October 25, 2013 – 2:25 pm
As noted in these pages seven years ago, I’m a “fall guy“. It’s always been my favorite season. Here are some lovely photos of autumn in America. (I mean that literally, not figuratively, of course.)
October 24, 2013 – 11:10 pm
In the Antarctic. The most in thirty years.
October 24, 2013 – 3:16 pm
In case you missed it: here’s a lesson in political philosophy from one Russell Brand, who is apparently a British entertainer of some sort. His plan appears to be: Phase 1: Revolution! Phase 2: ? Phase 3: Justice! Should work. He’s obviously given it a lot of thought.
October 24, 2013 – 2:18 pm
In this article from Science Daily, we learn that eucalyptus trees are pumping gold out of the ground.
October 23, 2013 – 9:58 pm
Here’s a a 3D zoomable panorama of the Sistine Chapel.
October 23, 2013 – 5:05 pm
The indefatigable JK sends along this item, with the comment “Good thing they raised the debt ceiling in time.” This is OUR MONEY, people.
October 23, 2013 – 10:43 am
It is generally the case that bien-pensant women (and not just the women!) in advanced Western societies are eager to crush all vestiges of “gender” differences. They imagine a world in which half of all soldiers, network admins, metallurgists, auto mechanics, and oil-rig workers are female, and half of all librarians, nurses, pre-school teachers, cosmetologists, […]
October 22, 2013 – 9:39 pm
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a brief post about an idea, discussed by blogger and IT consultant Bruce Webster, that he calls the “Thermocline of Truth”. Mr. Webster describes it: In many large or even medium-sized IT projects, there exists a thermocline of truth, a line drawn across the organizational chart that represents […]
October 22, 2013 – 1:54 pm
For you bitter clingers, here’s a WWII-era training film: combat firing with the 1911 .45 ACP. One thing modern shooters will notice (and did, if you read the comments at the linked clip): the lack of emphasis on trigger and muzzle safety, which nowadays is the first thing you learn in any training course.
October 21, 2013 – 10:25 pm
Another item from the frontiers of science: the Law of Mammalian Urination.
October 21, 2013 – 10:00 pm
With a hat tip to our man Mangan, here’s some good news: coffee helps prevent liver disease. The more you drink, the more it helps.
October 19, 2013 – 8:42 pm
It’s Oysterfest weekend in Wellfleet once again, and your humble correspondent has reclaimed his crown at the annual Spelling Bee. I realize that by now most of you have likely already heard — I’m sure it’s all over the national media — but I thought the rest of you would like to know.
October 19, 2013 – 8:23 pm
It’s the flesh-eating beetle, genus Dermestes. See these hungry little guys in action, here.
October 19, 2013 – 11:41 am
OK, everybody, I think we all need a little cooling-off period. Time to set aside our partisan differences and watch a bear play tetherball.
October 18, 2013 – 12:09 pm
OK, the battle’s over, if not the war, and as we carry the dead from the blood-soaked field, Obamacare is still the “law of the land”. (“Flaw of the land”, according to some, but never mind.) So: how’s it going? Megan McArdle’s been wondering. If you are too, here’s a nifty website to help you […]
October 17, 2013 – 10:07 pm
I’ve been preoccupied, so just a pair of related links for tonight. The topic is ‘biobots’ — i.e., remote-controlled cockroaches — and new ways to use them.
October 15, 2013 – 10:23 pm
I have a question for all of you who say insist that the Democrats have played no causal role in this government shutdown and impending default (there’s no reason why the US must cease paying its debt service if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, by the way). (Just to be clear: although I agree with […]
October 15, 2013 – 8:15 pm
From an item at SFGate: People whose 2014 income will be a little too high to get subsidized health insurance from Covered California next year should start thinking now about ways to lower it to increase their odds of getting the valuable tax subsidy. Slip-slidin’ away…
October 14, 2013 – 10:55 pm
— Steve Sailer comments on the tendency of women who are interested in science to go into the “life sciences” (medicine, biology) rather than fields like physics and chemistry. — Mark Steyn on King John and Barack Obama. — A “must-know” endgame from Susan Polgar. — Iron Man. — Walter Williams on guns, and the […]
October 13, 2013 – 1:30 pm
Forward-looking, tech-savvy investors knew a while back that 3-D printing was going to be a Big Deal. (Those farsighted speculators have already made handsome returns with companies like 3-D Systems and Stratasys.) The technology is still in its infancy, though — about where personal computing was in 1980 or so — and its truly transformative […]
October 11, 2013 – 11:41 pm
With a hat tip to our friend Mangan: sitting will kill you.
October 11, 2013 – 7:00 pm
Here’s the academic Left descending ever deeper into self-parody. Racism collides with sexism in a self-pitying pissing-contest of the microscopically oppressed. One would have to have a heart of stone to read this without laughing.
October 10, 2013 – 9:55 pm
On the dance floor itself, a great seething mass of people move like maggots in a tin. — Theodore Dalrymple, visiting a club. From Life at the Bottom, Kindle location 1408.
October 8, 2013 – 6:07 pm
I don’t know what’s worse here: the brownshirt tactics of NPS rangers assigned to strong-arm old folks so as to make House Republicans look mean, or the awful fact that someone educated in America could accuse a person of “recreating”. God help us.
