January 30, 2014 – 9:20 pm
I’ve been working long hours this week, and haven’t had the time — nor sufficient sleep — to write anything worth reading. Meanwhile, the links have been piling up, as they tend to do. So it’s time once again to flush, as we programmers say, the cache: — Another reason that I hope humans never […]
January 29, 2014 – 12:10 am
Here’s a pleasingly dyspeptic assessment of the State of the Union pageant, from Kevin D. Williamson.
January 27, 2014 – 7:27 pm
It’s the dead of winter here in the Outer Cape, and it’s been unusually cold and snowy. That doesn’t stop me from getting outside, though. Here are a few cell-phone shots from some recent walks around Wellfleet: First, our little wooded lane, after Tuesday’s snowstorm: Next, a few shots of Duck Harbor from about ten […]
January 26, 2014 – 11:58 pm
Here’s a mighty funny item from The Daily Show.
January 24, 2014 – 11:32 pm
Here’s something that seems to be in the air today. Yesterday I added a comment to our Benghazi thread from a few days back. As usually happens as threads lengthen, the conversation had wandered off-topic toward the more general sort of ideological scuffling that is a constant attractor in any discussion of current events these […]
January 23, 2014 – 11:21 pm
A common response from those who wish to inoculate the Obama administration, and in particular Hillary Clinton, from charges of negligence and malfeasance in the Benghazi murders, is to suggest that Ambassador Chris Stevens was in large part responsible for the absence of security at the diplomatic compound. In our own comment thread, for example, […]
January 21, 2014 – 7:14 pm
The venerable liberal journalist Nat Hentoff joins the chorus calling for Barack Obama’s impeachment. Worth a try, say I. The only plausible objection I can think of is Joe Biden, but at this point that’s a trade I’d be glad to make.
January 20, 2014 – 11:00 pm
Boy, do these things pile up quickly. — Ice balls. — I can almost hear him say “I told you so.” — Maybe we can get the Dems to primary this guy in 2016. — Well, whaddya know? — Satan’s Kimchi. — Common sense from Jim Cramer. — Even more personality tests. — Race trumps […]
January 19, 2014 – 11:30 pm
A lot has been made of The New York Times’s recent article, by David Kirkpatrick, about the sacking of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi on September 11th of 2012, in which four men, including our ambassador, were killed. The Obama administration’s partisans have given the article a triumphal reception, and have announced repeatedly that […]
January 18, 2014 – 2:14 pm
According to the New York Times, the “prolonged” execution of one Dennis McGuire — who had been condemned for the brutal murder of a young pregnant woman — has raised, once again, questions about the humaneness of various methods of execution. In Mr. McGuire’s case, the technique was lethal injection: As the lethal drugs flowed […]
January 16, 2014 – 4:58 pm
For today’s reading, we have an essay on income inequality by tech entrepreneur Paul Graham. Mr. Graham makes two key points: First, he reminds us that in a free society, the natural diversity of human characteristics, talents, and dispositions will always result in inequalities of wealth: When people care enough about something to do it […]
January 15, 2014 – 6:52 pm
The psychotic, pestiferous torrent of cultural-Marxist sludge excerpted below is, apparently, what a college education in the humanities produces nowadays. This is the moment when you make of your fist the same clench in your teeth, make of your tongue all the textbooks your school was not funded enough to provide you with, make of […]
January 14, 2014 – 6:44 pm
Here is a good example, from the Huffington Post, of a modern Eloi woman: a psychotherapist who responds to her young son’s naturally boyish play by wondering where she “went wrong”. (As one commenter remarks, it’s as if she sees her normal boy as a “defective girl”.) In particular, she is horrified that he might […]
January 14, 2014 – 12:30 am
I’m having a busy stretch here; the blog might be rather quieter than usual for a few days. Back to normal soon.
January 11, 2014 – 2:11 pm
Today we have an interesting piece by Nick Land on John Smart’s novel approach to the Fermi Paradox (see here for more about the Fermi Paradox, if you aren’t familiar with the term): that advanced civilizations, rather than expanding into space, relentlessly turn inward. We read: John M. Smart’s solution to the Fermi Paradox is […]
January 11, 2014 – 12:45 am
I haven’t anything substantial prepared for tonight, so just a brief salmagundi: — Fun with sound waves. — A lexical-distance graph of European languages. (Where’s Basque? So far out it’s off the chart, maybe.) — “Exponential medicine”. — VDH vs. Pajama Boy. — Amazing to see this, from the Times’s senior science writer. Is the […]
January 8, 2014 – 9:20 pm
In the comment-thread to our post about Duck Dynasty a few weeks back, the discussion turned to abortion rights. I wrote this: Are the not-yet-born rights-bearing persons, deserving of moral consideration? One would think that in a morally consistent ethics this would be an attribute inhering in the unborn person ”” but apparently in many […]
January 7, 2014 – 12:39 pm
Here’s an outstanding piece by Heather Mac Donald on our new, Marxist mayor. I had begun to prepare some excerpts and commentary, but you should really just go read the whole thing, here.
