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 […]
Here’s a movie I want to see.
Sad news: Peter Bergman, founding member of the Firesign Theater, has died at 72. His New York times obituary is here. For those of us of a certain age and sensibility, Firesign needs no introduction. For the rest of you, there’s YouTube.
In a comment to yesterday’s post on l’affaire Fluke-Limbaugh, I linked to a pair of blog posts by University of Rochester professor Steven Landsburg (sent my way by Dennis Mangan). In the first, Professor Landsburg wrote: [W]hile Ms. Fluke herself deserves the same basic respect we owe to any human being, her position ”” which […]
In a comment to our recent post about artificial wombs, I quoted some remarks by Lawrence Auster about the ongoing contraception brouhaha. In his post, Mr. Auster had written that liberal/feminist thought understands the issue along the following lines: 1) Society is a collection of equal persons, all having the right to equal freedom. 2) […]
We’ve been hearing ad nauseam about what a cad Rush Limbaugh was to call Sandra Fluke a “slut”. (I certainly agree that he would have been far wiser not to, for assorted good reasons, not least of which being that it was ungentlemanly.) President Obama was shocked — shocked! — to hear such language, and […]
My goodness: it looks like the long Congressional career of Dennis Kucinich might be coming to an end as a result of tonight’s primary in Ohio.
Well, while we’ve been fussing over such trivialities as the essential principles of American society and the fate of our Republic, we’ve missed the big story of the day: a chicken nugget that looks like George Washington. It sold for over eight thousand dollars.
Matters reproductive have been all over the news lately (with Rush Limbaugh’s idiotic tactical blunder getting the most attention over the past few days). One item that might have slipped under the casual observer’s radar is this one, in which a team of researchers have developed an artificial womb to which a blastocyst can successfully […]
With a hat tip to hbd chick (and to reader JK as well), here’s a little test: how well do you know Sunni from Shia Islam? The British, meanwhile, are soon to be experts. Paul Weston explains.
See for yourself, courtesy of Iowahawk.
Folks my age are old enough to remember, wistfully, the golden age of the American manned-spaceflight program, and have with sadness watched NASA’s long descent into senescence and irrelevance — from the virile pioneer of a “new frontier” that it was in the 1960s, to a sedentary bureaucracy tasked with getting children interested in science […]
With a hat tip to John D., have a tour of Kiyosato, a Japanese ghost town.
Here’s a home-delivery service that loses its customers as fast as it finds them.
Over at Reason, Jacob Sullum comments on Sandra Fluke’s testimony before Congress, and on the newly discovered right to make other people subsidize your sex life. See also our recent post on positive versus negative rights, and the balance between rights and privileges in a sturdy and flourishing society. It seems apt to quote a […]
Shocking news this morning: Andrew Breitbart dead at 43.
February 29, 2012 – 10:04 pm
It took a year, but it seems reality is finally beginning to impinge upon Thomas Friedman, who, of all people, should have known better all along. Beginning to impinge, I say, because there is one reality — the elephant, as they say, in the room — that he, and most of the academic and political […]
February 29, 2012 – 4:32 pm
Here you go, folks: the live-tweeting of last night’s Park Slope Food Co-op meeting.
February 29, 2012 – 1:49 pm
AP is reporting that “Israeli officials say they will not warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations with U.S. officials, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and in […]
February 29, 2012 – 12:21 pm
Last spring I wrote a brief post called Golden Mean, reproduced below in full: If you look at any vigorous society in its prime, you see a healthy balance between rights and privileges. When either grows too much at the expense of the other, a nation declines: on the one hand toward impotent mediocrity, on […]
February 29, 2012 – 11:46 am
It appears that the George Friedman resignation letter we mentioned here has turned out to be a hoax. (Thanks to reader Dom for the tip.) More here.
February 28, 2012 – 4:17 pm
Here’s a rotten piece of legislation: the Virginia Senate has passed a bill requiring women to undergo an ultrasound examination prior to an abortion. The bill includes language saying that the procedure is to “to determine gestation age”, but that is surely a red herring; obviously the measure is an attempt to confront women with […]
February 27, 2012 – 3:33 pm
Excellent post on monogamy over at Mangan’s. Read it here.
February 27, 2012 – 2:40 pm
At the beginning of his book Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett wrote: You watch an ant in a meadow, laboriously climbing up a blade of grass, higher and higher until it falls, then climbs again, and again, like Sisyphus rolling his rock, always striving to reach the top. Why is the ant doing this? What […]
February 26, 2012 – 11:40 pm
Speaking of where the buck stops, it appears that George Friedman has stepped down as the head of STRATFOR in response to the recent hacking attack against them, in which client accounts containing credit cards, passwords, etc., were breached.
February 26, 2012 – 7:06 pm
A while back, in a private correspondence with a conservative blogger about what the Left means when it talks about “social justice”, I wrote the following: Daniel Dennett once wrote that “if you make yourself small enough, you can externalize everything”. The central principle of liberal “justice”, and of Rawlsian justice, is exactly that: to […]
February 24, 2012 – 7:41 pm
Okay, enough grumpiness. Time for a lighter note, to ring in the weekend. In this item, magician Teller talks about the tricks of the trade.
