September 14, 2012 – 6:38 pm
I realize, dear readers, that these pages, which once upon a time covered an eclectic salmagundi of topics, have had a relentless focus lately on politics and foreign affairs. Our interest in other things is undiminished, but with the world catching fire, and the most important presidential election of our lifetime right around the corner, […]
September 14, 2012 – 5:21 pm
The question of the identity of the man behind this week’s most talked-about movie deepens. First there was this link from our reader Dom, then this, which came in the mail just now. Dom commented earlier that “Yahoo news is now reporting that the movie was not made by an evangelical Christian, but by a […]
September 14, 2012 – 4:08 pm
This is just terrific. Obama in 2007: “I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated, not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently. If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world, uh, they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country — and I may be a […]
September 14, 2012 – 10:07 am
There is something downright surreal about President Nero, who according to reports skipped his daily intelligence briefing on September 12th so he could sashay off to Vegas, tweeting about the Paralympics right now. Oh, and sweatshirts, too! “Winter is coming”. You got that right, pal.
September 13, 2012 – 11:15 pm
Six years ago I scribed a breezy little item about the tardigrade, one of our planet’s commonest, yet most exotic, microfauna. I haven’t thought much about them since, I’ll confess, but I just ran across a charming short video about the tim’rous wee beasties, featuring an affable philotard by the name of Mike Shaw. Here.
September 13, 2012 – 10:35 pm
In keeping with our time-honored tradition of spreading unsubstantiated rumors, I’ll mention that a little bird just whispered in my ear that we have killed Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban. I have no way of confirming this yet. We’ll see… Update: Looking doubtful. That’s just as well: they’d be spiking that football all […]
September 13, 2012 – 1:40 pm
All right, a break from Armageddon for a moment: have a look at a newly discovered species of blue-bottomed monkeys.
September 13, 2012 – 12:38 pm
Now this: a Lebanese report (I have no way as yet of confirming it) claims that Ambassador Stevens was raped before he was murdered. In our previous post we noted that Egyptian ambassador Anne Patterson forbade the embassy’s Marine guards to carry live ammunition. What is it in the modern Western mind that makes us […]
September 13, 2012 – 10:35 am
In its most recent posting, NightWatch has issued extensive and pertinent comments on the attacks in Egypt and Libya. I reproduce them here: Egypt-US: The day after the storming of the US Embassy, all day and night on 12 and 13 September, mainstream media aired footage of obviously unemployed Egyptian young men gathering and milling […]
September 12, 2012 – 9:51 pm
Reuters live stream: police vs. demonstrators in Cairo. Here.
September 12, 2012 – 10:23 am
Today Barack Obama, commenting on the murder of our ambassador to Libya by a Muslim mob, said this: Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, but there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence, […]
September 11, 2012 – 5:56 pm
Today is the eleventh anniversary of September 11th, 2001, when a team of Muslims, seeking martyrdom in jihad against infidels, slaughtered thousands of innocent American civilians and tore a gaping hole in the heart of the world’s greatest city. On this anniversary, a violent mob of similarly minded Islamists, enraged by a perceived insult to […]
September 11, 2012 – 11:47 am
Writing at Via Meadia, Walter Russell Meade comments on Europe’s accelerating slide into toothless decrepitude. As an example, he gives us France, who would like very much to intervene in Syria, but lacks the military oomph to do so. This is of course due to Europe’s having had, under the postwar U.S. security umbrella, the […]
September 11, 2012 – 10:46 am
Important thing to keep in mind in the fight against global warming: keep those damn sea urchins in their crevices, living on scraps. Ghettoization, you say? Sure. But this is the moral equivalent of war, folks.
September 10, 2012 – 10:08 pm
Here’s a beautiful time-lapse video shot in two Western parks during the Perseid meteor shower. Full-screen recommended.
September 10, 2012 – 9:52 pm
In a post-n-thread over at Ace of Spades HQ about computer time-sucks, Ace complains of something that afflicts me too. He calls it “tab hoarding“. It’s the result of skittering about the Web reading items that contain links, opening the links for a moment in a new tab, and going back to what you were […]
September 10, 2012 – 10:31 am
Over at VFR, commenter “Buck” has presented an amusing little doggerel dating back to 1949: DEMOCRATIC DIALOG Father, must I go to work? No, no, my lucky son. We’re living now on Easy Street On dough from Washington. We’ve left it up to Uncle Sam, So don’t get exercised. Nobody has to give a damn”” […]
September 10, 2012 – 9:59 am
Nobody should be surprised to learn that the security vacuum in Syria is drawing in jihadis from all over, bent on annexing new territory for the dar-al-Harb. Our reader Dom sent us this item today.
September 8, 2012 – 8:55 am
Where? Google, of course.
September 7, 2012 – 12:41 pm
With yet another hat-tip to VFR, here’s an interesting little item on Mitt Romney’s despisÁ¨d Bain Capital.
September 7, 2012 – 11:21 am
Be still, my heart: Beer Wellness Land. More images here.
