It’s been a long day at work, but I might have managed to write a post nevertheless — had I not lost myself for the past hour at the infinitely engaging (at least for a well-seasoned old gaffer like me) ‘miscellaneous” page at Lileks.com. Have a look for yourself.
We note with some surprise the Obama campaign’s adoption of the word Forward as its new slogan. The word has, of course, been a rallying cry of socialists and Marxists for a very long time — so much so that Wikipedia even has an entry about it. Perhaps this indicates a refreshing frankness on the […]
Uh-oh — according to Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, maybe we’d better not. We reserve comment.
April 30, 2012 – 10:34 pm
Here’s an item from NightWatch‘s Robert McCreary: Iran: For the record. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei provided the following guidance in response to a question about whether it was sinful to use social media. “In general, the use of social networking websites (such as Facebook, FriendFeed, Orkut, etc) is impermissible if their use entails a corrupt […]
Here’s a hilarious newspaper clipping, sent to Lawrence Auster by a reader: Read the caption carefully.
Here we are in 2012, and the most advanced technological civilization that has ever existed is stymied by three tons of meat in a log cabin. What was it that Emerson said about hobgoblins?
April 26, 2012 – 10:09 pm
First thing tomorrow I’m driving down to Milburn Landing State Park, near Pocomoke City, MD, for a weekend of camping with some boyhood chums: a long-overdue reunion inspired by a weekend we spent there 40 years ago this summer. One of us lives in San Diego, one in Minnesota, one in Cincinnati, and one in […]
Sitting for a portrait? Keep this in mind. Going on a date? Head for Peter Luger’s. Last, but not least: there’s no need to be glum just because Earth Day’s over. Not until you’ve read Iowahawk’s annual homage to Gaia, anyway.
Here’s some murderous rage from Forbes contributor Steve Zwick, who is scouting out lamp-posts for those who refuse to fall in line with his views on anthropogenic global warming: We know who the active denialists are — not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start […]
Well, it appears that Marine le Pen will be the kingmaker in France this time around, having attracted fully a fifth of French voters to her National Front party in today’s election. This was nearly double the turnout for her opposite number on the Socialist far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Assuming that National Front supporters will […]
April 21, 2012 – 10:25 pm
Sorry, haven’t had much to say since getting back, and it might be quiet here for a few more days. I need a little recess while I think about things.
Anyone of a “certain age” will be saddened by the death of Levon Helm, who has succumbed to cancer at age 71. His rustic voice was a big part of the soundtrack of our youth, and it hurts to see it silenced.
April 19, 2012 – 12:09 am
Longtime readers will know that I’m a big admirer of Richard Feynman. In the nanotech discussions last week at SU, there was frequent mention of his visionary 1959 lecture There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, which is widely regarded as the genesis of the field. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can read […]
I’m back from my trip to Singularity University, and I’ll just say it was one of the more remarkable experiences I’ve ever had — something like a futurist’s boot-camp, in the company of a hundred or so very smart people. The days’ events began at about 8 a.m., typically didn’t let up until midnight or […]
April 10, 2012 – 11:43 pm
I’ll be away for a few days: my friend Salim Ismail has invited me to participate in a program this week out at Singularity University, so I’ll be flying to San Francisco early Wednesday morning. I’ll be posting when I can — this looks like it’s going to be a fascinating experience — but the […]
April 10, 2012 – 10:36 am
Life is a risky business. To reach a comfortable dotage, one must thread one’s way past such omnipresent mortal hazards as cancer, auto wrecks, random assault, falling objects, air disasters, bullets stray or otherwise, atherosclerosis, capsizings, snakebite, cyclones, suicidal depression, carbon-monoxide leaks, cerebral haemorrhage, defenestration, shark attack, overdose, industrial accidents, poisoning, autoerotic asphyxiation, crib death, […]
Armed with weapons purloined from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal, Tuareg fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb give us what I think is referred to around Washington these days as a “teachable moment”. Today’s lesson? The law of unintended consequences.