February 24, 2012 – 6:52 pm
Remember all those sanctimonious calls from the Left for “civility” in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting? New York Times columnist and race-warrior Charles Blow appears not to have got the memo. Come to think of it, it looks like Slate’s Alex Pareene didn’t either.
February 24, 2012 – 4:19 pm
Now that President Obama has made his apology to Hamid Karzai for those Korans that got burned the other day, a concerned American woman expresses her own regrets in this video clip. Update: And here’s Newt Gingrich, explaining things to Piers Morgan.
February 23, 2012 – 10:45 pm
After working all day and teaching class this evening, I’m spent. So for tonight, just a few links to keep you occupied: — Nothing new under the sun. — Plan B: Algae! — The birds and the bees. — Last but not least, news you can use: How to to deal with those annoying roadblock […]
February 22, 2012 – 12:45 pm
Dennis Prager floats an interesting idea: allowing citizens to indicate in advance whether they wish to pursue the death penalty in the the event of their being murdered. It would be like checking the organ-donation box on your driver’s license. Mr. Prager remarks: I can’t think of one good argument against it ”” unless you’re […]
February 22, 2012 – 11:28 am
John Derbyshire commented, in last Friday’s Radio Derb podcast, on the Dharun Ravi trial getting underway today in New Jersey (this is the case in which a gay Rutgers student named Tyler Clementi killed himself some time after Mr. Ravi had secretly recorded Mr. Clementi kissing a male student in his dorm room). The case […]
February 22, 2012 – 12:30 am
Google has commemorated the 150th birthday of Heinrich Hertz, the physicist for whom the standard unit for the frequency of oscillating waves is named, with one of its “doodle” tributes. Here it is: Forgive me, but as an audio engineer I have to say that this image is very poorly chosen, and will offend, in […]
February 21, 2012 – 3:16 pm
Here’s a pair of images for you: an eclipse of the Sun, as seen from Earth orbit, in visible light and ultraviolet.
February 21, 2012 – 2:23 pm
Regular visitors will know that our editorial board has long regarded global-warming alarmism with a wary eye. (See our collection of related posts here.) There are so many who stand to benefit from warmist scare-mongering — academics enjoying lavish financial support and the eager attention of media and political institutions around the world; “green-energy” lobbyists, […]
February 20, 2012 – 6:25 pm
Last week ESPN used the long-familiar phrase ‘a chink in the armor’ in reference to the apparent invincibility of NBA sensation Jeremy Lin. Predictably, a ruction ensued, and as is usual in such cases, the network groveled, and two new heads-on-pikestaffs were mounted on the battlements outside the Ministry of Speech. We now have a […]
February 19, 2012 – 2:44 pm
Speaking of my daughter ChloÁ«, she dropped by today and showed me an amazing new application she has downloaded for her iPhone. I’m a lifelong techie, and it takes a lot to bowl me over, but I’m bowled over. See it in action here.
February 18, 2012 – 11:33 pm
A remarkable innovation, by the look of it: article here, video here.
February 18, 2012 – 2:55 pm
When my daughter ChloÁ« was very little — just a baby — I used to rock her in my arms to send her off to sleep. Soothing music always seemed to help her on her way. One evening I put on an album by the seminal jazz ensemble Weather Report, and I could tell the […]
February 17, 2012 – 12:34 am
For his heresies, Patrick Buchanan has now officially been sacked by MSNBC. (I’ll confess that I’m surprised he lasted so long.) He comments here.
February 17, 2012 – 12:27 am
Poking around online just now, I ran across the text of the speech given in the House of Commons by Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, regarding his condemnation in the “Don Pacifico affair”. The Pacifico kerfuffle arose in 1847, when Mr. Pacifico, the Portuguese consul to Athens, had his house plundered by a mob. […]
February 15, 2012 – 5:32 pm
Ever since the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” began its ontogeny in whatever sunless Congressional womb such hell-spawn are gestated, conservatives have howled that it reposes too much power in the Federal government (to be specific, in the capricious Executive Branch) — and so presents a grave threat to cherished liberties. “Suck it up, […]
February 15, 2012 – 2:45 pm
Sorry to harp so much on politics and social issues lately, but these are parlous times, and a great deal is at stake. A reader reminded me the other day that many of the categories over on the sidebar — categories that used to be the busiest ones — are now nearly “widowed”. The reader […]
February 15, 2012 – 1:45 pm
From Tocqueville’s Democracy In America, 1840: After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most […]
February 14, 2012 – 11:46 pm
In medieval times, tradesmen took surnames that reflected their profession. If you were John, and you baked bread for a living, you’d be John Baker. A great many of these names persist, e.g. Archer, Bailey, Baker, Barber, Bishop, Bowman, Brewer, Carpenter, Carter, Cartwright, Carver, Chandler, Chaplin, Chapman, Clark, Collier, Conner, Cook, Cooper, Cutler, Dean, Dyer, […]