Monthly Archives: May 2016

Creative Destruction

May 30, 2016 – 11:46 am

Here’s a question for abortion absolutists: A woman wishes to write a book about abortion. In order to give her work perspective and authenticity, she decides to become pregnant in order to experience an abortion herself. Being of independent means, she will pay all of the medical expenses. Is there anything morally wrong with what […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (31)

You Are a Slow Learner, Winston

May 30, 2016 – 11:45 am

From the mail, yesterday:     Not quite what the Framers had in mind, I think.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Reaction | Comments (4)

Service Notice, and Open Thread 15

May 28, 2016 – 1:30 pm

We have house-guests this holiday weekend, and it would be unsociable of me to roost at the computer. Back next week. The floor is yours, if you like.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Everything’s Coming Up Roses

May 26, 2016 – 11:34 am

Ah, what a lovely morning. Why? Well, it’s a balmy spring day here in the Outer Cape, where the air is fresh and fragrant, the little birds are singing, and the trees are stretching their new leaves in the golden May sunshine. Even better, though, a new report from the State Department’s Office of the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (14)

Something is Happening Here, But You Don’t Know What It Is

May 25, 2016 – 6:57 pm

Well, maybe some mainstream conservatives are actually beginning to. Here, for instance, is Rod Dreher, rising from the fainting couch (h/t to Porter): The media have soft-pedaled this thing, but when it gets right down to it, all the diversity rhetoric in the world is not going to matter when a man recognizes that in […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (17)

“Cucked by Zuck”

May 24, 2016 – 1:13 pm

An entertaining item by Milo Yiannopoulis, here. My own feeling about this: Facebook can do what it likes, and anyone on the Right who expects fair treatment from Mark Zuckerberg is a fool.

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

Paul Gottfried’s Latest

May 23, 2016 – 11:24 pm

Paul Gottfried has a new book out. I’ve mentioned Professor Gottfried here before (in particular, I strongly recommend his books Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy and After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State); his latest is called Fascism: The Career of a Concept. The word “fascism” has become little […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Books, Reaction, Society and Culture | Comments (0)

TOTD

May 21, 2016 – 9:23 pm

Retweeted today by Christina Hoff Sommers:  

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (6)

We’ll Tweet Again; Don’t Know Where, Don’t Know Venn

May 20, 2016 – 3:50 pm

Bernie Sanders has suggested that Hillary Clinton is unqualified for the Presidency. As you might imagine, I didn’t need much persuading, but after seeing this tweet, I’d say the case is closed:    

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (5)

This Sceptical Doubt…

May 19, 2016 – 9:53 pm

While taking a three-mile constitutional this afternoon (we of the American Right never, of course, forget the importance of constitutionals), I had a listen to John Derbyshire’s latest Radio Derb podcast. It was a particularly good one, with fine segments on immigration, automation, and social engineering. You can listen to it here, or read it […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (44)

A Mint, Mr. Creosote?

May 18, 2016 – 12:32 pm

When you are spending other people’s money, there’s very little incentive to cut costs. With a hat-tip to Michelle Malkin, here’s a splendid example: a million-dollar coin-toss. If ever there was a huge, complex, brittle, and unstable system in need of a reboot, well, folks, you’re living in it.

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

Defending Self-Defense

May 17, 2016 – 5:52 pm

Just a few months ago we mentioned Judge Richard Leon, of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Back then we praised him for putting the kibosh on a sneaky little maneuver by the DOJ regarding voter ID. Well, this patriotic magistrate deserves our kudos once again: he has just ruled against […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (4)

B.L.M. vs. Reality

May 15, 2016 – 1:40 pm

A good piece by Heather Mac Donald, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (4)

Inequality is Forever

May 15, 2016 – 1:29 pm

Inequality is intractable. I’ve written about this often. Innate inequalities — the unequal distribution of superior qualities — naturally create social and economic inequalities, and the only way to level these natural differences is by the creation and imposition of new inequalities of power. It follows, then, that a social movement (or, properly understood, a […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reaction | Comments (19)

