February 29, 2024 – 6:09 pm
I’ve been nursing a surprisingly debilitating cold (or flu, or something) for the past few days. It makes it difficult to summon up the energy to do much of anything, and I’ve been unable to concentrate the little grey cells enough to write anything worth reading. (I did manage another comment or two in that […]
February 29, 2024 – 6:04 pm
“One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.” – Eric Hoffer With that observation in mind, have a look at this item from Michael Lind.
February 28, 2024 – 2:05 pm
American media consumers have been soaking for years in a poisonous marinade of lies about our role in Ukraine. With a hat-tip to Dave Benner at Twitter, here is RFK Jr with an antidote: a history lesson that is brief, concise, and accurate. For a decade, US involvement in Ukraine has been based on a […]
February 25, 2024 – 9:29 am
On the road. Back Tuesday. Update, Tuesday evening: I’m back home, but after dropping the lovely Nina at JFK last night for a 1:35 a.m. flight to Hong Kong (to visit our grandkids), and then driving five hours back to Wellfleet, getting to bed just before sunup, and sleeping fitfully for a few hours, I’m […]
February 23, 2024 – 6:47 pm
Bill Vallicella has a fine post up at Substack today, in which he responds to the complaint that for an American president to speak of “America First” is, as Bill Kristol put it a few years back, “depressing and vulgar”. My only quibble with the piece is that Bill didn’t unpack, for those who might […]
February 23, 2024 – 5:11 pm
At this point it hardly seems worth mentioning, but the Daily Mail reminds us today, in painful detail, of what a frail and feeble dotard our President is. What times we live in!
February 22, 2024 – 10:34 pm
My friend “Spandrell” has a new version of his blog up and running. I’ve linked to several of his posts over the years, in particular his 2017 three-part essay on what he calls “Bioleninism”. (You can read that here.) Span is a very smart guy, and he’s one of the OGs of what used to […]
February 22, 2024 – 5:13 pm
Cellphone outage hits AT&T customers nationwide; Verizon and T-Mobile users also affected Don’t look at me, Feds; I assure you all I’m just a humble blogger.
February 21, 2024 – 12:15 pm
A Lowell, MA High-school girl’s basketball team had to forfeit their game yesterday after three of their players were injured by a mentally ill young man playing on the opposing team. The male player, who is over six feet tall and has facial hair, says he’s female. The triumph of subjective fantasy over objective reality […]
February 20, 2024 – 5:30 pm
Here’s a news story. I’d say it was “shocking”, or “amazing”, but at this point it really isn’t. It’s bad, though. In brief: New York City has signed a no-bid contract with a “W/MBE” company (i.e., not run by white men) to make debit cards to be issued to “migrants”. The cards will have no […]
February 20, 2024 – 2:35 pm
I’ve had nothing, so far, to say about Donald Trump’s show-trial for “fraud” in New York, which the other day resulted in a guilty judgment, and a fine of $355,000,000. I’m still having difficulty. The process was a sham, of course, from start to finish. There was never any crime, any complainant, or any victim. […]
February 17, 2024 – 6:17 pm
It’s remarkable how complex any topic — especially anything to do with society and law — can be when you examine it closely. Take, for example, drunk-driving, which on the face of it seems simple enough. We know that driving drunk is dangerous — I’ve had friends who have died from it, and I nearly […]
February 14, 2024 – 9:35 pm
I’ve just watched this guided tour of the new Apple Vision Pro, a new VR headset. These are still early days, and the thing is, for most ordinary people, prohibitively expensive so far — but there is no way, in my opinion, that this will not be as addictive, and disruptive, as cell-phones, or perhaps […]
February 13, 2024 – 10:03 pm
As I write, the House has impeached Homeland Security secretary Mayorkas: a pointless gesture, a little kayfabe for the fans. Yes, he’s lied to us, and to Congress. Yes, he’s an enemy who hates us. But he’s an underling, a myrmidon, a stooge, an infantryman, a dogsbody. His impeachment will die in the Senate, like […]
February 12, 2024 – 6:12 pm
On Saturday the lovely Nina and I found ourselves in Woods Hole, at the far end of the Cape from where we live, where we had been invited to attend a living-room performance by two extraordinary musicians: violinist Darol Anger and mandolinist/guitarist Mike Marshall. (Their websites are here and here, respectively.) It was music the […]
February 12, 2024 – 2:31 pm
Well, the site’s all fixed up; I just spent hours recreating all the old linked-series entries in a new plugin (fortunately I was able to pull all the info I needed from the backend database, though it’s been six years since I’ve had to write any SQL, so it took me a minute to remember […]
February 9, 2024 – 5:08 pm
I’ve been having some backend issues with the website: page links, comments, etc. aren’t working, and for a while today the site was completely inaccessible. I’m trying to get it all fixed, but until I do things won’t be working properly, and the site may be down from time to time. Update, 2/11: I’ve had […]
February 9, 2024 – 12:00 pm
Special Counsel Robert Hur has released his report on Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. I don’t say “alleged” mishandling, because the second paragraph of the report states the following: Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials […]
February 7, 2024 – 11:44 pm
Imagine for a moment what a collapse of the modern communication grid would be like. All of a sudden, you can no longer make or receive phone calls, emails, or text messages. You try to go to the Internet — news services, social media, etc. — to find out what’s happening, but you can’t. You […]
February 6, 2024 – 6:34 pm
Here’s some good news, for a change: clever application of advanced technology is now making it possible to read ancient Roman scrolls that were carbonized in the devastating first-century eruption of Vesuvius, making them too fragile to unroll. Learn more here.
February 5, 2024 – 11:12 pm
Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has just posted an excellent essay at Substack on why he is inclined toward theism. Longtime readers of this blog will know that this is a topic I’ve been wrestling with for ages, so I’m always glad to find essays like this latest offering from Bill. Bill asks: why are […]
February 5, 2024 – 5:16 pm
I know that many of you may have been worrying lately about the possibility of some sort of national, or even civilizational, decline. But you should always remember that, as bad as things may seem economically and politically, our popular culture continues to raise the bar for excellence in the fine arts. So, to lift […]
February 2, 2024 – 2:26 pm
I’ve just read Against Inclusiveness: How the Diversity Regime is Flattening America and the West and What to Do About It, by James Kalb. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the name, Jim was the original proprietor of the influential blog View From The Right (archived here), which he then handed off to […]