Monthly Archives: April 2025

Our Democracy!

April 30, 2025 – 5:14 pm

This is getting some attention today, and rightly so: conservative commentator and gadfly Jack Posobiec attended a Jamie Raskin rally and shouted out a couple of pointed questions, and Raskin sicced a bunch of union goons on Posobiec to assault and beat him. Tim Pool has video here. This Jamie Raskin critter is one of […]

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

Science!

April 28, 2025 – 11:56 am

An editorial in my local paper laments, as an “assault on truth”, the cancellation of federal funding for research into “disinformation”. We read: The National Science Foundation last week canceled hundreds of grants to researchers studying the spread of disinformation online. This was the explanation: “NSF will not support research with the goal of combating […]

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

Is Presentism Tenable? Cont’d.

April 27, 2025 – 4:09 pm

I haven’t had a chance yet to resume the examination of Christian Wüthrich’s philosophical paper on presentism and special relativity that I began in this recent post, but the discussion continues in a new post over at Bill Vallicella’s place, here. This is one of those topics that resemble digging in sand: the hole gets […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy, Science | Comments (0)

About-Face! And About Time, Too

April 27, 2025 – 12:49 pm

C.S. Lewis once wrote: “We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to […]

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

Is Presentism Tenable?

April 22, 2025 – 2:00 pm

Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, recently posted an item critiquing a defense of “presentism” by the Canadian philosopher John Bigelow. Philosophical presentism is the view that only presently existing things have any sort of existence at all. It stands in contrast to “eternalism”, which maintains that all points in time — past, present, and future […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy, Science | Comments (6)

Is AI A Problem For Functionalism?

April 21, 2025 – 7:56 pm

I’ve been continuing to test-drive the AI known as Grok. Today I thought I’d ask it about consciousness. Me: Are you conscious? I’m Grok 3, built by xAI. I don’t have consciousness like humans do—no subjective experience or self-awareness. I process inputs, generate outputs, and mimic understanding using complex patterns, but it’s all computation, not […]

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Technology | Comments (2)

Service Notice

April 19, 2025 – 10:14 am

Sorry it’s been slow again here; we’ve been traveling for a few days. Back shortly, and meanwhile: happy Easter to you all.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Breaking News!

April 14, 2025 – 12:25 pm

Today’s top story: Patriarchy hoists giggling all-female “crew” briefly into space in giant flying penis. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (3)

Not This Again!

April 13, 2025 – 3:27 pm

As seems to happen with appalling regularity on April 13th, I find myself another year older (69, if you can believe it!) — and, quite astonishingly, still on the sunny side of the sod. As always: natal salutations to Guy Fawkes, Thomas Jefferson, F.W. Woolworth, James Ensor, Butch Cassidy, Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, Robert Watson-Watt, […]

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

VDare Needs Your Help

April 12, 2025 – 2:12 pm

The patriotic immigration-reform foundation VDare has for years now fallen under a withering “lawfare” attack by New York State’s maleficent Attorney General, Letitia James — who has never accused VDare of any crime, but despises the organization merely for its allegiances and opinions. Seeking to destroy VDare and its principals, Peter and Lydia Brimelow, and […]

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

Music Is Life

April 7, 2025 – 1:26 pm

On Saturday night I attended a performance, by our extraordinary Cape Symphony, of Beethoven’s Leonore Overture, Violin Concerto, and Symphony #5. Today I discovered 82-year-old Frank Watkinson: Is there any greater gift than music? Love, perhaps. But maybe that’s just a distinction without a difference.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (5)

Hang On To Your Hats

April 6, 2025 – 9:19 pm

This week should be a wild one, folks. It’s hard to find the perfect metaphor for what’s happening in the nation and the world right now, but it’s somewhere between radical battlefield surgery and an exorcism (probably much closer to the latter, and perhaps even literally so). The old world order is not going to […]

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