Monthly Archives: January 2020

Hmmm

January 31, 2020 – 9:36 pm

Here’s a research paper, from a team of scientists in India, about the now-pandemic coronavirus. They are puzzled by an “uncanny similarity” of portions of its molecular structure to other dangerous viruses, including HIV, and say that the insertion of these novel sequences is “unlikely to be fortuitous in nature”. Perhaps we will be hearing […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Curiosities | Comments (0)

Good Friday

January 31, 2020 – 9:21 pm

The Senate has voted to shut down the Democrats’ impeachment stunt, and the U.K. has officially left the E.U. It’s nice to see things work out now and then.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Racist Thing #111

January 31, 2020 – 1:12 pm

The Coronavirus Task Force.

By Malcolm | Posted in Racist Things | Comments (1)

Who IS this Guy?

January 29, 2020 – 8:03 pm

I haven’t commented on this impeachment show — in part because I have nothing original to say about it, but also because I don’t want to dignify it with serious commentary. Eventually it will come to an end; Mr. Trump will not be removed from office, and then we can all wait a few days […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)

Service Notice

January 26, 2020 – 1:07 pm

I’ve been a little preoccupied this week with family matters and other offline distractions. Back soon.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Ah, Democracy

January 22, 2020 – 10:55 pm

“Impatience and ignorance are characteristic of democratic ages; coarsely ambitious men generally are at the helm of state; dignity is wanting in the conduct of affairs, although arrogance is not lacking; the decay of the family, especially in America, to the status of a mere household, removes one of the ancient supports of social tranquillity; […]

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

MLK Day

January 20, 2020 – 4:51 pm

Martin Luther King — or, at least, the man as publicly imagined — would be aghast if he saw how the politics of collectivist grievance-bloc identitarianism — ‘Bioleninism’, to give a nod to the subject of our previous post — has come to dominate American life in the decades since he died. People should be […]

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

A Safe Space For Spandrell

January 20, 2020 – 3:05 pm

Spandrell’s blog, Bloody Shovel, has been moved from WordPress.com to its own domain. This was a wise move – Spandrell has been an influential writer on the reactionary Right for years now — see, for example, his important essays on ‘Bioleninism‘ — and a host like WordPress might have shut him down at any time. […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reaction | Comments (0)

Up And Down

January 18, 2020 – 12:32 pm

In a comment on our previous post, Professor J.M. Smith said: Our society is shot through with an incredible amount of intelligence, but a great deal of it seems to work in service of things that are low and stupid. Think of someone snap-chatting selfies using a smartphone and the internet. The end of their […]

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

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone

January 16, 2020 – 5:59 pm

Ross Douthat published a wistful column at the New York Times the other day, lamenting the death in academia of the Western canon of literature. At the heart of the problem — and the problem itself is, as Chiang Kai-shek once said in an analogous context, a “disease of the heart” — is the death […]

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

Palming The Card

January 14, 2020 – 11:47 pm

Over at Unz Review, Steve Sailer comments on Baltimore’s homicide statistics, in which 303 murders were committed with handguns, and only 9 with long guns (the stats lump together rifles and shotguns, so the number of rifles used was almost certainly fewer than 9). Blunt objects and knives each were used in more murders than […]

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

Gleichschaltung

January 13, 2020 – 4:51 pm

As they all said, in bone-chilling unison: this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Sir Roger Scruton, 1944-2020

January 12, 2020 – 1:50 pm

It was with terrible sadness that I learned today that Sir Roger Scruton has fallen from the ramparts at age 75. He was a man of incomparable culture, erudition, discrimination, and integrity. Not only has Western civilization lost one of its greatest defenders; it is also as if a magnificent library has just been burnt […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Less Is More

January 10, 2020 – 11:08 pm

Women and demographic minorities living in the modern West inhabit the least racist, least sexist society that has ever existed. They have greater liberty, and a broader scope of opportunity, than they have ever had anywhere on earth. Yet to listen to public discourse, or to look over any university’s curriculum, would give a newcomer […]

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

Master Yourself, Or Be Mastered

January 9, 2020 – 10:04 pm

“Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen […]

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

Well, You Can Just Ask Directions, Right?

January 8, 2020 – 1:45 pm

In a recent poll, men were almost twice as likely as women to be able to locate Iran on an unlableled map. The overall success rate was a dismal 28%. By sex: 38% of men got it right, and 20% of women.

By Malcolm | Posted in HBD | Comments (10)

Racist Thing #110

January 7, 2020 – 5:24 pm

Sanitation. (Hat-tip: Twitter follower @BirddogJones.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Racist Things | Comments (4)

Wha Daur Meddle Wi’ Me?

January 6, 2020 – 7:57 pm

Here’s a thing Donald Trump and I have in common: we both had Scottish mothers — mine from Glasgow, and his from the Hebrides. Here too is a thing that the Scots and many of the peoples of the Middle East have in common: they are tribal societies from remote places. In such circumstances — […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (2)

Their Move

January 6, 2020 – 12:34 pm

Lewis Amselem, a.k.a. “Diplomad”, has put up a rousing post on the Soleimani hit. Best of all, I think, was the bit at the end: Now is the time openly to tell the Iranians that we do not want war, but they should want it much less. We should openly tell them that we will […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (8)

Many A True Word Hath Been Spoken In Jest

January 5, 2020 – 11:45 pm

I hate awards shows, and never watch them (full disclosure, though: when I was nominated for an engineering Grammy in 2004, I did go) — but I rather have to hand it to Ricky Gervais for tonight’s monologue at the Golden Globes, which was splashed at once all over social media. You can watch it […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Keep It Simple

January 4, 2020 – 8:13 pm
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Pilgrim's Progress

In a recent post, I wrote about my dissatisfaction with the answers that scientific materialism has offered for some difficult questions. One of these questions is about the astonishing fine-tuning of the physical constants of the natural world: To understand this it’s important to keep in mind what’s called the “Anthropic Principle”. This is the […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (14)

Pop! Goes The Weasel

January 3, 2020 – 9:43 pm

Everybody’s abuzz about this Qassem Soleimani business. I don’t have much to say about it, but I’ll say this: First, it’s amusing that some parties seem so persnickety about the legality of striking down a man who made his career in terrorism and assassinations all over the globe. Second, I’m having a hard time seeing […]

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

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2020 – 12:37 pm

Buckle up, everybody – I have a feeling 2020 is going to be an eventful year. “Interesting”, even.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)