Tractatus Logico-Multiculturalus

May 12, 2016 – 1:48 pm

(1) One of the most important ways that cultures differ is in their normative biases. (2) When composing a multicultural Venn diagram, the intersection can only contain non-contradictory elements of the cultures being combined. (3) Norms are often contradictory in a way that, say, food is not. (Food, and music, the most commonly cited blessings […]

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

Death Wish

May 11, 2016 – 5:55 pm

Here’s another video clip: a hair-raising tornado chase.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (1)

Nothing Is Real

May 11, 2016 – 10:52 am

Great, simple video here from a young Swedish woman.

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (5)

The Real Victimhood

May 10, 2016 – 3:58 pm

Our recent post, Douthat and Reaction, featured a link to a video clip of a young woman disrupting a speaking event at the University of Massachusetts. She is seen flailing her arms and shouting obscenities — in short, having a child’s temper-tantrum. The video clip has gone “viral”, and its star has been the object […]

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

The Citadel Lives Up To Its Name

May 10, 2016 – 1:15 pm

Here’s a gratifying item from today’s news: The Citadel Denies Prospective Student’s Request to Wear Hijab Whether this will stand — and whether it is actually an early indication of some kind of limit having been reached at last, or simply the corpse of the West giving a little twitch — remains to be seen.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (9)

Bayesed and Confused?

May 8, 2016 – 4:36 pm

You’ve probably heard of Bayes’s Theorem, but if you’ve yet to get your head around it, here’s a nice visual explanation, including a simple Bayesian explanation of the perplexing “Monty Hall problem” (which we last discussed in here way back in 2009). (Also, from the same website, here’s another Bayes tutorial.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (7)

Douthat and Reaction

May 6, 2016 – 3:37 pm

Ross Douthat of the New York Times has been nibbling, lately, at NRx’s red pill, and has recently written both a column and a blog-post on neoreaction that seem at least partly sympathetic. For a man in his position, that is, as Orwell reminded us, a “revolutionary act”: to the extent that the movement has […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (18)

Keeping Me Honest

May 5, 2016 – 5:27 pm

Our newest commenter, Jacques, is holding my feet to the fire once again in the comment-thread to our recent post on the “Black Pill”. (These things tend to scroll down and disappear, so I thought I’d mention it; J. is prying open some old (i.e., eternal) questions I haven’t written about in years.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

A Potpourri From Dr. V

May 4, 2016 – 4:14 pm

Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, is in fine form this week. Yesterday he published an excellent meditation on free will, and today he’s breathing fire upon the political Left: It is hopelessly naive to think that we can have comity without commonality… we have reached the point where we agree on almost nothing and that […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (13)

False Alarm

May 4, 2016 – 12:33 pm

In case you missed it: Actual Climate Scientist Judith Curry posted an item a few weeks ago linking to a forceful essay by Mario Loyola on climate-change activism. The Loyola essay is behind a paywall at The American Interest, but that publication offers non-subscribing visitors one free article a month, so you ought to be […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion, Global Warming | Comments (2)

On Genetics and Intelligence

May 3, 2016 – 8:05 pm

From Stephen Hsu’s blog, here’s a video of an hour-long panel discussion with Dr. Hsu, Steven Pinker, and Dalton Conley on the subject of genetic engineering and the heritability of human traits, particularly intelligence. This topic is a minefield in the West, and so great care is taken, and necessary pieties uttered — and some […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Science, Technology | Comments (2)

Service Notice

May 3, 2016 – 1:25 pm

Yet another outage today with my hosting service. Apologies to all.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Right : Left :: Order : Chaos

May 2, 2016 – 1:29 pm

I’ve written often about the many isomorphisms between society and thermodynamics (see, for example, here, here, and here). The subject came up again in the comment-thread to our previous post. Our reader Robert, a.k.a. “Whitewall”, noted the ceaseless efforts of the political Left to “force change where no change is needed or even wanted.” He […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (4)