Monthly Archives: January 2016

Plug

January 31, 2016 – 11:55 pm

Readers will be aware that I’m recovering, slowly, from having my left knee replaced. (It’ll be three weeks tomorrow since the surgery.) The operation was actually a redo of the original job, last March, which turned out to have been botched. Total knee replacement is major surgery — it inflicts a grievous wound, and the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (14)

Confess!

January 31, 2016 – 7:33 pm

We’ve written often (for example, here) about the unbroken ideological and doctrinal thread connecting the Puritanism of the Massachusetts Bay Colony with the modern, secular religion of the Left. The “mission into the wilderness” continues unabated, its outward forms unaltered. All that changes is the temporal object of the mission: the MacGuffin varies from picture […]

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

Circling The Drain

January 30, 2016 – 4:30 pm

I meant to comment on this when it happened a few days ago: Rome’s nude statues covered up ahead of Rouhani visit In further concession to Iranian president, official dinner with Italian PM does not include wine on the menu What a craven, flabby, neutered thing our civilization has become. This is what ACID syndrome […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reaction | Comments (10)

What Say You, Tea Leaves?

January 28, 2016 – 4:37 pm

It’s been almost a year — it was February 28th, 2015 — since I predicted that Hillary Clinton would not be the Democratic nominee. (Readers can find the historic vaticination — upon which I immediately staked a bottle of whisky in a wager with our commenter ‘The One Eyed Man’ — in the comment-thread here.) […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (21)

Rules Of Order

January 27, 2016 – 2:39 pm

Here’s an extended meditation on that modern Sisyphus, Wile E. Coyote, and on the genius of his creator, Chuck Jones.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Hoplology 101

January 26, 2016 – 7:55 pm

Here’s another clarifying and informative piece by Sean Davis on firearms: 14 Things Everyone Should Understand About Guns. (I say “another” above because we’ve linked to Mr. Davis’s articles, such as this one, before.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (13)

The Thucydides Trap

January 23, 2016 – 11:22 pm

In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes wrote the following about why humans fight: ”˜So that in the nature of man, we find three principal causes of quarrel. First, competition; secondly, diffidence; thirdly, glory. The first maketh men invade for gain; the second for safety; and the third for reputation. The first use violence, to make themselves masters […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture, Foreign Affairs, Military | Comments (35)

Old School

January 22, 2016 – 10:20 pm

My boy Nick just sent me a link to a YouTube channel that you might find interesting. (I did.) Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

Gyre, Widening

January 22, 2016 – 8:00 pm

I have to say: it would be hard to imagine a livelier political season, or one more fitting for these times. Over on the left, Hillary Clinton is watching it all slip away all over again — this time to a pallid, septuagenarian Marxist from Vermont. (I’ve had many wonderful blessings in my life, but […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (23)

Open Thread 12, Etc.

January 20, 2016 – 9:47 pm

I’m still way too fuzzy to write, so just a couple of links: First, an amusing little allegory posted at Gates of Vienna (with a h/t to Bill Keezer; I’ve been offline a lot this week, and hadn’t visited GoV in a few days). Second, I think a recent podcast by John D. on the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (36)

If Looks Could Kill

January 19, 2016 – 3:19 pm

You just might have to watch this more than once.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (18)

Floating Metaphor Captured in Gulf

January 18, 2016 – 6:00 pm

The big story over the past week has been the news from Iran: the ransoming of our hostages, the fat payoff for the nuclear deal (but I repeat myself), and the humiliating capture by Iran of riverine patrol boats allegedly adrift in the Gulf. Normally I’d really be digging in on this one, but it’s […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (7)

The Kindness of Strangers

January 15, 2016 – 2:25 pm

Just got a package from Amazon containing a CD by the rock band Clutch. I have no idea who sent it to me, but I do get the occasional item in the mail from readers (mostly books). Anyway, thanks, whoever you are. This is not exactly the sort of thing I usually listen to, but […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (35)

Service Notice

January 11, 2016 – 12:27 pm

OK, off for knee-revision surgery at 4:30. Back in harness before too long, I expect. At the very least I’ll post something, just as “proof of life”, as soon as I am able. If not, carry on! The barbarians are at the gates. Update, January 13th: I’m back home, but completely knackered. It was a […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (36)

David Bowie, 1947-2016

January 11, 2016 – 12:12 pm

I was shocked and saddened to read this morning that David Bowie has died of cancer at age 69. He was one of the greatest artists of my age. He touched nothing that he did not adorn. I consider myself enormously fortunate to have had a slight personal acquaintance with Mr. Bowie. (I met him […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording, Society and Culture | Comments (5)

Dead Man Walking

January 10, 2016 – 1:35 pm

I don’t know if you’ve been following this crazy Sean-Penn-El-Chapo story, but what an incredible dope Sean Penn is: The Man Who Got El Chapo Arrested. He will now have every neck-tattooed La Santa Muerte gang-banger south of the Rio Grande hunting him down until the end of his days. I reckon that at this […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

An Onomastic Oversight

January 10, 2016 – 12:46 pm

In a post a few months ago, while developing a metaphor involving collapsing stars, I commented on the vulnerabilities of the load-bearing structures that support a civilization’s weight: Given that what gives a culture its form is essentially ‘memetic’ — an aggregation of ideas, lore, mythos, history, music, religion, duties, obligations, affinities, and aversions shared […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reaction | Comments (10)

Many Roads. One Summit?

January 10, 2016 – 1:04 am

Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella has taken on the question, raised by a disciplinary action at Wheaton College, of whether Christians and Muslims worship the “same God”. I’m not a religious believer myself, but over the past decade or so the naive atheism of my earlier years has withered away to a sympathetic agnosticism, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (15)

Friday Miscellany

January 8, 2016 – 5:51 pm

Sorry for another grab-bag post, but even with all that’s going on in the U.S. and abroad I just don’t have the “bandwidth” to do much writing at the moment. (It may not be until I’ve recovered a bit from Monday’s surgery that things will get back to normal around here.) I’m also so fatigued […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (34)

Still Here

January 5, 2016 – 12:45 am

Sorry about the quiet spell here, readers. Our lovely daughter (newly betrothed!) has been visiting us from Vienna over the “hols”, and it’s been good to disconnect from the wider world for a couple of weeks. I’m sorry to say, also, that another hiatus is coming up soon. Some of you may remember that I […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)