January 22, 2018 – 6:57 pm
Well! It appears the shutdown’s over. (Somehow, the nation survived.) It would take real determination not to see this as a political win for Donald Trump, and a black eye for Chuck Schumer. As we noted on Friday, the Democrats had three separate chances to make a deal, and there was never anything in the […]
January 22, 2018 – 1:22 pm
This is nice: a 3D simulated fly-through of the Orion Nebula, in visible and infrared light. What times we live in! The nature of astronomical nebulae was almost completely unknown as recently as the beginning of the last century; it wasn’t even a hundred years ago that astronomers debated whether the spiral nebulae* might in […]
January 19, 2018 – 3:50 pm
Well, another government shutdown looms. The Democrats are refusing to sign on to a budget resolution, because it doesn’t include a “clean” DREAM act. Over at Hot Air, “Allahpundit” explains: Let’s run through this again, because job one for Schumer and Pelosi over the next 24 hours will be to muddy waters that are actually […]
January 18, 2018 – 8:53 pm
A little birdie just whispered into my ear the words “Project Pelican”. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about…
January 18, 2018 – 1:44 pm
The problem is more widespread than we think, folks.
January 18, 2018 – 12:58 pm
Required reading, sent my way by several readers this morning: a former Peace Corps volunteer’s reflections on her time in Africa. Here.
January 17, 2018 – 10:48 pm
If there’s anything worse than an imbecile, it’s a smug imbecile. And — forgive me if this seems ungallant — if there’s anything worse than that, it’s a smug, “progressive” imbecile with a chip on her shoulder (but I fear I repeat myself). When it gets better is when such a person is put in […]
January 17, 2018 – 2:40 pm
Thirty-three years ago, Harvard severed all connections to single-sex clubs such as fraternities and sororities; since then these organizations have been entirely independent of the university. Now, in a repressive blow against freedom of association, Harvard has decided that merely distancing itself wasn’t enough: it will henceforward seek out and punish students who are members […]
January 17, 2018 – 2:06 pm
A while back I asked: is digital civilization sustainable? I wondered whether we had, in the long run, any good reason to expect cybersecurity to stay out in front of those who work around the clock to breach it. Despite ever-increasing (and increasingly burdensome) layers of security, we seemed to be, at best, neck-and neck […]
January 16, 2018 – 6:32 pm
Over at the Maverick Philosopher Bill Vallicella has published a post commenting on the failure of “Laïcité” — the doctrine of separation of church and state, intended to pre-empt religious political factionalism — in Europe. Bill advances the argument that, because modern Leftists are such unreflective secularists, they’ve lost their understanding of the “deep-rootedness” of […]
January 16, 2018 – 2:28 pm
Here’s another from VDH: President Nobama. Hardly a day goes by without some reminder of what a miraculous stroke of fortune it was, in what Professor Hanson calls “the lateness of the national hour”, that Hillary Clinton lost that election.
January 16, 2018 – 11:40 am
I’m note with sorrow the death of Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of the Irish group the Cranberries. She was a unique talent, with a haunting, unforgettable voice. Ms. O’Riordan suffered throughout her brief life, battling depression and anorexia. From her pain came beautiful, sometimes gorgeously uplifting music. We should be grateful to her for that […]
January 16, 2018 – 11:08 am
Good piece today by Victor Davis Hanson on how an antagonistic news network might have treated the declining Franklin D. Roosevelt. Here.
January 15, 2018 – 7:17 pm
Here’s the latest Project Veritas video about Twitter. You shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. When it comes to “free” online services, the rule is: if you aren’t the customer, you’re the product.
January 15, 2018 – 1:16 pm
The blogger JayMan (one of the most intelligent and articulate voices you’ll find online) comments on the Steven Pinker brouhaha, here. In my own comments a couple of days ago, I said that “Dr. Pinker, quite understandably for someone who wishes to remain employed”, was “trying to thread a needle.” JayMan puts this far more […]
January 13, 2018 – 7:58 pm
Thought experiment regarding immigration from “shithole” countries: 1) Think of a so-called “shithole” country, and one that obviously isn’t (say, Haiti and Finland). 2) Swap all the people, leaving all their stuff behind. 3) Check back in 25 years. 4) What results do we expect? P.S. I don’t mean to belabor this topic, but […]
January 13, 2018 – 4:31 pm
A foible of the English language is our fondness for words that repeat a syllable (or two) with a different vowel. Some examples: Flim-flam Tip-top Flip-flop Hip-hop Mish-mash Zig-zag Pitter-patter Chit-chat Riff-raff I’m sure you can think of others. (There are also examples that are purely imitative of sounds, such as “ding-dong”, “tick-tock”, and “clip-clop”, […]
January 12, 2018 – 9:49 pm
Steven Pinker, who by some miracle still finds himself employed despite holding some deeply heretical notions (of which those he expresses are surely just the tip of the iceberg), is under fire today for some remarks he made at a panel at Harvard. The snippet that’s been making the rounds is this: The other way […]
January 11, 2018 – 10:30 pm
Well, the cat’s out of the bag (to the extent that it has been in the bag at all, lately): As we learn from undercover videos of its engineers (who mostly appear, judging by appearances and accents, to be recent arrivals to these welcoming shores), Twitter is indeed using shadow-bans to mute the voices of […]
January 9, 2018 – 8:34 pm
For tonight, I have an article by a Chinese national, Puzhong Yao, who emigrated to the West — first to England, then to the United States — to complete his education, and to work in the financial industry. He is obviously highly intelligent, and has done very well. He writes about the difference between Chinese […]
January 8, 2018 – 6:50 pm
We’ve just had an interesting conversation over at Bill Vallicella’s place. Bill proposed that subversive political parties be excluded from participation, and we went from there to a discussion of the relative merits of democracy itself. (Over the last decade or so I have become deeply skeptical of democracy — which is, after all, just […]
January 7, 2018 – 1:05 pm
Today I read an article about Dmitri Tymoczko, a music theorist at Princeton, who has developed a new spatial framework for the representation and comprehension of music, using mathematical objects called “orbifolds”. It seems fascinating, but I’m sure I haven’t fully grasped it yet. (The easiest way to take such things in is by visual […]
January 6, 2018 – 9:40 pm
Yes, the caption says it all. As much as I enjoy life, I do find it difficult, at times, to be optimistic about the future. (Readers may have noticed this.) Some days it’s harder than others.
