January 22, 2013 – 11:25 pm
Can anyone explain to me why the United States is giving Egypt two hundred tanks and sixteen F-16s? The answer should not be that “we signed an agreement that we are now honoring”. We signed that agreement with Hosni Mubarak, a man we could rely on to maintain a stable peace with our principal ally […]
January 22, 2013 – 3:51 pm
Yuval Levin has written an excellent, and even-tempered, response to yesterday’s unapologetically collectivist speech by the President. Levin seizes on what I also thought was a key point, namely that Mr. Obama remains frankly and resolutely committed to the hollowing out of the essential layers of civil society that stand between the individual citizen and […]
January 22, 2013 – 1:58 pm
Speaking of yesterday’s inauguration, some of you might not have seen the hat that Justice Antonin Scalia wore. More here.
January 22, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Commenting on a recent item, one of our regular readers shared with us a fulsome effusion about yesterday’s reinstallation of our nation’s chief executive. Monday’s re-enactment of the actual swearing in, which took place on Sunday, was attended by the usual pomp and pageantry. It was attended also by a heterogeneous conglomerate of ethnic, cultural, […]
January 20, 2013 – 9:55 pm
In case any of you (perhaps those of you who have been held prisoner in a sub-basement by your evil stepfather for the past few decades, or you folks miraculously emerging from a persistent vegetative state) have any lingering doubt about the partisan alignment of certain media outlets, here’s the political director of CBS News […]
January 20, 2013 – 1:19 am
Champion sharpshooter Jessie Duff demonstrates a variety of semiautomatic firearms for Sean Hannity, making clear once again that the hysterical focus on so-called “assault rifles” is ignorant idiocy. (Look, for example, at the damage done by that 12-gauge.) As with all semiautomatics: one round per trigger pull.
January 20, 2013 – 1:01 am
Gates of Vienna is down again.
January 18, 2013 – 11:56 pm
There’s a truly shocking news item making the rounds: an inspection of Air Force facilities has turned up — you’d better sit down first — inappropriate material. There were calendars with scantily clad women, R-rated movies, and even — it’s hard for me to bring myself to tell you this, readers, but in the interest […]
January 18, 2013 – 12:43 am
Here’s an informative slideshow about so-called “assault weapons”.
January 17, 2013 – 11:45 pm
Here’s an interesting little item: a collection of maps, from 1932, showing how long it took to travel in the U.S., in days of yore. (From New York, of course.)
January 17, 2013 – 12:40 pm
Some very nice bass-playing here (reminds me of Paul Jackson, from Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters band). Fun to watch, too.
January 16, 2013 – 10:46 pm
Criminy. Gates of Vienna has now been taken down. That’s very bad. And it didn’t have to happen. Attention, thoughtcrime bloggers: GET YOUR OWN DOMAIN AND HOSTING. It’s easy. You know who you are. Your voices are vitally important, and more so every day, as the shades of night descend upon the West. Are you […]
January 16, 2013 – 4:45 pm
Here’s something you language weenies will enjoy: an online dictionary of British slang.
January 16, 2013 – 11:46 am
For the Consideration of the General Publick: The Safety of its elected Magistrates being of the highest Concern to a free Society, and the presence of Fire-arms being, as we are continually assured, a Catalyst for mortal Peril, there can be little Doubt that the surest Measure for the Protection and Defense of our Chief […]
January 16, 2013 – 12:44 am
Last week the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by Susan Jacoby called The Blessings of Atheism. In it, Ms. Jacoby attempts to rebut a colleague’s remark, apropos of Newtown, that atheism has no consolation to offer when people are suffering. I’m an atheist myself, and I think Ms. Jacoby is on a fool’s […]
January 15, 2013 – 7:54 pm
Seizing its chance, New York’s legislature has now, in a breathless rush of immoderate and ill-considered haste, passed one of the nation’s strictest gun laws. Similar measures are soon to be attempted at a national level. Those in power should be mindful, just now, not to push too hard, too fast; there is a tremendous […]
January 14, 2013 – 11:05 pm
Barack Obama vs. Barack Obama on the debt ceiling. Here.
January 14, 2013 – 5:17 pm
Here’s another shocker from the frontiers of medical research: Slimmer Women’s Waist is Associated with Better Erectile Function in Men Independent of Age IIEF scores don’t lie, folks. Story here.
January 13, 2013 – 11:22 pm
I haven’t posted anything for a while about the Left’s latest spasm of gun-control hysteria, so let’s catch up a bit with some miscellaneous items. By far the loudest of the torch-and-pitchfork mob has been the swinish, unapologetically ignorant prig Piers Morgan, whose idea of a “debate” has been to insult and shout down his […]
January 12, 2013 – 11:42 pm
The Uncanny Valley, that is. Here.
January 11, 2013 – 11:08 pm
I’m an admirer of the philosopher Daniel Dennett. He can be overconfidently brusque and dismissive, and in particular I have parted company with him on the issue of activist atheism (more about that in a minute), but he has an enviably fertile and wide-ranging intellect. He’s also a terrific writer; in particular I highly recommend […]
January 11, 2013 – 4:35 pm
Spring’s on its way, guys! If you want to nail that big job interview, or just look your best at the local biker-bar, it’s time to hit the stores.
January 11, 2013 – 2:50 pm
The National Research Council has issued a new report, considering in unprecedented depth a startling possibility: that variability in the energy output of the sun might have an effect on Earth’s climate. Watts Up With That has posted a lengthy and detailed discussion here. (Hat-tip: David Duff.)
