February 14, 2017 – 1:36 pm
Our previous post touched on the inexorable encroachment of sensors and listening devices into every cranny of our lives. In the comment-thread I mentioned a “particular nightmare” of my own, and said I’d describe it in a new post. It is this: given the exponential advances being made in brain-machine interfaces and nanotech, I see […]
February 11, 2017 – 3:45 pm
One thing I’ve been awfully leery of is the proliferation of sensors of every sort in every part of our environment. In particular I’m edgy about the new generation of devices, such as Amazon’s Echo, that just sit in your house and listen. I realize that this ship has already sailed, really, in that we […]
February 10, 2017 – 7:38 pm
In September 2015 I commented on the increasing political polarization of Europe, and the extent to which any middle ground was increasingly excluded. A longish auto-quote: … [T]he entire continuum of political opinion on the question of immigration and and of the ethnic and religious composition of European nations has now been reduced, editorially, to […]
February 9, 2017 – 7:42 pm
With a hat-tip to the indefatigable JK, here’s an interesting little item: three Congressional IT staffers — brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan — may have been using their access to snoop.
February 8, 2017 – 4:14 pm
Here’s tart piece by Porter on Cass Sunstein’s vision of the Constitution. (I always enjoy Porter’s astringent writing, except for those doggone sentence fragments.)
February 8, 2017 – 2:32 pm
The National Association of Scholars has published a new report entitled “Making Citizens: How American Universities Teach Civics”. From the “executive summary”: A new movement in American higher education aims to transform the teaching of civics. This report is a study of what that movement is, where it came from, and why Americans should be […]
February 8, 2017 – 1:14 pm
It turns out that “Publius Decius Mus”, who wrote the influential essay “The Flight 93 Election” back in September (we commented on it here) is Michael Anton, a former editor of the Journal of American Greatness. He is now a member, I’m glad to say, of the Trump administration. Therefore he is also a Nazi.
February 8, 2017 – 11:53 am
From a scathing editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (my emphasis): The Senate made history Tuesday when Mike Pence became the first Vice President to cast the deciding vote for a cabinet nominee. The nominee is now Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The vote came after an all-night Senate debate in a futile effort by […]
February 7, 2017 – 2:15 pm
The range of human emotion varies widely not only among individuals, but also across cultures. There is a poignancy in an inexpressible emotion (there ought to be a word for that!) — but there’s a good chance that what is inexpressible in one language is pinpointed by a word or phrase in another. Tim Lomas […]
February 5, 2017 – 8:15 pm
In the comment-thread to a recent post, our commenter Henry argues that Calexit, as the Golden State’s secession movement refers to its goal, is a non-starter. Is it? Is secession prohibited by the Constitution? Not explicitly. By Constitutional interpretation? Well, there’s Texas v. White (1869). Wikipedia has excerpted some key passages from Salmon P. Chase’s […]
February 5, 2017 – 1:42 pm
Why is there civilization? To make beer, of course. Duh.
February 5, 2017 – 12:10 am
Here’s a story I think we’ll be hearing a thing or two about. From the Daily Mail: The Mail on Sunday today reveals astonishing evidence that the organisation that is the world’s leading source of climate data rushed to publish a landmark paper that exaggerated global warming and was timed to influence the historic Paris […]
February 3, 2017 – 12:11 pm
Our commenter Robert has sent us a link from MindingTheCampus.org: What To Do When Angry Students Plan To Cancel A Speech. It is brief enough to quote in its entirety here (emphasis added). So the Chancellor of the University of California put out a defense of free speech when violent rioters threatened to cancel a […]
February 2, 2017 – 11:25 pm
In my previous post I mentioned the fault-lines dividing the nation, and said it seemed the ground was beginning to shake. There’s no question that the West’s tectonic plates, which have been locked for a long time now, have begun to slip; the collapse of the Democratic Party, and the ascension of Donald Trump, could […]
February 1, 2017 – 11:26 pm
Here’s me, three years ago: America’s ideological landscape is like the continent itself: transected by deep fault-lines at the irregular boundaries of rigid plates. Though crushed tightly together, these great masses seek to move in different directions, and so they strain relentlessly against one another. The pressure builds, and builds ”” until, sooner or later, […]
February 1, 2017 – 8:53 pm
With a hat tip to Nick B. Steves, we have for you a meditation from the Dissenting Sociologist on an ideological neoplasm: the Universal Person. The Universal Person is a being almost celestial. He is best understood in contrast to the corrupt and sublunary identitarian, who remains trapped in his gross particularity: Since the particular, […]
January 31, 2017 – 2:45 pm
As tempting as it’s been, I haven’t commented here about the recent “women’s march”. (Anyway, it would be hard to top the succinct remark left by “The Anti-Gnostic” at Steve Sailer’s blog, so I won’t try.) Here, though, is some worthwhile contrarianism from Margaret Wente, writing at the Globe and Mail.
