Monthly Archives: April 2016

Blue, Red, Black

April 29, 2016 – 1:43 pm

I’ve often mentioned a popular neoreactionary metaphor, the “red pill” (in fact I did so just two posts ago). Now, with a hat-tip to the latest edition of Nick Steves’ weekly roundup, we offer you an essay by Brett Stevens about another existential medicament: the black pill. What is the black pill? In a word, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Rubbish, Reaction | Comments (39)

Mission Accomplished

April 27, 2016 – 11:09 pm

While we in the moribund West gabble self-congratulatory nonsense about the “right” and “wrong” sides of history, China — which doesn’t bother with such rubbish — is rapidly reconfiguring itself. It has always been aware of the risks that Western infection brings, and so it is clamping down on foreign influences, and on the free […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (11)

Democracy: Taking On Water

April 26, 2016 – 10:05 pm

Today I read an item in The Atlantic about an amusing story from the UK. Apparently Her Majesty’s Government has commissioned, at great expense, a state-of-the-art climate-research ship. The vessel needed a name, and so the public was asked to provide one. They did. The winner of the poll, by a large margin, was “Boaty […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (7)

Energy Is Life

April 25, 2016 – 10:51 pm

I’ve mentioned the fossil-fuels advocate Alex Epstein several times in these pages, most recently back on April 13th. Here he is making his case last week before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Note in particular the odious, and evidently wholly unlettered, Senator Barbara Boxer mocking Mr. Epstein (at 7:20, and again at the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish, Global Warming, Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Science | Comments (2)

Back

April 24, 2016 – 7:37 pm

Time to start betting back to regular operations around here, I think. It was good to take some time off, and I thank all of you who visit here regularly for your patience. I’ll confess that it’s been a little harder lately for me to keep to daily blogging; I’ve had many distractions, and I […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Reaction | Comments (6)

Service Notice, and Open Thread 14

April 17, 2016 – 8:12 pm

Need a few days offline, folks. Back later this week, or early next.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (13)

One Cheer for OSU

April 15, 2016 – 5:40 pm

With a hat-tip to our reader Henry, here is a link to a video of an Ohio State University employee explaining to a group of student protestors that if they do not vacate the building they are occupying, they will be arrested and expelled. It’s a beginning, and a welcome one, although in my opinion […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (11)

April 13th

April 13, 2016 – 12:14 pm

We note, as always on this date, the natal day of Guy Fawkes, Thomas Jefferson, F.W. Woolworth, James Ensor, Butch Cassidy, Sir Arthur “Bomber’ Harris, Robert Watson-Watt, Samuel Beckett, Harold Stassen, Stanislaw Ulam, Eudora Welty, Howard Keel, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Ken Nordine, Don Adams, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Seamus Heaney, Paul Sorvino, Jack Casady, Tony Dow, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (10)

Nature Vs. Nurture

April 13, 2016 – 12:03 pm

Over the transom today came a link (thank you, Bill K.) to Diplomad’s latest salvo: At War with the History of Mankind. Dip makes the point that a central tenet of modern Leftist ideology (which is, as I and others have argued at length, essentially a cryptoreligious belief-system) is to make Nature sacred, and mankind […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Religion, Global Warming | Comments (53)

Equal Time

April 12, 2016 – 3:58 pm

It’s “Equal Pay Day”, so here’s a video by Christina Hoff Sommers on this evergreen gripe.

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

Through the Looking-Glass

April 11, 2016 – 12:48 pm

“What a curious world this is!” thought Alice. “Everything is upside-down and backwards!” “We are ruled by the oppressed, the only sin is to believe in sin, the only tradition is the destruction of tradition, ‘anti-racism’ means loathing white people, and ‘education’ means un-learning one’s culture!” She nibbled thoughtfully on the little cake the Mad […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (8)

Is This A Great Company, Or What?

April 9, 2016 – 1:31 pm

In his book Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern, Douglas R. Hofstadter discussed the idea of “recursive acronyms”. He gave as an example the acronym TATO, which stands for “TATO And TATO Only”. The expansion goes like this: 1. TATO 2. TATO And TATO Only 3. (TATO And TATO Only) And […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (8)

Low Ceiling

April 9, 2016 – 12:46 pm

Our previous post — a link, with excerpts and brief commentary, to an essay by Dennis Prager on how leftism and statism step in to fill the void left by religion — seems to have left some readers puzzled. Here are some further thoughts of my own: The religious impulse, the need for sacred objects, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Religion, Reaction | Comments (23)

Dennis Prager on Secularism

April 6, 2016 – 8:12 pm

Dennis Prager published an insightful item yesterday, entitled “A Note to Conservatives Who Are Secular”. We read: The vast majority of leading conservative writers, just like their liberal colleagues, have a secular outlook on life. With few exceptions, the conservative political and intellectual worlds are oblivious to the consequences of secularism. They are unaware of […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction, Politics, Religion | Comments (16)

Bend That Arc!

April 5, 2016 – 8:01 pm

In 1968, the Fair Housing Act made it the law of the land that owners of property could not refuse to sell or rent it on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or national origin. In 1988 the list was expanded to include family status and disabilities. Absent from this list of criteria was […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, Religion | Comments (29)

Cutting Them Off at the Pass

April 4, 2016 – 10:28 pm

We haven’t said much about the situation in Europe lately, but with warmer weather coming, “migrant” flows will increase, and the social and political climate is going to heat up as well. Already, as we see here, the Schengen idea is becoming unsupportable. I will be in Vienna in July. I wonder what things will […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad, Immigration | Comments (3)

Schrödinger’s Trout?

April 4, 2016 – 1:40 pm

Our reader Henry has sent us this interesting item, in which we learn that fishes and quanta have more in common than we thought.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (13)

My Little Chickadee

April 3, 2016 – 9:41 pm

A black-capped chickadee, to be precise. (Beech Forest Trail, Provincetown, MA, last Thursday.)  

By Malcolm | Posted in Cape Cod | Comments (7)

On Intentionality

April 1, 2016 – 5:15 pm

Commenter “Jacques”, last seen (by me, at least) over at Maverick Philosopher, has joined our recent thread on consciousness and intentionality. (Discussions on older posts can often go on unsuspected by other readers, so I thought I’d mention it. Also, it’s a nice change from the grim topics we usually handle around here these days.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy | Comments (1)

It Takes All Sorts

April 1, 2016 – 4:27 pm

Here’s a nice visualization of sorting algorithms. (If you’re interested.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Science, Technology | Comments (12)