January 6, 2014 – 11:11 pm
It’s a sad day here at waka waka, where we’ve just heard that an old friend, Dr. Clive Sell of Phoenix, Arizona, has died unexpectedly of a heart attack. I got to know Clive many years ago, and hadn’t seen him in a long time, but he was a fine man: a charming Southerner, exceptionally […]
January 5, 2014 – 12:39 pm
Here’s a story that might get interesting. I’ll let you know.
January 5, 2014 – 12:08 pm
In part 3 of his “Gentle introduction“, the reactionary and monarchist writer Mencius Moldbug examines a possible framework for the creation of a new ‘noble’ class: Let’s say you were a person who didn’t care at all about the Constitution, and you wanted to take America back to the past and establish a new order […]
January 4, 2014 – 11:37 pm
Here’s a little late-night reading to make you love your local Leviathan just a little bit more: an Obamacare threefer, and then an NSA nightcap. First, this was too much even for Sonia Sotomayor. Second, some number-crunching from James Taranto. Third, a little historical perspective from Jay Cost. Last, this comforting item by way of […]
January 4, 2014 – 12:42 pm
The computer scientist David Gelernter has just posted an essay about the aggressiveness and overreach of contemporary scientism and transhumanism. In particular, he focuses on what he perceives to be an assault on the essence of our humanity — our subjectivity, which so far remains an impenetrable mystery. We read: Today science and the “philosophy […]
January 4, 2014 – 12:11 am
They’ve been piling up a bit, I’m afraid. — Graphene: the gift that keeps on giving. — Remember what happened to the Shakers, kitten. — How to keep your man. — The Daily Telegraph, just a century ago. — “You will know us by the trail of dead.” — Ice, Ice, Baby. — Eagle grinders: […]
January 2, 2014 – 11:06 pm
As you may have heard, there’s quite a storm on in the Northeast tonight. The lovely Nina and I are riding it out in our snug little dacha at the far end of Cape Cod, twenty-five miles out in the Atlantic. It’s been snowing all day, and we’re supposed to end up with about two […]
January 1, 2014 – 11:27 pm
Once again, here’s our New Year’s selection of some of the search-engine keyphrases that have brought visitors our way in the past year: dark enlightenment mola mola compelling natural force washington monument syndrome freedom go to hell what is a moral fact he’s no fun he fell right over hirsutative nipples brooklyn outwash moraine fools […]
December 31, 2013 – 4:59 pm
Happy New Year, everybody. And have a rip-roaring Hogmanay. Thanks again. See you in 2014!
December 29, 2013 – 11:51 pm
In this blog post, a New York venture capitalist expresses his concern about an urgent national problem: the underrepresentation of women in software engineering. Why this would, by itself, be an urgent national problem is hard to imagine. From an end-user’s perspective, what matters is that software does what it’s supposed to, reliably and without […]
December 27, 2013 – 12:15 am
From our reader Henry, here’s an interesting item: geneticists studying the rate at which biological complexity has increased over time have arrived at a provocative extrapolation.
December 24, 2013 – 5:34 pm
A warm and happy holiday to each and every one of you. Thank you all, as always, for reading and commenting.
December 24, 2013 – 5:25 pm
We’ve already discussed the Duck Dynasty brouhaha at sufficient length (and then some), but I wouldn’t want you to miss Bill Vallicella’s recent post about it: Some Points on Homosexuality in the Context of the Culture War.
December 24, 2013 – 12:02 pm
We haven’t mentioned the Norks much in these pages lately (or, for that matter, foreign affairs generally; we’ve been taking a bit of a breather there). Time to catch up a bit. As I’m sure most of you know, the doughy, degenerate, dipsomaniacal despot Kim Jong-un has recently executed his girlfriend, his uncle’s closest advisers, […]
December 23, 2013 – 1:54 pm
By now, I imagine, you are all familiar with the smug, epicene Eloi putz that the Obamacare P.R. machine recently chose to promote their product. He has entered the popular culture as “Pajama Boy”, and to an awful lot of people he has become an icon of American decadence and enfeeblement: a vain and useless […]
December 22, 2013 – 5:37 pm
Making the rounds today is a rant by one of the online community’s preeminent dyspeptics, Fred Reed. In it he responds to the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s opinion that men are no longer necessary. Ms. Dowd sums up her little idea as follows: So now that women don’t need men to reproduce and […]
December 22, 2013 – 12:24 am
We’re having a busy weekend — among other things, our daughter just flew in from China to stay with us for the Christmas week — and so I haven’t had the time to sit at the computer brooding and writing. For tonight, then, a logical curiosity you may not be familiar with: Newcomb’s paradox. Here’s […]
December 19, 2013 – 12:22 pm
The big news story of the day is that a good-natured Christian man from Louisiana has expressed an opinion that, while in full concordance with traditional Christian beliefs, is, in eyes of the modern Cathedral, a grievous heresy. (If “no news is good news”, I suppose we should all be relieved.) You can read about […]
December 19, 2013 – 11:52 am
With a hat tip to the indefatigable JK, here’s an item from Yahoo! Finance summarizing yet another unforeseen consequence of the grotesque and misbegotten Affordable Care Act. (The original story, from the Seattle Times, is here.)
