January 25, 2024 – 5:40 pm
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here is a sickening dispatch, posted in a Disqus comment-thread at Powerline, by “Diego Palma“, who says he lives in Arizona at the Mexican border. Is this real? I have no way of knowing. The place Mr. Palma describes certainly is; it’s at 31°20’3.81″N, 110° 8’53.86″W, and if look […]
January 24, 2024 – 1:42 pm
In yesterday’s post about the looming showdown between Texas and Washington over securing the border, I wrote: The so-called “rule of law”, and obedience to the formal structures of government, are all that stand, in a vast and divided nation, between order and chaos; they are the load-bearing walls that support the great (and trembling) […]
January 23, 2024 – 8:07 pm
Yesterday, five justices of the Supreme Court (the obvious ones, plus Barrett and Roberts) decided to lift an injunction against the Biden administration’s attempt to force open the portions of the national border in Texas that Texas had unilaterally decided to seal off with razor wire and other barriers. Think about that; the administration appealed […]
January 22, 2024 – 7:43 pm
Look at this sickening video: At the speed society evolves, so too does warfare. pic.twitter.com/qU9lP5WAGT — Joshua Hartley (@JHartley2) January 22, 2024 This is a technology still in its infancy. The drone you see pursuing and killing this terrified man was guided by someone sitting comfortably in perfect safety far away. It’s possible that the […]
January 21, 2024 – 1:08 pm
OK, folks, we are heading into a year that will likely make the last few seem like “the good old days”. I have put together a bluntly and unsentimental list of some of the direst possibilities. Which of these seem likely? 1) 9/11-level terror attack 2) New and far deadlier pandemic 3) Trump jailed 4) […]
January 20, 2024 – 11:25 pm
One of the reasons that I laid off blogging for a while was that it had become just too dispiriting to try to speak the truth while living in a world of lies. Among the worst of these webs of falsehood (and outright stupidity) was the Narrative about our relationship with Russia in the post-Soviet […]
January 19, 2024 – 7:17 pm
Here’s something refreshing: James Hankins, a senior professor of history at Harvard, having been pestered by the harridans of the university’s Diversity Office to provide a personal statement of his commitment to the Cause, has penned a tart reply (cf. the Reply of the Zhaporozhian Cossacks to Mehmed IV). We read: Dear Members of Harvard’s […]
January 18, 2024 – 5:10 pm
Making the rounds today: the newly elected president of Argentina, Javier Milei, just spoke at the World Economic Forum’s conference in Davos — and having taken the stage, used the platform to denounce everything that the malevolent WEF seeks to accomplish, and to warn the world of the danger these people present to human flourishing. […]
January 17, 2024 – 3:05 pm
Well, here we are: mid-January 2024, with the first round of electoral winnowing behind us, and another a few days away. Already we are down to three still in the running for the GOP nomination, but it doesn’t look like much of a contest. Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill V. has put up two posts […]
January 16, 2024 – 11:42 am
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.” – Conan the Cimmerian, on the Iowa Caucuses
January 16, 2024 – 12:21 am
Our reader “mharko” has sent along a link to an article by “N.S. Lyons”, a fine writer whose work I’ve mentioned before in these pages (see here and here). The article, published at Substack, is called The Rise of the Right-Wing Progressives, and it is in response to a techno-futurist manifesto recently published by Marc […]
January 13, 2024 – 3:50 pm
I’ve just run across a Twitter (okay, “X”) thread so remarkable that I’m going to unroll it for you right here. The principals are Emmett Shear, a serial Internet entrepreneur who has just been selected as CEO of OpenAI, and a science-fiction author by the name of Devon Eriksen. How did I come across this? […]
January 13, 2024 – 12:35 pm
We’re back home — my lovely wife Nina had some surgery on Thursday, and is now resting and recovering. Back to posting shortly.
January 10, 2024 – 1:06 pm
I’m not likely to be able to post for a couple of days. Back by the weekend.