January 10, 2013 – 11:46 pm
Well, the Oscar nominations are out, and the nation is abuzz as always. Tell you what, though: ever since this groundbreaking film didn’t make the cut a couple of years ago, I’ve kind of lost interest.
January 10, 2013 – 11:11 pm
Since emerging, chastened, from the militant atheism of my not-so-distant past, I have in recent years come round, despite being an unbeliever myself, to the opinion that wide-scale secularism is a maladaptation that sharply — perhaps even lethally — reduces a society’s fitness. In a recent lecture at Washington University in St. Louis, George Will […]
January 9, 2013 – 10:25 pm
Courtesy of Bill Keezer, here’s Victor Davis Hanson on the exculpatory blessings of hipness. I used to be pretty hip myself, you know. After reading this, I’m starting to think that maybe I should give it another go.
January 9, 2013 – 4:04 pm
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, it must release itself in […]
January 8, 2013 – 11:43 pm
From 1967: Woody Allen and William F. Buckley.
January 8, 2013 – 4:01 pm
There’s been so much focus lately on the senescence and decline of Western culture that I think it’s important to take a minute, now and then, to remind ourselves that we still possess much of great and lasting value — and that the magnificent legacy of Plato and Aristotle, of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Beethoven, Goethe, Newton, […]
January 7, 2013 – 12:21 pm
Here’s a heartwarming item from the Windy City. As Sandburg said: “Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action.”
January 7, 2013 – 12:39 am
Boy, you can say that again. Here’s a glimpse from the year of my birth: cars, kitchens, and kitsch, in an unforgettable nine-minute movie. Hat tip to Iowahawk.
January 7, 2013 – 12:21 am
I’m whipped tonight. So here’s… A camera mounted on the slide of a trombone. Oddly entertaining.
January 6, 2013 – 12:44 am
The composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett died this past Christmas Eve, and tonight WQXR played a selection of his works. One of them was from his score for the 1967 film Billion Dollar Brain, and it featured an eerie, flute-like instrument. At first I thought it was a Theremin, but then I realized it must […]
January 5, 2013 – 5:54 pm
California, not so long ago the flagship of the American federation, has been going under for quite a while now: overfreighted with lavish entitlements, embarnacled with suffocating regulation, and holed below the waterline by demographic disintegration. Because attacking the root of the problem by reducing the expansion of government is for deep-blue California an ideological […]
January 5, 2013 – 12:28 am
There’s no shortage lately of the sort of topics I’d normally be commenting on. The ongoing Second Amendment “debate” is certainly one (this Vanity Fair piece deserves a good going over, for example, and I’ve piled up a lot of related material that needs organizing into a post). The eternal and stupendously useless budget war […]
January 4, 2013 – 1:08 pm
In this brief item, Jim Pethokoukis weighs the various options for dealing with the looming debt-ceiling battle. Among them, in case you haven’t heard: trillion-dollar platinum coins.
January 2, 2013 – 11:56 pm
On February 15th, the asteroid 2012 DA14 will be passing by at the rather intimate distance of 21,500 miles. That’s mighty close: it’s actually within the Clarke orbit used by geosynchronous communication satellites, which circle the planet 22,300 miles up. It definitely will not hit us, say the boffins, and when it comes to this […]
January 1, 2013 – 5:30 pm
In keeping with our ancient tradition, here’s this year’s selection from the searchphrases that brought readers to our doorstep in 2012: man in chicken suit flying on hang glider lwica lwica race map the boy who cried sheep thats a moray freedom go to hell ice tricks darkie toothpaste pelicans eating other birds no bikini […]
January 1, 2013 – 1:10 pm
Happy New Year to you all! (I know it’s a long shot, but what the heck.)
December 30, 2012 – 11:49 am
Well, all that rain turned to snow last night. Here’s the view out the front window, looking west across a mile of woodland to the bay. The little camera in my phone is not the best, but that new-fangled HDR software makes everything look pretty.
December 29, 2012 – 6:33 pm
We’re sequestered in the rainy and windswept Outer Cape for the next few days, enjoying a warm fire and a little intercalary downtime with some old friends. Back soon.
December 27, 2012 – 5:21 pm
Move over, Tom Friedman! Here, from Sean Penn, is a late entry for Worst Writing of 2012. It really is just unspeakably awful. Enjoy!
December 26, 2012 – 2:32 pm
Consistent, at least. Here.
December 26, 2012 – 1:19 pm
Best Christmas song ever. Sorry I wasn’t able to post this before the Big Day.
December 25, 2012 – 3:15 pm
To all of you, with my thanks as always for reading and commenting. I’ll make up for my own laziness at the keyboard today by pointing you to this delightful Christmas meditation by our friend Kevin Kim.
December 24, 2012 – 12:50 pm
According to this report, the Assad regime has deployed poison gas in Homs, killing 7 and injuring others. The quoted source is “opposition activists”, by way of al-Jazeera, so the story may not be veridical. But if so, in we go, I’d imagine.
December 22, 2012 – 10:54 pm
If you’ve seen Walt Disney’s Fantasia, which featured an animation of Tchaikovsky’s Christmas suite The Nutcracker, you’ll likely remember the fairy-circle of mushrooms performing the Chinese Dance. The mushrooms have white stalks, with red caps that are also speckled with white. Such mushrooms are a common theme at Christmas, as we see in the assortment […]
December 21, 2012 – 11:06 pm
Here. Also, as an “extra added bonus”, a new word: ctenactinium.