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 […]
December 5, 2013 – 8:34 pm
From PJ Media, here’s a report on a recent restaffing of the Department of Homeland Security’s legal team. Given the bios of the new hires, readers should be forgiven for coming away with the impression that their selection reveals something of a departure from ideological neutrality. (And from any interest whatsoever in enforcing our immigration […]
December 5, 2013 – 5:00 pm
Nelson Mandela has just died. Waiting for President Obama to release a tribute featuring himself. … Update: …aaaaand — here it is! Rest in peace, Nelson Mandela. pic.twitter.com/4qlqsXLp6e — The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 5, 2013 A twofer this time: a picture of himself, AND he quotes himself, too!
December 4, 2013 – 11:39 pm
When I was a young boy (the son of two scientists), I was fascinated by paleontology, and always imagined that it would be what I would do when I grew up. It didn’t work out that way, but I never lost my interest in natural history and the theory of evolution. One man I admired […]
December 4, 2013 – 12:36 am
“He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted and capable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, […]
December 3, 2013 – 12:26 am
Making the rounds this evening is a study of male and female brains that reveals — you’d better sit down for this — that they are actually wired up, and operate, rather differently. There’s an article about it in The Independent, here. A great deal of costly and coercive public policy is based on the […]
December 2, 2013 – 12:44 pm
OK everybody, here’s a treat for you: the Faces, live in 1972. Rod Stewart at the peak of his powers, with one of the greatest old-school rock bands of all time — Ron Wood, Ronnie Lane, Ian McLagan, and Kenny Jones. Nicely recorded, too. Here.
November 29, 2013 – 11:34 pm
Another of our steeples drench’d, I’m afraid. More here. We are dying, dying…
November 29, 2013 – 11:20 pm
Here’s something that’s apparently been going on for a while now that I’m just hearing about: Cicada 3301. “The world is so full of a number of things; I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
November 28, 2013 – 10:59 pm
Thanks to all of you, readers, for all your time and attention these past eight years. Thanks especially to those of you who have joined the conversation here. It’s why I started this blog in the first place.
November 27, 2013 – 12:19 pm
From the blogger known as ‘educationrealist’, here’s a penetrating look at Common Core, and some of the reasons why it is such a bad idea. One of the reasons it’s a bad idea: it fails to acknowledge an essential and utterly self-evident truth, namely that the ability to learn and master complex topics is not […]
November 26, 2013 – 11:39 pm
It’s a long day at work for me today — 11:35 p.m. and I’m still at it. All I have to offer is this little item from XKCD, which I happened on earlier today, in an idle moment. Back soon.
November 24, 2013 – 6:33 pm
There’s a bosky little corner of the blogosphere that is home to an intellectual movement to which I am ideologically sympathetic, and with which I am loosely associated. It is known variously as the Dissident Right, the Dark Enlightenment, or Neoreaction. This seditious cabal been around for years, but only lately has begun to attract […]
November 24, 2013 – 1:38 pm
Well, Carlsen did it. He defeated Anand 6.5-3.5, with three wins and not a single loss, and is now the world champion. You can go over all the games here.
November 22, 2013 – 10:20 pm
Our e-pal ‘hbd* chick’ (a scholar of human reproductive patterns and variation whose outstanding blog should be on your regular reading list, if it isn’t already) posted an excellent item yesterday on the increasing difficulties confronting adherents of the ideological cult of Diversity in the face of damning and discrediting evidence. (At this point the […]
November 22, 2013 – 4:08 pm
My God, is there no limit to this man’s narcissism? (No need to reply, we already know the answer.) Can he not honor anything or anyone without placing himself in the frame?