January 5, 2018 – 10:51 pm
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a review of Douglas Murray’s new(ish) book on the murder of Europe by its political elites: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. Back in May, we excerpted an essay by Mark Steyn, writing on the morrow of the Ariana Grande concert-bombing in England, in which he […]
January 4, 2018 – 9:11 pm
I see in the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is looking to change the DOJ’s lax policy regarding enforcement of marijuana laws. I think he’s right to do so. To put my own cards on the table: I’d like to see pot legalized. I think it’s a silly thing to criminalize, and its illegality […]
January 3, 2018 – 10:48 pm
You won’t often find me linking to the New Yorker these days, but this article by Joan Acocella is so good I’m passing it along.
January 2, 2018 – 12:59 pm
As we begin the new year, Lewis Amselem, a.k.a. “Diplomad” has some comments on “The Year of the Donald”, here. An excerpt: The resistance to Trump’s nomination and election started with prominent Republicans, such as Romney and the Bush clan, and continued with brave talk of riots in the street, “pussy hats,” vote recounts, electoral […]
December 31, 2017 – 2:36 pm
To all of you. Thanks as always for reading and commenting. Buckle up! 2018 looks like it’s going to be an “interesting” year.
December 29, 2017 – 10:50 pm
Mass protests are underway in Iran against the totalitarian Islamic regime that has been in power since 1979. Something very significant happened yesterday: as reported by the AP, Tehran has announced that it will no longer enforce the dress code for women that has been in place since the revolution. This is a moment of […]
December 27, 2017 – 11:15 am
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, we have for you an essay in which Rod Dreher, citing Theodore Dalrymple, examines the expanding sinkhole at the foundation of Western civilization: the family. The causes are many — among them are secularism (which, I believe, belongs right at the top of the list), multiculturalist decohesion, the substitution […]
December 26, 2017 – 6:31 pm
Today the fashion magazine Vogue tweeted this photograph. The caption read: “Is your hair holiday party ready?” I found it more than a little disturbing (and no, it wasn’t because of the missing hyphen in the compound adjective “holiday party”, as bad as that is). To me the photograph leapt off the screen as […]
December 24, 2017 – 4:24 pm
(Noel!) Merry Christmas, everyone.
December 22, 2017 – 10:11 pm
The rightish television presenter Tucker Carlson today offered his Twitter followers one of the best “tweetstorms” I’ve ever seen: #100RacistThings. You can see the thread here, but it’s so good I’m going to preserve it for posterity in this post — because this is the sort of thing that gets people banned from Twitter these […]
December 21, 2017 – 6:26 pm
OK, here’s something really fantastic: a website that enables you to scroll around the globe and pick up radio broadcasts from pretty much everywhere. Here.
December 21, 2017 – 5:30 pm
Congress has a lot to do in the new year. I certainly hope ending obstetric tourism is somewhere near the top of the list.
December 20, 2017 – 4:10 pm
The tax-bill’s done. Not perfect, perhaps, but what is? Aside from its most important feature — lowering the corporate-tax rate — it repeals the Obamacare “individual mandate” (take that, Mr. Chief Justice!), and it makes room for further energy exploration in Alaska. Better still, it’s a major blow to Schumer, Pelosi, Warren, & Co. — […]
December 20, 2017 – 3:27 pm
With a hat-tip to the indefatigable ‘JK’, here’s a delightful video: Riccardo Muti on conducting.
December 18, 2017 – 10:58 pm
A reader (who is also an old friend) emailed me today, in response to yesterday’s post. That post contained this passage: In either of these cases ”” the origin of the stupefying complexity of living systems as either a self-organizing process across “deep time’, or as an act of God ”” if we turn and […]
December 18, 2017 – 10:49 am
I noticed that comments on old posts had been automatically closed. I’m not sure why; it may have been an anti-spam move on my part a while back, or just something that happened during a site update. Anyway, I’ve got better spam protection now, and they are open again.
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 […]