January 31, 2017 – 12:49 pm
With concatenated hat-tips to our friends Horace Jeffery Hodges and Bill Vallicella, here is a superb essay on the Trumpian assault on the postmodernism that has had a death-grip on Western culture for some time now (and which, I have argued, has its roots in the radical skepsis that was born in the Enlightenment itself). […]
January 29, 2017 – 11:24 pm
In an earlier post, I castigated President Trump for a “blunder”: not exempting green-card holders from his U.S. entry-restriction list. Scott Adams argues that this might not have a blunder at all: that to restrict them first, then exempt them after all hell broke loose, was, perhaps, a carefully considered move. Perhaps he’s right (which […]
January 29, 2017 – 6:50 pm
As I imagined would happen, the Trump team has apparently realized its error, and has added permanent residents to the list of persons exempted from its temporary entry ban. Good, I’m glad that’s sorted out. I do wish they hadn’t made this colossal boo-boo in the first place, but at least they’ve put it right. […]
January 29, 2017 – 6:36 pm
From Porter today on Twitter: The right wants politics to make a better life for their children. The left wants children to make a better life for their politics.
January 28, 2017 – 11:13 pm
As I write, the world is in an uproar because people with permanent resident status in the United States (i.e., holders of “green cards”) are being prevented from re-entering the country as a result of a recent executive order. (I’ve been offline for the past day or so, and am still trying to find out […]
January 27, 2017 – 1:40 pm
I’ve just run across an interesting and illustrative story about academic heresy. It’s by a dissident researcher who took on the high priest of linguistics, Noam Chomsky, and describes the storm of opprobrium that followed. In brief: a central tenet of Chomsky’s model is that a particular feature — recursion — is universal to all […]
January 25, 2017 – 8:01 pm
Today we note with sadness two deaths: the actress Mary Tyler Moore, and the drummer Butch Trucks. Mary Tyler Moore was a beloved figure in American popular culture, and rightly so: she was gifted, beautiful, charming, funny, intelligent, decent, and magnetically appealing. She touched nothing that she did not adorn, and I think I speak […]
January 25, 2017 – 12:18 pm
From our e-pal P.D. Mangan (who, as people who used to read his now-defunct blog will know, already has the mens sana part covered), here is a list of 20 principles for good health and longevity. Many of these principles are obvious common sense. A controversial one, though, is number ten: The cholesterol hypothesis of […]
January 24, 2017 – 6:43 pm
Behold Sally Boynton Brown, an industrial-strength ethno-masochist who wants both to “have a conversation” and “shut other white people down”. (If you’re a student of political language, by the way, and you’re looking for examples of Orwellian phrases that mean exactly the opposite of what they say, it’s hard to beat “have a conversation”.) I […]
January 22, 2017 – 7:07 pm
In this torrid political season, if your sympathies are with the Left, you may have been saying to yourself: “Boy, I’m frustrated! I can’t believe we actually lost!! It’s so unfair!!! Is it OK now if I just go out and assault people I disagree with?” Well, I’ve got good news: the New York Times […]
January 22, 2017 – 6:50 pm
Barack Obama has left office, and in a weepy item called “Obama’s final ride into a wet, foggy California night“, the Washington Post grieves. (The article was written by “Greg Jaffe”, which seems an odd name for a teenage girl. I had to squeegee estrogen off the screen several times to maintain legibility.) This eulogy […]
January 21, 2017 – 12:53 am
Finally, to borrow a phrase from another presidential transition, “our long national nightmare is over.” That was quite a speech Mr. Trump gave today (video here, transcript here). Yes, it had its moments of hyperbole — we will not, for example, be eradicating Islamic terrorism from the face of the Earth any time soon, I […]
January 20, 2017 – 11:16 am
Right, then, today’s the day. The inauguration is about to begin. Mr. Trump can expect to be tested at once. From today’s NightWatch: China-US: On 19 January, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ms. Hua Chunying answered a question about China’s relations with the new US administration. Her reply is China official position regarding the US on the […]
January 19, 2017 – 1:00 pm
With a hat-tip to Bill Keezer, here’s a scathing response to our Praetorian press.
