In case you haven’t noticed, everything’s going to hell. I can’t say that I’m surprised: in a comment a while back, for example, I wrote that the administration of “this awful man — this grotesque incompetent, this subversive fraud, this preening and malevolent narcissist, this despiser of American tradition and implacable enemy of everything the […]
There aren’t many public figures on the Left who irritate me the way the writer Chris Hedges always has. (Tim Wise is another.) Pallid, sneering, humorless, self-righteous, and full of that grotesque collectivist piety that has done more damage in the modern world than any other force of man or nature, the very sight of […]
I have to say, this is pretty titillating. It’s also the first I’m hearing about this sort of thing as a realistic possibility, and I wonder how seriously to take it. (The article says this rig can get to Alpha Centauri and back in a month. I assume that’s ship’s time, and so we’d still […]
Not content with Mosul, now it appears that ISIL has seized Tikrit, too. Iraq is disintegrating. Update: Not sure what to make of this…
Things are finally getting back to normal around here, and I apologize to all for the long absence. (I realize that my not writing anything here for a week doesn’t exactly deprive anyone of oxygen, but I do know that many people stop by here regularly — my thanks to all of you as always! […]
In this engaging post, science-fiction writer John C. Wright responds, with brio and in fine style, to accusations of political heterodoxy and tainted allegiances.
There are a great many things I’d like to be commenting on just now, but I’m working very long hours this week and have no time for anything else. Thanks very much as always for checking in. Back soon I hope.
Say what you will about Barack Obama, the man is consistent: everything he does seems reliably to act against the interests of the United States, its people, and its economic and social well-being; against the intention of the Framers that we shall live under a government of limited, enumerated powers, in which the three branches […]
I haven’t written about martial arts in a while, but coming across a silly little article in Popular Mechanics prompts me to do so today. The article begins with some fawning hyperbole: Forget all those broken boards and crumbled concrete slabs. No feat of martial arts is more impressive than Bruce Lee’s famous strike, the […]
Google’s just revealed its workplace demographics. The breakdown for tech workers: 60% white, 34% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% black. Pass the popcorn. Addendum, 5/29: I neglected to add above that the breakdown by sex is: women 17%, men 83%. Nobody should be surprised by any of this. To get through the multilevel Google tech interview, […]
Our reader Henry has sent us a link to the latest crop of “Random Thoughts” from Thomas Sowell. Some excerpts: Some people act as if the answer to every problem is to put more money and power in the hands of politicians. * Republicans in Congress seem to be drawn toward the immigration issue like […]
Here’s George Will outlining the sort of presidential candidate he’s hoping for next time round. I have to say, I think that if someone actually presented himself to the voters as Mr. Will proposes, he’d win by a landslide. At the very least, he’d certainly get my vote.
Well! Good news from across the Big Ditch, as the “bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” known as UKIP did very well indeed in yesterday’s elections. Here’s a happy reaction from UK blogger ‘Anna Racoon’, in which she writes: So peace finally reigns in the old ‘Muppet show’ studio ‘D’ at Elstree, from where […]
Writing at The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald reports on an item from the collection of classified material leaked by Edward Snowden: a report on the ways that “Western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction”. I can’t say that any of it should come as a […]
Here’s something really beautiful: photographs of subtropical fungi by Australian photographer Steve Axford.
We’ve been hearing for years that the only way America can stay ‘competitive’ is to admit hordes of foreign engineers to supplement our inadequate supply of homegrown STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) workers. The constant influx of these workers on H-1B visas has kept wages in these fields from rising for many years now. But […]
Just discovered a terrific online resource. Have a look.
Reviews and reactions to Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History have been many, and varied. The book is as polarizing as we all expected: for some it is racist ‘pseudoscience’, while for others it is a social and scientific watershed. I linked last week to hbd*chick’s roundup of these reviews; Occam’s […]
After working long hours the past three days (including an all-nighter on Tuesday), and teaching class tonight, I am utterly flogged. All I have to offer you is this.
We haven’t been covering political events very closely of late, so here are two items of interest. In the first, we learn that the Executive Branch has been short-circuiting deportation proceedings for thousands of criminal aliens, choosing instead just to let them go. Apparently this cohort, now at large within our borders again, have already […]
From Eric Hoffer’s Before the Sabbath, 1975: It is disconcerting that present-day young who did not know Stalin and Hitler are displaying the old naiveté. After all that has happened they still do not know that you cannot build utopia without terror, and that before long terror is all that’s left.
Sorry for the meager output over the past few days. The muse has been silent. Back soon. Here are a few items that have piled up: — Goodnight Dune. — An outstanding reactionary essay by Richard Weaver. (Worth a post of its own, when time permits.) — Tornado passing through. — A handy chart. — […]
A few days ago we linked to a defiant essay by a young, Jewish college student in which, having been told once too often to ‘check his privilege’, he examined the ‘privileges’ his family had enjoyed in the Holocaust, and during the struggle of its surviving members to build a life in postwar America. Here’s […]
Courtesy of the indefatigable JK. Here.
Our pal Mangan directed us yesterday to an interesting item, from Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs, on the idea of ‘political correctness’ as an expression, not of one’s actual beliefs, but as a ‘signaling’ mechanism employed to enhance status. (This is not a new idea, but this is a good treatment of it.) Inside the […]
A sharp excerpt from a post by Bryce Laliberte: Equality is alien to nature… Democracy is opposed to order, for it is fundamentally a kind of disorder; order entails the accumulation of capital, material and social, which likewise entails a hierarchy and the attendant high asymmetries of power. Democracy precludes the accumulation of power by […]
Kevin Spacey: new face of the Dark Enlightenment. Here. (h/t: Nick Land.)
