December 17, 2017 – 8:55 pm
A few days ago I posted a brief item about the idea of “society” as something more than an aggregate of individuals. It began: How can anything benefit “society”? There is nothing we can call “society” that actually experiences anything at all — and what (and to whom) is the value of a benefit unexperienced? […]
December 17, 2017 – 7:41 pm
Here’s a story you might not have heard: about a years-long operation against Hezbollah’s global criminal-syndicate apparatus, and how it was smothered by the Obama administration in the runup to the Iran deal. (From Politico, no less.) It’s long, but it deserves your attention.
December 15, 2017 – 12:44 pm
I haven’t commented much about the unholy mess that is the “collusion” investigation, but it is as tainted with obvious conflicts of interest, ulterior motives, double standards, foul play, abuse of power, dirty tricks, partisan cronyism, and good-old-fashioned political corruption as anything I’ve ever heard of in the history of the United States, which is […]
December 14, 2017 – 1:55 pm
Well, the Apocalypse is upon us: the FCC has voted to repeal the Obama-era “Net Neutrality” regulations. This means that the Internet we’ve all come to know and love is finished, over, kaput. The services you love — Google, for example, or perhaps some crotchety old geezer’s curiously named and depressing blog — will henceforward […]
December 12, 2017 – 2:59 pm
How can anything benefit “society”? There is nothing we can call “society” that actually experiences anything at all — and what (and to whom) is the value of a benefit unexperienced? If “society” benefits, it is only experienced by individual persons, each of whom experiences any social benefit or blessing as an individual. There is […]
December 10, 2017 – 4:40 pm
Ladies, are you worried that by some unfortunate turn of fate, you might someday find yourself in a relationship with a man? Just keep this checklist handy, and you’ll make sure you and your cats will never have that to worry about.
December 9, 2017 – 12:03 pm
I’ll be on the road all day today. Here’s something beautiful for you to puzzle over. Black to move. (Solution here.)
December 8, 2017 – 11:55 pm
I have nothing prepared for publication tonight — I was too busy all day, and I went to the VDare Christmas party this evening — but I’d hate for you to go away empty-handed, so I’ll offer you this excerpt from Richard Weaver’s essay Up From Liberalism: The attempt to contemplate history in all its […]
December 7, 2017 – 7:15 pm
A reader from an Australian metropolis wrote me a little while back to describe the social and emotional difficulties of being a Right-thinking outlier in an overwhelmingly, and so often unreflectively and oppressively, Leftist culture. He needed some bucking up, I thought, and so I offered the following (slightly edited) reply. I don’t think he’ll […]
December 6, 2017 – 5:27 pm
I was gratified to see President Trump announce today that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and will move its embassy there. Mr. Trump summed it up succinctly: Israel is a sovereign state, and a U.S. ally. If a state cannot even choose its own capital city, then it is not sovereign. […]
December 6, 2017 – 2:42 pm
This is no small thing: Google’s “Alpha Zero” AI, after taking just 4 hours to teach itself chess, played 100 games against the strongest dedicated chess engine, Stockfish, with decisive results: it won twenty-eight games, drew seventy-two, and lost… zero. We had a good run, humans.
December 6, 2017 – 11:26 am
From the Telegraph: Don’t call us snowflakes – it damages our mental health, say young people Sorry, kids. It’s just that “fragile, helpless, trembling little mice” seems such a mouthful by comparison. We’ll try to come up with something else. Maybe “towering, invincible colossi”, with a little wink.
December 5, 2017 – 6:15 pm
This just in, from the Daily Mail: Demand for anal bleaching soars by 23% as women follow in the footsteps of celebrities including Sophie Kasaei, Charlotte Crosby and Kourtney Kardashian I notice Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Queen Elizabeth didn’t make the cut there, for some reason. I guess times have changed. And after all, […]
December 5, 2017 – 12:16 pm
We’ve been having a server-side problem that caused commenters to see the comment-form populated with the name and email of whoever commented previously. Bluehost tells me the issue is now fixed. Please let me know if you’re still seeing this.