This entry is part 13 of 15 in the series
Free WillSam Harris, the neuroscientist who made his bones as an anti-religious gadfly and member of the atheist “Four Horsemen” (now down, sadly, to three), has been writing and speaking lately about “free will”. The expression is rendered in scare-quotes because in Dr. Harris’s view “free will”, as generally imagined, is an illusion, and less: it […]
So: here’s the latest inevitable step toward having our brains permanently jacked into the Internet. Are you going to want a pair of these? In this demo the user talks to his glasses. But what’s the endpoint here? Once the interface is fast and intuitive enough, so that we can send and receive data as […]
Here’s Eric Hoffer, writing in 1975: After all that we have seen with our own eyes there ought not to be a grownup person who is not contemptuous of the gibberish about an ideal society and does not look for the lineaments of a commissar in the features of an idealist loudmouth. The trouble is […]
In case you’ve been shackled to a drainpipe for the past couple of weeks, there’s been an escalating tension in the air over the fate of Obamacare, now that the Supreme Court has heard the case. President Obama, warning the other day that he would view a negative ruling by the Court as “judicial activism”, […]
Our friend David Duff posted an item today in which he quoted an article from James Bamford at Wired about a new U.S. data-storage facility: Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of […]
No posting today: I’m heading off to Ephrata, PA, for the annual banquet and awards ceremony of the national quilter’s association I’ve been sewing with since my early twenties. (I’ve been quilting since I was a boy; I should post some photos of some of my work sometime.) My latest piece, which expresses the deepening […]
March 31, 2012 – 10:36 pm
Oh, my. For a truly startling, completely unforeseeable turn of events, check out this item from the Times: Islamist Group Breaks Pledge to Stay Out of Race in Egypt CAIRO ”” The Muslim Brotherhood nominated its chief strategist and financier Khairat el-Shater on Saturday as its candidate to become Egypt’s first president since Hosni Mubarak, […]
More nanny-state idiocy from the Feds. Here.
In the comment-thread of a recent post, I’ve been arguing with our resident gadfly The One Eyed Man about the Constitutional legitimacy of Obamacare’s individual mandate — part of a broader disagreement about the proper scope of Federal power. After much back-and-forth I wrote: Bottom line: Constitutional law is a fascinating study, combining history, literature, […]
In the past few days Heather Mac Donald has posted two essays on the jarring dissonance between mainstream coverage of race and violent crime and the underlying realities thereof. We hear all the time about the need for a “frank discussion of race in America”; perhaps this will help. Read them here and here. The […]
March 29, 2012 – 10:36 am
Here’s a cogent item on the death of free speech in Britain, by Charles Cooke.
March 28, 2012 – 12:09 pm
The New York Times opines today about yesterday’s Obamacare arguments in the Supreme Court. Predictably, the editors seem to believe that the effects of the Affordable Care Act are of sufficient national importance to trump its Constitutional audacity, and so they are willing to brush aside yesterday’s sharp questioning by conservative Justices as mere tendentiousness: […]
March 27, 2012 – 11:51 pm
It was a big day at SCOTUS, and long awaited: the Justices heard oral arguments about the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate, and the buzz seems to be that it was rough sailing for the Solicitor General. Transcript here. Decide for yourself. Tomorrow: severability. If the mandate falls, does it take down the whole rotten […]
March 27, 2012 – 10:44 pm
Here’s Richard Feynman explaining, with trademark clarity and simplicity, how science works. (Would that the video clip were as clear, but it’s worth watching anyway.)