October 8, 2013 – 3:54 pm
Over at The New Republic, in an article called Quit Blaming Gerrymandering for the Shutdown, Nate Cohn addresses some fashionable ideas about the effects of Congressional districting.
October 8, 2013 – 3:29 pm
In a new worldwide evaluation of various cognitive skills, Americans have made a poor showing. Americans performed below the international average on math, reading and problem-solving on the exam, known as the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies. U.S. math skills lagged far behind top performers, including Japan and Finland. The Organisation for […]
October 6, 2013 – 10:21 pm
Here’s another, from DARPA: WildCat. See also: RoboSimian.
October 4, 2013 – 2:20 pm
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own […]
October 3, 2013 – 11:14 pm
Limpid clarity on the 17th shutdown, from Thomas Sowell. Here.
October 3, 2013 – 1:07 pm
From Heartiste: the Beauty Ratio.
October 3, 2013 – 11:17 am
A tart item from Bill Vallicella. Here.
October 2, 2013 – 10:32 pm
While the nation keens and writhes over the theatrical Obamacare showdown/shutdown, Kevin D. Williamson, in an essay published earlier today, offers a sobering look at the larger problem: reaching a point where debt service plus “mandatory” entitlement spending exceeds total revenue — which rising interest rates could bring about sooner than you might think. When […]
October 2, 2013 – 10:02 am
Speaking of Washington Monument Syndrome, some memorable political theater is underway at the WWII Veterans Memorial: the completely open-air plaza has now been blocked off by our Executive Branch, in a gesture of sheer petulance, just as a planeload of elderly veterans are arriving for a ceremonial visit. (“Non-essential” workers were actually exempted from their […]
September 30, 2013 – 12:10 pm
This excellent metaphor comes to us (by way of Jim Geraghty) from blogger Bruce Webster, who coined it to describe a phenomenon that he observed, originally, while analyzing the ways in which large-scale software projects can fail. In this post, he notes that it applies also to the slow-motion catastrophe we call “Obamacare”. The post […]
September 29, 2013 – 11:17 pm
The lovely Nina and I met a very interesting gentleman today: Paul Sheehan, a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald. (He has also served as that newspaper’s Washington correspondent, and its day editor.) Mr. Sheehan is an old friend of our friend Allen Kurzweil, and is in Wellfleet for a visit. This afternoon Allen, who […]
September 28, 2013 – 2:59 pm
Here is the opening of Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, pp 25-26, 1986. (My emphasis.) For “openness”, you may substitute “non-discrimination”. There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put […]
September 25, 2013 – 11:00 pm
One of my oldest and closest friends is a fellow by the name of Carl Sturken. We’ve been pals since the fifth grade. Carl is a fantastically (and eclectically) talented musician. We were bandmates in high school, and he went on (to no-one’s surprise) to a very successful career as a songwriter and record producer. […]
September 24, 2013 – 11:26 pm
Interesting item here: the human population may have undergone significant expansion far longer ago than we’ve thought up till now — not ten millennia ago, but sixty to eighty. How, I wonder, does this fit in with the “Toba bottleneck” theory, in which the entire breeding population of humans is thought to have crashed to […]
September 23, 2013 – 10:33 pm
Here’s a Cold War scheme I’d never heard about, until our own JK sent me this link: a Saturn-like ring around the Earth, made of little copper wires.
September 22, 2013 – 12:08 am
For you chessplayers: a pretty puzzle, from Susan Polgar. Here.
September 21, 2013 – 9:48 am
Here’s the comedian Louis C.K., with some remarkably insightful remarks on the popularity of smart-phones and the human condition. Blaise Pascal said: “All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room’. We would rather see, or do, almost anything rather than be forced to look […]
September 20, 2013 – 10:06 pm
— Not of this Earth? — Steve Sailer on amnesty and fertility. — New book on the way about the Matthew Shepard story. — A great Burgess Shale website. Drill down for the animations. — Speaking of exotic fauna, longtime readers may remember our mentioning the tardigrade, here and here. Now, an amazing photo, here. […]
September 19, 2013 – 1:40 pm
Cleverly displayed, using animated maps. Here.
September 18, 2013 – 1:42 pm
In his daily newsletter, Morning Jolt, political commentator Jim Geraghty posts a response to a question from NPR on “what kind of debates the country should have after a mass-shooting tragedy”. * I’m reproducing Mr. Geraghty’s answer in full, below, because I think it is forthright and sensible.
September 17, 2013 – 12:13 pm
Sam Harris has issued a $20,000 challenge to anyone who can refute his claim to have placed morality on a thoroughly scientific, Utilitarianist footing. (Not a merely descriptive footing, that is: a normative one: a beneficent blend of biology and Bentham.) I might have to take a go at this myself. See also Harris’s initial […]
September 16, 2013 – 4:20 pm
Jonah Goldberg has posted a tart essay on the Left’s conceit that it is they, not conservatives, who stand on the side of personal liberty. We read: Alleged proof for this amusing myth (or pernicious lie; take your pick) comes in the form of liberal support for gay marriage and abortion rights, and opposition to […]
September 14, 2013 – 9:37 pm
Encouraging news from Illinois. Here.