December 18, 2013 – 10:42 pm
— As above, so below. — Forget engineering: here’s a degree that will always be in demand. — An excellent article about the Second Amendment. — Farewell to the Warthog. — Yet another example of the importance of social cohesion. — Ralph Nader and Charles Murray examine their differences and similarities. — Jersey’s “Jackson Whites”. […]
December 17, 2013 – 11:34 pm
James Taranto had a very good piece in his daily Best of the Web edition yesterday, but before I could write it up, my pal Mangan beat me to it. So go and find it at his place.
December 16, 2013 – 7:31 pm
I habitually prowl odd corners of the Internet, but plenary coverage takes time. There are still, I am reminded almost daily, large and undiscovered countries. I charted a new one today (although I had glimpsed its coastline from afar on several occasions). It began with a Tweet from the account calling itself “Outsideness”: https://twitter.com/Outsideness/status/412591534668656640 This […]
December 15, 2013 – 9:49 pm
The post just below this — “Small World” — was originally posted back in August. I took it down to mull it over some more, but really never got around to mulling it over very much at all, and thought I might as well just repost it more or less as it was. It is […]
December 15, 2013 – 9:44 pm
A while back somebody remarked to me that the world was “getting smaller”. It’s a familiar expression, but this time it evoked in me a literal image of a closed container whose volume was actually shrinking. The metaphor led in interesting directions, and the more I thought about it, the more fertile it seemed to […]
December 12, 2013 – 11:49 pm
From the indefatigable JK, a link to yet another story of swaggering government overreach and unintended consequences. A sage once was asked: “Master, what is wisdom?” “Good judgment.” “And how does one acquire good judgment?” “Bad judgment.” Unfortunately, this process works for people, but not democracies, where those who make the bad judgments never pay […]
December 12, 2013 – 5:57 pm
Well, political junkies, here it is: Politifact’s Lie of the Year. (One could bicker about which year it really belongs to, but it’s certainly a whopper, and had a major effect on the course of events.) Of course there are far bigger specimens out there — submerged monsters big enough to affect the very currents […]
December 11, 2013 – 10:13 pm
Well, the Mandela memorial’s come and gone, and a fine time was had by all. In particular, our own Mr. Obama really let his hair down, offering a playfully deferential bow to that mean old Mr. Castro, and swanning about with Denmark’s comely PM, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Mr. Obama, never one to let his playful spirits […]
December 11, 2013 – 5:31 pm
Speaking of NASA, here’s their latest robot. Seeing that they’ve given it a female shape and name, I’d have thought ‘Fatima’, or perhaps ‘Ayisha’, would have been far more appropriate — but ‘Valkyrie’ it is, at least pending a little re-education amongst the staff.
December 10, 2013 – 9:24 pm
On October 13th, NASA’s Juno probe, which is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on Independence Day 2016, made a ‘slingshot’ flyby of Earth in order to boost its velocity. Using some low-res calibration cameras, it took a time-lapse movie of its approach to the Earth-Moon system. I don’t know why NASA is bothering with Jupiter, […]
December 8, 2013 – 1:07 am
This is exquisite: Glenn Gould playing the Goldberg Variations, 1981.
December 7, 2013 – 11:05 pm
Back in July, I wrote the following: To the conservative, traditions arise naturally from the workings of human nature, as part of the ontogeny and organic development of societies. They are not the result of scientific planning or sociological theorizing — and like biological species themselves, they only come into view in retrospect. They are, […]
December 6, 2013 – 11:39 pm
— That’s life. — Democracy! Meh. — Do you ever get the feeling… — Well, they do love to play with yarn… — A Protestant Manifesto, 1942. — Quip of the month. Orwell smiles. — We don’t need no stinkin’ Constitution. — Floral design. — A negative income tax? (We could look at that universal-suffrage […]