Monthly Archives: June 2017

Florida

June 30, 2017 – 11:08 am

I found myself chatting online this morning with an old friend from my New York studio days. I was dismayed to learn that he’d moved to Florida. I’ve never seen the appeal, I must confess, of the “Sunshine State”. It’s always seemed to me a tacky and unserious place — like southern California without the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (10)

By The Numbers

June 29, 2017 – 2:33 pm

Here’s an interesting angle: using Benford’s Law to spot falsified data in academic papers.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science, Curiosities | Comments (1)

Come ON Already

June 29, 2017 – 1:28 pm

Donald Trump unbosomed himself of yet another pair of catty and adolescent tweets this morning, resulting in the usual fuss. Yes, Mr. Trump has been the object of relentless personal assault, and the vilest invective, since he became a candidate, but we expect that sort of thing from the spoiled and sullen Left. Would it […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (7)

The Wrathful Sky

June 28, 2017 – 3:48 pm

Beautiful, beautiful time-lapse storm footage, here. Watch in ‘full screen’.

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

Hyperintelligent Machines: Myth Or Menace?

June 27, 2017 – 10:26 pm

Here’s a provocative item from Wired: a skeptic’s take on the idea of superhuman AI, by one Kevin Kelly. I haven’t time to comment on it now, other than to say that once you get past the “there are all kinds of intelligence” boilerplate, it raises some interesting points.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

Where Do They All Come From?

June 26, 2017 – 8:33 pm

So many talented people! Here’s a splendid solo version of Eleanor Rigby by a gifted young musician named Josh Turner.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (2)

Russia? Fuhgeddaboudit.

June 26, 2017 – 5:18 pm

In case you missed it: according to this item in the Washington Times, millions of noncitizens may indeed have voted in recent elections.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

An Idea Whose Time Had Come

June 25, 2017 – 1:32 pm

A while back a reader pointed out to me in an email that my e-pal David Duff and I often seemed to be oddly “in sync” with our blog-posts. Yesterday I visited David’s excellent blog Duff and Nonsense after a few days’ absence, and saw that like me, he’d also put up a post about […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (4)

No Good Options

June 24, 2017 – 3:45 pm

Here is a depressingly thorough look at the problem of North Korea. It examines four things the U.S. might do: 1) pre-emption Á  la Thucydides; 2) smaller-scale military pressure; 3) decapitation of the Kim regime; or 4) more of what we’ve done so far, namely nothing. Not one of these choices is appealing. It is […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (4)

Power Tools

June 24, 2017 – 2:32 pm

Some years ago I read The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene. The book, which has become an international best-seller, has its flaws, but it is, on the whole, a sharp and insightful distillation of timeless principles. Today I ran across a half-hour animated summary of this vade mecum for the ruthlessly ambitious. Here […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Inner Work | Comments (3)

Molon Labia!

June 23, 2017 – 1:52 pm

Presented without comment: Beyond Pro-Choice: The Solution to White Supremacy is White Abortion An excerpt: White women: it is time to do your part! Your white children reinforce the white supremacist society that benefits you. If you claim to be progressive, and yet willingly birth white children by your own choice, you are a hypocrite. […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (4)

Racism And Murderism

June 21, 2017 – 11:33 pm

Here is a brilliant piece by Scott Alexander on what we mean by ‘racism’. It’s long, but you should read it all. It also includes this gem, right at the end: I don’t want civil war. I want this country to survive long enough to be killed by something awesome, like AI or some kind […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Language | Comments (3)

Rise And Fall

June 21, 2017 – 7:57 pm

Over at Jacobite magazine, Nick Land has posted an item called Modernity’s Fertility Problem. It addresses a liability that, although it presents itself in an especially virulent form today, is hardly unique to modernity, and has been the death of high civilizations since antiquity. We read: Modernity has a fertility problem. When elevated to the […]

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

They’re Just Not That Into You

June 21, 2017 – 2:55 pm

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: one would have to have a heart of stone to read of the death of little Jon Ossoff’s Congressional aspirations without laughing. This photo of CNN’s election-night panel as the loss became apparent is pure sunshine:   With the hope that springs eternal, however, Dems and their media (perhaps I have […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

That Ship Has Sailed

June 18, 2017 – 7:51 pm

Our previous post mentioned an article at National Review by David French. I’d also like to comment on another item by Mr. French, published two days earlier. The piece was a commentary on Wednesday’s rifle attack, by left-wing kook James Hodgkinson, on Republican members of Congress as they practiced for a baseball game. Mr. French […]

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

The French Defense

June 18, 2017 – 7:04 pm

You may have heard about a depressing criminal case here in Massachusetts, in which a young woman, Michelle Carter, was accused of involuntary manslaughter for talking her boyfriend into killing himself. Ms. Carter was found guilty just the other day. There’s no question that Ms. Carter did an evil thing. I had serious misgivings about […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (8)

Living On The Edge

June 17, 2017 – 2:19 pm

The other day I went for a stroll along the shore here in Wellfleet. The Outer Cape is very nearly the easternmost extension of the continental United States (save for a stretch of coastline in eastern Maine), and as I stood facing the sea I was aware of standing precisely on the boundary of two […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Pretty Good Posts, Ruminations | Comments (2)

Cold Civil War Heats Up

June 14, 2017 – 12:36 pm

A disgruntled Bernie Sanders supporter directed rifle fire at a Congressional baseball-team practice in Alexandria today. The House majority whip, Steve Scalise, was shot in the hip, and several others were injured as well, including two Capitol policemen. The gunman, 66-year-old James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, was killed. He had apparently asked Rep. Ron DeSantis, […]

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

Service Update

June 13, 2017 – 10:10 pm

I must apologize for the lack of content here over the past week or so. As I mentioned earlier, it’s been a busy time: sadly, I still must labor to earn the daily crust, and meanwhile we have been preparing for a wedding. (Also, on Monday the 12th, the lovely Nina and I celebrated our […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Plug

June 10, 2017 – 12:40 pm

Tired of the crap the kids are listening to? Do yourself a favor and buy this album, made by grownups. Trust me on this; I know about these things.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (2)

Service Notice

June 8, 2017 – 1:17 pm

A busy few days here. Back in a bit.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Cower Of London

June 6, 2017 – 1:55 pm

Here’s Ed West, writing in the “Speccie”: The reason we keep on hearing about ”˜British values’ uniting our nation is precisely that they don’t; communities that genuinely do have a sense of group feeling don’t need to go on about a set of values that supposedly binds them. Why would they? This is not just […]

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

Western Man

June 4, 2017 – 12:47 pm

   

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)

Bon Débarras!

June 2, 2017 – 12:47 pm

We note with satisfaction that President Trump pulled us out of that Paris-Agreement boondoggle yesterday. We never should have been in it in the first place: it was never put to Congress, and we signed up solely on the whim of Barack Obama, as a demonstration of sacerdotal virtue. The “motte-and-bailey” style of the left’s […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Global Warming | Comments (1)

Render Unto Caesar

June 1, 2017 – 11:54 am

Our e-pal Bill Keezer has sent along an essay by Ian Hutchinson, a professor of nuclear science and engineering. Dr. Hutchinson is also a Christian, and his article is a riposte to people like Lawrence Krauss and Richard Dawkins, who flatter themselves that the certainty of their atheism is grounded in truth, rather than their […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Science, Religion | Comments (2)