January 18, 2017 – 11:25 pm
Making the rounds today (with a hat-tip to our old e-pal Dennis Mangan): a poem written for Donald Trump’s inauguration. It’s called “Pibroch of the Domnhall” and was written by Joseph Charles MacKenzie (originally published at ClassicalPoets.org). I reproduce the first few stanzas, with prefatory notes: § The refrains at the end of each stanza […]
January 17, 2017 – 6:38 pm
In a post three years ago about the decline of eros, I had this to say: I have a friend named Bob Wyman; he was the founder of a startup company I worked for a few years ago. He’s a mighty smart guy. One of Bob’s pet ideas is that we can understand a great […]
January 16, 2017 – 1:32 pm
Among today’s emails was a solicitation from an online gift-shop called The Grommet. What were they trying to sell me on this cold January morning? Something called hygge: a Danish word (pronounced ‘hue-gah’) that the advertisement defined as “coziness, warmth, and contentment through the enjoyment of life’s simple pleasures.” You get the picture (quite literally […]
January 15, 2017 – 1:07 pm
The spat between John Lewis and Donald Trump is all over the news today. It began when Mr. Lewis announced that in his view the Trump presidency was illegitimate, which is no small thing for a member of Congress to say on the eve of a presidential inauguration. If I were Donald Trump, which I […]
January 14, 2017 – 5:07 pm
The Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto has for many years published a daily digest called Best of the Web. I’ve always enjoyed reading it: Mr. Taranto is a smart and funny guy, an astute observer, and a good writer. Mr. Taranto has now been promoted to editor of the paper’s op-ed pages, and BOTW […]
January 13, 2017 – 10:32 pm
Here’s something you might be surprised to see: a balanced and reasonable look at the Trump movement in the pages of The New Yorker. It is built upon an interview with the pseudonymous essayist “Publius Decius Mus”, whose anti-Clinton article “The Flight 93 Election” caused a such a stir last September. (We linked to it […]
January 12, 2017 – 10:12 pm
I’ll confess that its been a little hard to get back “up to speed” here since our little vacation. While we were away I was almost completely disconnected from the Internet, and from the news media. I thought I might draft a few posts, but the days and nights were full, and I never even […]
January 11, 2017 – 9:54 pm
This is fantastic: a centrifuge, spinning at up to 125,000 RPM, made out of paper and string. Brilliant. Here.
January 10, 2017 – 8:25 pm
In a comment on our previous post, our reader Robert, a.k.a “Whitewall’, gave us this link to a piece by Rod Dreher about the framing by NPR and the New York Times of the recent attack by four blacks on a young white schizophrenic, in which the victim was beaten and forced to drink from […]
January 9, 2017 – 3:09 pm
We’ve returned from our trip to the British Isles. It was a splendid, if not exactly slimming, trip (too many pints and convivial repasts for that, I’m afraid), and it was nice to be almost completely off-line throughout, paying almost no attention to social media and the news. Among the highlights (besides being with family […]
December 25, 2016 – 12:28 am
We’re heading off across the pond for a couple of weeks to visit family old and new. Things will probably be pretty quiet here till the week of the 8th, but you never know: there may be reports from abroad. Feel free to browse our eleven years of archived posts (4,292 as of this entry), […]
December 21, 2016 – 5:37 pm
Well here we go again. Goodwhites (many of whom, I’ll confess, are my friends) have been aghast about all the “hate” unleashed among badwhites during the Trump ascenscion. Just look! — here’s a sweet young Muslim woman assailed by Trumpist bigots on the subway, while out at Nassau County Community College some sociopath, his mind […]
December 20, 2016 – 11:03 pm
In the wake of the latest attacks in Europe, I’m re-linking to a post I wrote in April of 2013, in which I coined the term “Cultural Immunodeficiency Virus” to describe the lethal memetic pathogen affecting the West. The post seems to me as relevant now as it did then. Read it here.
December 20, 2016 – 6:42 pm
I always have to admire those who present quantitative data in visually compelling ways. With a hat-tip to David Duff, here is a wonderful example: Trumpland and the Clinton Archipelago, from the site Vivid Maps.
December 20, 2016 – 3:44 pm
I’ve written before about the fractal nature of social grievance, and the curious inversion of status that is only made possible by comfortable political and material conditions. Back in 2014, I had this to say: As I’ve said before (see here and here), “injustice” is fractal. (Zoom out and you get slavery, the Holocaust, ISIS; […]
December 20, 2016 – 12:43 am
Last weekend my daughter, who lives in Vienna, sent us a photograph of herself, her husband, and our four-month-old grandson enjoying themselves in the Kristmasmarkt in Karlsplatz. Today a similar holiday marketplace in Berlin was attacked by a jihadist, who rammed a truck into the happy crowd. As I write the death-toll stands at twelve, […]
December 20, 2016 – 12:10 am
Well, the Electoral College has cast its votes, and the results are in. The envelope, please? Aaaand … the winner is…. …Donald Trump! Hillary Clinton loses again! The best part? More of Hillary Clinton’s electors defected than Donald Trump’s. There is special kind of wonderfulness about this election: not only did we get […]
December 17, 2016 – 11:39 pm
Here’s an unsympathetic op-ed piece — from the New York Daily News, of all places — on the Left’s desperate campaign to annul the recent presidential election by subverting members of the Electoral College. The author, Michael Tracey, writes: Such a move would be rightly labeled a kind of hostile coup, as it totally flies […]