September 6, 2012 – 10:53 pm
Well! There you have it. I have to say: the more political conventions I see, the more I miss H. L. Mencken. “There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard […]
September 5, 2012 – 3:19 pm
I live in New York’s 11th Congressional District, and so my proxy in the House of Representatives, the champion responsible for advancing my interests in the august councils of this great Republic, is a woman by the name of Yvette Clarke. Ms. Clarke recently appeared on The Colbert Report. During her brief interview, she was […]
September 5, 2012 – 10:56 am
One of the absurdities of modern political life is the assumption that everyone, regardless of innate qualifications, should have a college education (indeed the assumption, at least on the Democratic side, seems to be not only that everyone belongs in college, but that every citizen person within our borders also has an inalienable right to […]
September 4, 2012 – 7:19 pm
To the person who sent the Churchill books to my home in Brooklyn today, with no note enclosed: if you’re a reader of this blog, thanks. (And thanks also, of course, even if you aren’t.) It’s nice to have something to look forward to when we get back to the city.
September 4, 2012 – 7:12 pm
In this election year’s frenzy of so-called “fact-checking”, we’ve been hearing a lot about the Obama administration’s recent maneuver regarding the 1996 welfare-reform law known as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, part of the Social Security Act). In case you missed it, back in July, HHS secretary Sibelius issued a fiat declaring that the […]
September 4, 2012 – 3:09 pm
It’s getting harder and harder to distinguish P.C. from parody. The latest example (hat tip to VFR): here.
September 2, 2012 – 2:11 pm
If you’re a “reactionary” like me, then you’re sure to enjoy this.
September 1, 2012 – 10:43 pm
Sorry it’s been so slow around here, readers, but with the long and languorous days of summer now drawing to a close, the little grey cells should soon get back to work. (I’m afraid I’ve fallen behind in my email correspondence too — apologies to all.) So for now, just an entertaining follow-up on that […]
August 30, 2012 – 11:19 am
If I were to ask you, readers of a certain age, to think of rock music’s all-time greatest guitarists, I have a feeling that the thirty-three-year-old Derek Trucks might not be among the pantheon that swims into view. He should be, though. To get an idea why, have a look here.
August 28, 2012 – 6:40 pm
In this endless, eye-gouging, brass-knuckled, dung-flecked presidential campaign, we’ve been hearing an awful lot of noise from the Obama machine about an imaginary conservative “war on women”. (It’s calumnious rubbish, of course.) On the the other hand, there is indeed one resolutely committed ideological faction in this world that really is waging a relentless war […]
August 27, 2012 – 11:57 am
As we’ve all heard by now, the astronaut Neil Armstrong died last week. For the 43 years following his moonwalk, an achievement that he could surely have parlayed into wealth and glittering fame, the self-effacing Armstrong chose instead to lived a quiet life of teaching and farming. (In contrast, the pathologically narcissistic Barack Obama — […]
August 27, 2012 – 10:20 am
Here’s a nifty animation illustrating the spread of Indo-Euopean langauges.
August 24, 2012 – 1:33 pm
As the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, once explained, “Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the station we want.” That train seems to be moving along briskly in Egypt, where last week the democratically elected President, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi, ousted the Mubarak-era leadership of the […]
August 22, 2012 – 11:29 pm
And a pretty brilliant one too, I think: his new album will not be recorded at all, but will be published only as sheet music. It’s up to the fans to render it as they see fit.
August 22, 2012 – 8:31 pm
Rather a nice sunset just now over at Duck Harbor:
August 22, 2012 – 2:49 pm
Here’s a delightfully un-PC item about Mitt Romney, by NRO’s Kevin D. Williamson, that’s sure to push all the right buttons. (As I write, it’s already clear from a quick survey of Twitter that those buttons have been pushed en masse.) It begins: What do women want? The conventional biological wisdom is that men select […]
August 21, 2012 – 7:17 pm
As planned, I’ve hardly written anything here for a couple of weeks now. The lovely Nina and I are sequestered at our modest hilltop dacha here in the Outer Cape, and after spending two or three long days each week writing code (thank goodness for telecommuting!) the last thing I’ve felt like doing is to […]
August 21, 2012 – 1:38 pm
One trillion frames per second, folks.
August 19, 2012 – 4:39 pm
Andrew McCarthy comments on recent developments in Egypt.
August 19, 2012 – 4:20 pm
Boy, everybody‘s on Twitter these days.
August 19, 2012 – 1:02 pm
Remember Mike Dukakis in that tank?
August 19, 2012 – 12:25 pm
Another quick link: I stumbled across a collection of photos by someone named “Faryndale”, and I think they’re mighty good. Have a look.
August 18, 2012 – 9:31 pm
Okay, readers of a certain age: have a look at this.
August 16, 2012 – 11:51 am
Closed-door meetings between Obama, Biden, and Hillary Clinton today… I find it hard to believe that Ms. Clinton would accept Mr. Biden’s place on the ticket, but we’ll just have to see. Of course, they might just be talking about, oh, foreign policy, or something, I guess. [snicker]
August 15, 2012 – 9:45 am
What do you think, folks — will Joe Biden, who just seems to get battier and battier, be on the ticket in November?
August 14, 2012 – 12:41 pm
Interesting item here: as calls to disarm the citizenry grow louder, why is the National Weather Service stocking up on .40-caliber jacketed hollow-point amunition?