January 8, 2024 – 2:55 pm
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella links to two contrasting articles. The first, by Binyamin Applebaum, an editor at the New York Times, is a panegyric on the presidency of Joe Biden. The second, by Peter van Buren at American Conservative, is a jeremiad called “Evening in America”. It’s a stark and fascinating juxtaposition. In […]
January 7, 2024 – 1:15 pm
Before we wade, in our teeming millions, into the riotous disorder that 2024 is sure to bring, I thought it might be nice to “cleanse our timelines” for a moment in the clear air of a serene and ancient vastness where the vital spirit of remote antiquity still touches the living. Here, then, is Batzorig […]
January 5, 2024 – 11:18 pm
Have you heard of “superheating”? If you haven’t, Wikipedia describes it as: “the phenomenon in which a liquid is heated to a temperature higher than its boiling point, without boiling. This is a so-called metastable state or metastate, where boiling might occur at any time, induced by external or internal effects… This may occur by […]
January 4, 2024 – 10:27 pm
The cataract of aliens pouring over our southern border has risen, in December of last year, to a rate of about three-and-a-half million a year. (Can anyone, at this point, doubt for a moment that this an intentional feature of government policy?) Meanwhile, as our efforts in Ukraine slump toward failure — as has been […]
January 2, 2024 – 8:09 pm
I am very sorry to tell you that our longtime friend and commenter here at this blog, Robert (a.k.a. “Whitewall”) has very suddenly and unexpectedly lost his wife. I can only imagine the terrible shock and sorrow he must be going through, and I ask you all to think of him and to keep him […]
January 2, 2024 – 7:07 pm
Well, Claudine Gay has stepped down as president of Harvard. She was already listing badly after her embarrassing testimony before Congress about antisemitism at Harvard, and Christopher Rufo’s withering barrage of examples of her chronic plagiarism finally holed her below the waterline. Needless to say, in her resignation letter she made no apology for her […]
January 1, 2024 – 9:52 pm
To kick off 2024 — a year in which I think we all will be tested — here is an important reminder from David Bowie (PBUH): Great advice from David Bowie pic.twitter.com/CheUp389ow — Darrell Craig Harris Pro Bassist (@DarrellCBassist) January 2, 2024
December 31, 2023 – 6:09 pm
Happy New Year, everybody! Take a deep breath. 2024 is going to be “interesting”.
December 30, 2023 – 6:25 pm
I realize the tone’s been kind of gloomy over here since I started posting again. As Woody Allen once put it: More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Yep, we’re in a bit of a pickle, and no […]
December 29, 2023 – 10:22 pm
Reading the news in these last days, I’ve been trying to find the right word to describe how it feels to watch the briskly accelerating disorder of all our civic and political affairs. “Shocked” won’t do, as I’ve been expecting it for years. “Appalled”? Well, yes, of course, but that doesn’t really catch all of […]
December 28, 2023 – 6:13 pm
Philip K. Dick once said that “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” A great many people, including myself, have seen, and said, for a very long time now that there was never going to be any “victory” over Russia in Ukraine. Yet for the last two years we […]
December 27, 2023 – 10:24 pm
I was saddened today to hear news of the death of Tommy Smothers, whose wholesome, good-natured comedy (and fine guitar playing) I, and all of my generation, grew up with. The America of that bygone era all seems like a fading and faraway dream. Here he is with another iconic figure from the Before Time: […]
December 26, 2023 – 6:38 pm
The muse isn’t singing for me tonight, so I’ll just leave you with this: “Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in […]
December 24, 2023 – 11:16 pm
I hope you all have a happy and peaceful day, and that you can set all this tumult aside for a moment, enjoy the company of those you love, and think about higher, better things. Thank you all for stopping by here, especially those of you who kept checking in during the long interval when […]
December 22, 2023 – 7:01 pm
Watch this video (it’s brief): We have a serious mental health crisis in this country pic.twitter.com/dumx4nZagc — Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 21, 2023 This is what we get when we tear everything down — all the sturdy scaffolding that children have relied on throughout history to learn to be adults — without putting anything […]
December 21, 2023 – 7:39 pm
Back in 2020 I published an article at American Greatness on the subject of civil war. In it I wrote: One of the peculiarities of civil war is that it is hard to say, except in retrospect, when a nation has passed the point of no return. There is rarely anything so distinct as Caesar’s […]
December 20, 2023 – 12:41 pm
We live in a world of obvious lies. Magna est veritas, et praevalebit, goes the old saying — “the truth is mighty, and will prevail” — but “will prevail”, as should be apparent to all at this moment in our history, is clearly not the same thing as “does prevail”. I’m fond of quoting Theodore […]
December 18, 2023 – 11:44 am
In Arlington National Cemetery stands a memorial, sculpted by a Jewish sculptor named Moses Ezekiel (who, by the way, was the first Jew to graduate from the Virgina Military Institute). It features a classical female figure wearing a laurel wreath, and bears the inscription “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into […]
December 17, 2023 – 11:59 pm
I’m just putting a placeholder here lest anyone think the blog is sinking back into desuetude (I’m not going to let that happen again). It’s Christmas season, and there’s a lot going on around here — for example, tonight we went to Chandler Travis’s annual Christmas Cavalcade charity show here on the Cape, which was […]
December 15, 2023 – 8:41 pm
I see that a jury has just ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay two Georgia election workers the stupendous sum of $148,000,000 for some things he said about them regarding the 2020 election. I will confess that I had known nothing whatsoever about this ongoing trial until hearing this news today, but I will say that […]
December 13, 2023 – 10:05 pm
I am very sorry to say that our longtime e-pal (and commenter) Bill Keezer has died. Our friend the Maverick Philosopher has written a remembrance of him, here. Rest in peace, Bill. It was a pleasure, and a gift, to have known you all these years.