Among the people I follow on Twitter is the popular comedian and writer Andy Borowitz, winner of the first National Press Club Award for humor. He pops up all over the place: you can read him in The New Yorker, at the Huffington Post, and in syndication in many major newspapers. He’s contributed to lots […]
March 26, 2012 – 12:46 pm
The story making the rounds today concerns Barack Obama’s remarks to Vladimir Putin’s proxy Dmitri Medvedev, as detected by some open mics: President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space. President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message […]
March 25, 2012 – 11:35 pm
An object at rest tends to remain at rest, I’m told, and I’ve been providing experimental confirmation for the past few days. Have no fear, though: just because we haven’t been chronicling the collapse of Western civilization as attentively as usual here at waka waka waka doesn’t mean it isn’t proceeding apace.
March 23, 2012 – 10:12 pm
The lovely Nina and I, having pried open a tiny gap in our routine of ceaseless toil, made the five-hour drive back to the Outer Cape late last night. We arrived sometime in the “wee small hours of the morning”, and awoke to a clear blue sky, fragrant sea breezes, and warm golden sunshine — […]
I follow a lot of different accounts on Twitter, but one of my favorites is @NASAVoyager2. Here’s the latest: I am currently 13 hrs 37 mins 31 secs of light-travel time from Earth (2012:081:2L) That’s it: cool, calm and collected. I’ve been a follower for months now, and never once have I seen this thing […]
Here’s a thoughtful new item by Sam Harris called Islam and the Future of Liberalism. A sample: As I tried to make clear [in a recent podcast], we know that intolerance within the Muslim world extends far beyond the membership of “extremist’ groups. Recent events in Afghanistan demonstrate, yet again, that ordinary Afghans grow far […]
Here. I assume the Royal Navy has a carrier on the way.
Here, courtesy of VFR, is another illustrative account of the myriad blessings that the cult of Diversity showers upon us all. As anyone with a realistic understanding of history and human nature knows, high diversity erodes social trust and cohesion, and this story has it all: ethnic conflict, identity politics, race-hustling lawyers enriching themselves by […]
Still swamped here, with no time for a long post. At the top of the list of topics on my mind, though, is that insane Dharun Ravi thoughtcrime trial and verdict — in which an (admittedly unlikable) young man is facing 10 years in jail, a permanent felony record, and possible deportation for committing … […]
March 17, 2012 – 12:35 pm
I’m still sweating bullets this weekend trying to solve a baffling work-related technical problem, so here’s a new site for you to have a look at: Lists of Note. I’ll start you off with this list of predictions for the year 2000, made in 1949 by Robert Heinlein. You can take it from there. Heinlein […]
I’ve been grappling for three days with a difficult problem at work and an impending deadline, and so have had no opportunity for writing — though Lord knows there’s a lot going on right now I’d like to comment on: Afghanistan, the Dharun Ravi verdict, the man who was buried alive by pinto beans, etc. […]
March 14, 2012 – 12:32 pm
Anyone have experience with Movable Type upgrades? I have a friend who needs some assistance.
March 14, 2012 – 10:13 am
Oh, no, this is awful. It looks as if Obamacare is going to end up costing more than the Democrats told us it was going to! Who could ever have imagined that they would deceive us like this? I feel so… used.
March 13, 2012 – 11:02 pm
This in my inbox just now, from info@barackobama.com: Friend — If the general election were held today, President Obama would lose to Mitt Romney — according to the latest poll from Washington Post-ABC News. And then there’s this, from today’s Times: Obama’s Rating Falls as Poll Reflects Volatility Despite improving job growth and an extended […]
Having spent hours on the road this afternoon schlepping back to Gotham from Cape Cod’s outer extremity, and facing the prospect of a long and early day of toil tomorrow, I’m feeling much too lazy to write anything this evening. Fortunately, Bill Vallicella has posted up a link I can steal, and it’s just the […]
It was a lovely day today, with golden sunshine and temperature well into the 60’s, and so I took a walk along Mayo Beach, a south-facing harborside littoral a few hundred yards from our wooded hilltop. Readers may recall that Wellfleet has had a rash of dolphin strandings this winter. As I walked the mile-long […]