April 30, 2014 – 11:01 pm
The best thing I’ve read all week. Here.
It appears as if reality may slowly be impinging upon the consciousness of David Brooks. In today’s column, he laments that the abstract world order he had hoped for seems to be slipping away, yielding to older and more organic forces. We read: “The ”˜category error’ of our experts is to tell us that our […]
Just in case, loyal Readers, you happen to be looking for a fat tax write-off; and supposing also that you’ve been troubled lately by how hard it is for aging, pallid reactionary male bloggers just to get around without being interfered with by resentful Progressive mobs, here’s the perfect way to kill two birds with […]
April 28, 2014 – 10:37 pm
One more from the UK: the Daily Mail reports that modern humans are weaklings compared to our early ancestors. They might be on to something.
April 28, 2014 – 10:27 pm
NRO’s Jim Geraghty attended the National Rifle Association’s annual convention last week in Indianapolis, and today he summed up his impressions in an excellent post. I had begun to cull some excerpts, but really you should go read the whole thing yourself. It’s here. Best line: “Hi, I’m here to change your culture!’
April 28, 2014 – 10:06 pm
After yesterday’s depressing post, here’s some good news from across the pond: the anti-EU party UKIP has surged to first place in the runup to to next month’s elections. Suddenly, all over Europe, the spell is breaking.
April 27, 2014 – 11:36 pm
Once, Winston Churchill was the voice of England, the defender of “the island race“. My parents, who grew up in Britain, remembered hearing him on the radio during the Blitz. They told me that, more than anything else, it was his lion’s heart (and his lion’s roar) that gave the sturdy people of that battered […]
April 24, 2014 – 11:00 am
This morning I dropped a post I had written late last night, something I rarely do. When I got up and reread it, it just seemed too morose. As news unfolded later in the morning, I was glad I had done it for another reason: it would have led to more bickering than I have […]
Hello, … well, something very different indeed. Here’s an article about what college “debate” has become.
In his latest column, Patrick Buchanan argues that what confounded the Soviet empire, and what will keep Vladimir Putin’s revanchist ambitions in check today, is not sanctions or military threats, but a rising tide of nationalism. We read: Before we start sending troops back to Europe, as we did 65 years ago under Harry Truman, […]
April 20, 2014 – 11:34 pm
In a splenetic comment to an earlier post, a reader presents us with a clinical example of what I have called Cultural Immunodeficiency Virus: an AIDS-like memetic infection that attacks the social organism’s immune system, rendering it incapable of making essential discriminations — in particular, exactly those self/other distinctions that any organism must make to […]
April 18, 2014 – 10:49 pm
Here’s a fine online edition of Philogelos, the world’s oldest joke book.
Megan McArdle comments on the Obama administration’s conveniently timed revamp of insurance-data collection: I’m speechless. Shocked. Stunned. Horrified. Befuddled. Aghast, appalled, thunderstruck, perplexed, baffled, bewildered and dumbfounded. It’s not that I am opposed to the changes: Everyone understands that the census reports probably overstate the true number of the uninsured, because the number they report […]
Here’s a calm and reasonable article about “climate change”. The author is Lennart Bengtsson, an impeccably credentialed climate researcher. We read: More CO2 in the atmosphere leads undoubtedly to a warming of the earth surface. However, the extent and speed of this warming are still uncertain, because we cannot yet separate well enough the greenhouse […]
April 15, 2014 – 12:08 pm
Here’s a good piece by Jon Hinderaker on the Bundy affair.
April 14, 2014 – 11:16 pm
It’s just spring here in Wellfleet, and suddenly there are daffodils everywhere. I love daffodils; they seem perfect to me. They sing of warm spring sunlight, and cool clear air, and dark fertile soil, and of beauty unvanquished. I’ve always thought that daffodils are pure joy. I’ve written in these pages, from time to time, […]
I just took an online survey called “How Stereotypically White Are You?” It offers a hundred criteria, and asks the respondent to check all that apply. Most of them were things like “Have you ever listened to John Mayer while hooking up with someone?” (The sort of questions I might have asked — “Have you […]
A simple explanation from Randall Munroe.
April 11, 2014 – 11:50 am
We’ve been hacked, it seems. Perhaps it’s that ‘Heartbleed’ business, although my understanding was that Bluehost, my hosting service, had not been affected. Thanks to Matt Walker for leaving a comment on one of the (now deleted) spam posts to tell us that our RSS feed is corrupted also. Our in-house team of cyberterrorism experts […]
Brandeis University has rescinded its decision to award Aayan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree at this year’s commencement. You might have thought that a Jewish liberal-arts institution that was sufficiently impressed by Ms. Ali’s advocacy of women’s rights to offer her this honor wouldn’t be put off by her outspoken criticism of a culture that […]
A story that’s making the rounds today concerns trending changes in the way people read. Here’s the lede, from today’s Washington Post: Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, […]
My Android phone just had a stroke, and I had to do a factory reset. I lost all my applications, which meant I had to go rummaging around to replace them. It’s turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I’ve found some nifty new ones, and after blasting away all the cruft that […]
Too much social/political stuff lately. Will lay off for a while.