December 3, 2017 – 5:39 pm
Here’s an informative piece on the Flynn affair by Tyler Durden. Key point: the purpose of the interrogation of General Flynn by the FBI was never to determine the content of Flynn’s conversations with the Russians — because the FBI already had the transcripts. I will add: just how did the FBI have these transcripts […]
December 3, 2017 – 5:22 pm
Once again this site is bedeviled by a back-end problem that causes new commenters to see the previous commenter’s information in the comment box. When this last came up, in May, it was due to a server-side caching issue at Bluehost that took me a lot of time and effort on the phone to get […]
December 3, 2017 – 3:40 pm
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella comments on the Kate Steinle verdict, in a post rightly titled A Struggle for the Soul of America. After quoting a passage from this essay by the indispensable Heather Mac Donald (an essay you must be sure to go and read in full), Bill adds: There you have it. […]
December 3, 2017 – 2:17 pm
By now you’ve all heard all about the suspension of ABC News reporter Brian Ross for his story on Friday claiming that General Mike Flynn had copped a plea for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia. Ross initially reported that, during the campaign, Donald Trump had told Flynn to arrange meetings with […]
December 2, 2017 – 10:28 pm
Ugh. Food poisoning. There were things I’d have liked to comment on today, but it will have to wait.
November 30, 2017 – 10:41 pm
The Kate Steinle verdict is in: the accused was found guilty only of a weapons charge, and was completely exonerated in causing her death — despite having undisputedly fired the shot that killed her. Frankly, I am not surprised, given the venue. But this will not sit well.
November 30, 2017 – 10:12 pm
Sunset tonight on the tidal flats at Wellfleet Harbor:
November 30, 2017 – 8:20 pm
It’s been quite a while since I’ve put up one of these omnibus posts. Let’s see what I have lying around here: ‣ Jonathan Bowden on the Soviet gulag. ‣ WWII waist-gunner training cartoon, featuring none other than the great Mel Blanc. ‣ Twelve ways artificial wombs will change the world. ‣ […]
November 29, 2017 – 6:07 pm
Well, the sexual-harassment scalps keep piling up. Today it’s Matt Lauer (fine with me; I never could stand the guy), Garrison Keillor, and, if I recall correctly, some executive at NPR (who can keep track anymore?). The wholesale termination of all these male media bigwigs will likely have a consequence that, so far, I haven’t […]
November 28, 2017 – 4:28 pm
I’m just going to lay down a marker here, so I can say “I told you so” years from now. The world’s climate will clearly have become significantly colder within, at most, one decade, and we will be looking back at global-warming hysteria and wondering how we could have been such fools.
November 27, 2017 – 6:21 pm
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a brief and worthwhile article on immigration. Go and read the whole thing. You may notice some overlap with the ideas expressed in my own post Simple Common Sense About Diversity And Immigration, from 2013.
November 23, 2017 – 1:15 pm
… to all of you, as always. Thank you for reading and commenting. As we noted recently, gratitude is perhaps the most important requirement for a happy life. We have much to be thankful for today in America; as a nation we can be thankful, especially, for the mortal calamity we avoided a year ago […]
November 22, 2017 – 2:47 pm
Richard Fernandez: Some social commentators have noted a mood of disillusionment. “Millennials report depression in higher numbers than any previous generation”, up to one in five. People appear to be tuning out of politicized “comedy”, sports and entertainment, exhausted by the public frenzy. It’s a direct consequence of the fall of the Narrative. The irony […]
November 22, 2017 – 12:06 pm
Here’s a timeline of the Uranium One caper. (Caveat lector: I haven’t independently confirmed every detail, but it seems about right.) See also Andrew McCarthy’s summary here, and his discussion with John Batchelor, here.
November 21, 2017 – 7:31 pm
Is it me, or does the Las Vegas shooting seem to have dropped right down the memory hole? We still don’t have a clear motive; there’s the laptop with the missing hard-drive; the time-line has gone through several revisions, and there was the very curious story of the actions of the hotel security guard — […]
November 20, 2017 – 6:04 pm
In this short video clip, Dennis Prager names the single trait that, in his opinion, is the key to happiness. I’m not at all sure that it all boils down to a single factor — but I’ll agree with him that if it does, he’s picked the right one. And, it being late November, the […]
November 18, 2017 – 9:38 pm
There’s a been a fuss about President Trump’s plan to remove the Obama-era ban on elephant trophies. Bien-pensant liberals greeted the news with uncomplicated moral revulsion, along the following lines: 1) Elephants are marvelous, beautiful, intelligent animals. 2) Hunting marvelous, beautiful, intelligent animals is always morally wrong. Therefore: 3) Supporting a policy that endorses, or […]
November 17, 2017 – 6:05 pm
Off to see King Crimson at the Beacon Theater tonight. They are a remarkable ensemble, including, among others, two of my favorite drummers, Pat Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison, the great bassist Tony Levin and — sui generis — the Gurdjeffian guitarist and musical innovator Robert Fripp. I’ve never seen them perform, and I’m happy to […]
November 16, 2017 – 11:21 pm
Well! No sooner do I write about how Bill Clinton seems to be gliding smoothly across the surface of our latest moral panic, than prominent Democrats seem suddenly to notice that the man is in fact, as so many of his victims had been trying to tell everyone for decades, a loathsome sexual predator. I […]
November 14, 2017 – 4:13 pm
Over at American Greatness, Roger Kimball explains why he’s given up on Trumpism.