December 12, 2023 – 8:12 pm
There’s a branch of science called “forensic entomology”. It’s used in criminal investigations to determine the time of death for corpses by examining them to see what species of insects have invaded the body. There are specific timelines for this, depending on where the body is found, and I understand that it provides a pretty […]
December 11, 2023 – 10:51 pm
A great deal has been going on in America and the world since I last updated this blog with any regularity, so there’s an awful lot of backlog for me to pick up and comment on. Let’s start with Ukraine. When I left off, the war in Ukraine was still, more or less, the Current […]
December 10, 2023 – 6:53 pm
I know I’ve said this before, but I really am going to get this blog going again now. (I may start with a post about what happened to me to make me lay off for as long as I did, or I may not; doing so might be just a bit too omphaloskeptic — and […]
October 7, 2023 – 3:26 pm
All eyes are on Israel today after Hamas launched a vicious assault from Gaza with widespread atrocities against civilians. This is one of those days where the tectonic plates suddenly slip, releasing destructive energy and reshaping the landscape. The scope and coordination of the operation make it clear that it has been carefully planned; it […]
October 2, 2023 – 11:42 pm
Published at City Journal today: a scathing article by my friend Jim Meigs on our shameful response to COVID-19, and how those in power at the highest levels of our public and private institutions (looking at you, Drs. Fauci and Collins) worked to suppress dissent and debate, interfere with legitimate inquiry into the disease’s origins, […]
September 30, 2023 – 2:13 pm
Yesterday’s deluge in New York City was a substantial and frightening event. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, where I lived for 40 years before selling up and moving out (thank goodness!), the flooding at the bottom of the moraine was up to the windows of stranded cars. As with every notable weather event these days, from […]
September 24, 2023 – 6:16 pm
Worm that jumps from rats to slugs to human brains has invaded Southeast US
September 12, 2023 – 12:16 am
Once again I must apologize for the spotty content here lately (aside from the item I popped up for discussion yesterday, which is really just me picking at a very old scab from a different direction). I’ve had enough of jeremiads about the state of our decline and misrule; it would be easy enough to […]
September 10, 2023 – 10:57 pm
(Spoiler: I can’t.) Found here.
August 24, 2023 – 12:27 pm
I hear there was some sort of political debate last night. How did it go?
August 23, 2023 – 5:20 pm
Although I no longer have to mix records to pay the bills, I still love to do what I do best, and so I enjoy doing a few projects a year in Hiram Hill Studio, the superbly equipped little mixing room I have here at home. This spring I mixed a five-song compositional-jazz EP for […]
August 22, 2023 – 6:13 pm
Here is a brief and almost impossibly concise rationalist apologia for Christian belief, given by the Oxford mathematician John Lennox. I’ll quote just two little gems from his speech. The first: “People are so desperate now to show that the universe created itself from nothing – which seems to me to be an immediate oxymoron: […]
August 19, 2023 – 11:36 am
Sorry — even though the kids and grandkids (who were here for more than a month) have gone, I still haven’t been writing much here at the blog. We’re still in that lazy summer mode, and have been fully occupied with, as they say, “touching grass” (and, in our case, sand and water as well). […]
Korean researchers are reporting that they have developed an easy-to-make room-temperature superconductor. If so — well, hang on to your hats, folks. Story here. Update, 8/10: Never mind.