difference between authoritarians and totalitarians: that the former only cares about what you do, while the latter must also control what you think. Totalitarians demand not only obedience, but conversion. Mr. Nichols […]
Making the rounds today is a neural-network project from Google called DeepDream. It’s an open-source effort to train neural networks to recognize images (for you programmers, the code is here). I haven’t had any time to give this a close look, but if I understand correctly, when the system is presented with an unfamiliar image […]
Just a few topical ones: ‣ Patrick Buchanan (pre-Greek-referendum-result) on the E.U.’s worsening cohesion. ‣ Milton Friedman saw this coming. ‣ Dark Independence-Day ruminations by Dymphna. ‣ On spree killings. ‣ Your tax dollars at work (well, if you live in Oregon’s Gresham-Barlow school district).
A recent exchange on Twitter (another urgent call for gun bans, in reaction to the spree-killing in Charleston) reminded me once again the extent to which gun-control zealots are driven, not by reason and wisdom, but by missionary Utopianism, cultural resentment, naive and sheltered pacifism, and lust for social control. (As someone once said, gun […]
Or, Woe to the Vanquished, Part II. What’s the difference between authoritarians and totalitarians? As Tom Nichols observed recently: the former only cares about what you do, while the latter must also control what you think. They demand not only obedience, but conversion. Things are moving fast these days. This acceleration is exactly what we […]
From the latest Radio Derb, here’s a corking rant by John Derbyshire on the latest national frenzy: the destruction and damnation of all symbols of the Confederacy. It’s so good that I reprint it here in full, with some emphasis added. Back there in our April 11th podcast I noted the 150th anniversary of Robert […]
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we present the most numerous vertebrate on Earth: the bristlemouth.