November 13, 2017 – 11:39 pm
Yesterday a the New York Times published an opinion piece by a black academic, one Ekow Yankah. The essay is called Can My Children Be Friends with White People? Professor Yankah’s answer is no, for the reason that black people must assume that every white person is, unless proven otherwise, such a virulent racist as […]
November 13, 2017 – 2:29 pm
It seems that hardly a day goes by lately without the ruination of another prominent man by allegations of sexual misconduct. Somehow, though, Bill Clinton sails along. Can there be any doubt that this blackguard is a sexual predator of the first order? Of course not; the allegations are legion, including a highly plausible accusation […]
November 12, 2017 – 12:32 pm
Once again, here’s the indispensable Andrew McCarthy, former Federal prosecutor, on the Mueller investigation. In his latest essay, he compares it to the way the Obama DOJ handled its investigation of Hillary Clinton. The contrast is instructive, and sorely vexing.
November 11, 2017 – 10:50 pm
Our e-pal Bill Keezer sent along a link today to an essay on climate change by the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson. As it happened I offered a post about this very essay ten years ago, and it’s at least as relevant now as it was then. Have a look. My post is here, and the […]
November 11, 2017 – 3:05 pm
The view out my front window just now (click for larger version): These guys should really pay more attention to the calendar.
November 8, 2017 – 2:56 pm
Back in May we had a problem with server-side caching at Bluehost. The symptom was that commenters would see the comment-box pre-populated with the name and email of whoever had commented last. Please let me know if you see this happening again now. (I will be sorely vexed with Bluehost if so.) To clear the […]
November 8, 2017 – 11:49 am
Worried that our culture is in decline? Relax. In fact, the more you can relax, the less this will hurt.
November 6, 2017 – 9:09 pm
Here’s the future of the automobile, from former GM, Ford, and BMW executive Bob Lutz. I love driving. Glad I got the chance, I guess.
November 5, 2017 – 10:32 pm
The key weakness of liberalism — which, to be fair, has at times done much to improve society — is that it must assume as “given” the existence, and the continuing existence, of the society it hopes to improve. But liberalism, by its very nature — its pacifism, its sentimentalism, its opposition to hierarchy, its […]
November 2, 2017 – 10:44 pm
I enjoyed this very much: Mark Knopfler playing his guitars, and talking about playing guitar. (The clip is hosted at Laughing Squid, where it’s described as Mr. Knopfler giving a “wonderful guided tour of his guitar collection” — but that isn’t what it is at all, as older and wiser readers will understand.) Here.
November 1, 2017 – 4:41 pm
The transgendered have become holy objects because, unlike those of us who are frozen in a conventional relation between our sex and our gender, and are trapped in the matrix of objective and pre-existing natural categories, the transgendered demonstrate the supremacy, and so the apotheosis, of the subjective. In a secular religion that denies the […]
October 31, 2017 – 7:15 pm
A Muslim terrorist in a rented truck mowed down pedestrians in New York today, killing eight people. At a news conference, Governor Cuomo assured us that the killer was a “lone wolf”, and that there was no evidence of a “wider plot”. Rubbish. The “wider plot” has been in effect for fourteen centuries. It continues […]
October 30, 2017 – 11:00 pm
I’ve been reading James Burnham’s Suicide of the West. Published in 1964, it is an anti-liberal jeremiad, and a corking good one. It also anticipates a number of themes that have become central tenets of both traditional-conservative and neoreactionary criticism. I’m still only about three-quarters of the way through, but I’ll offer some excerpts. Burnham […]
October 27, 2017 – 3:17 pm
A few days ago I mentioned a manifesto called the Paris Declaration — signed by, among others, Roger Scruton — and gave it two-and-a-half cheers. I did allow that I had a “quibble or two”, but in general I thought — and I still do think — that it was an important step in the […]
October 24, 2017 – 3:47 pm
From Campus Reform: Prof: Algebra, geometry perpetuate white privilege The story is about one Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor of mathematics at the University of Illinois. We read: “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of […]