The latest tempest in the media teapot appears to be something called “i-dosing“, in which hellbound teens listen to brain-addling audio signals to get high. From what I have learned so far, it appears that the audio plays various tricks with what we audio weenies call “binaural beats”, a pulsating perceptual phenomenon that occurs when […]
On the corner of the block where I live, in the ultra-blue neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn, there is an upscale little diner, right beside a busy subway entrance. Outside there stands a little blackboard. On one side of the blackboard the staff lists the daily specials, and on the other there is usually a […]
The influential (and generally non-partisan) think-tank The Cato Institute has published an in-depth assessment of the recent health-care bill. It’s a hefty read, and not at all encouraging. Here.
While the USA backs away from further production of the F-22 Raptor, deciding instead to rely on the inferior F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Russia, as we noted here, is aggressively looking forward, deploying the impressive Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA. So what about China? They aren’t sitting still either. The balance is changing. Learn more here.
This entry is part 9 of 15 in the series
Free WillHere’s a clarifying passage from Daniel Dennett on the idea that the findings of neuroscience prove that “free will” is a fiction: Recall the myth of Cupid, who flutters about on his cherubic wings making people fall in love by shooting them with his little bow and arrow. This is such a lame cartoonists’ convention […]
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella has written a fine post in response to a query from a reader about religious zealotry. The reader’s argument was: Given that, as most religions claim — 1) There is an afterlife of infinite duration; 2) Those who live in strict accordance with the religion’s requirements and prohibitions will […]
On September 6th, 1824, at Monticello, the eighty-one-year-old Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to one William Ludlow (my emphasis): …I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time […]
In the Park Ridge Herald-Advocate, there’s an article (linked to in today’s Best of the Web) about what Peter, Paul, and Mary used to eat on the road. It contained this fishy little morsel from from Noel (Paul) Stookey (emphasis mine): “Until the ’80s, there was usually the (standard) deli tray backstage,” said Stookey, calling […]
The bottom having fallen out of the recording business, for the past ten years or so I’ve been writing software to earn my daily crust. You probably know that programmers spend a good deal of time “debugging” the software they write (I’ve often felt inclined to refer to the remainder of what we do as […]
Yogi Berra, on the death of George Steinbrenner: “George and I had our differences, but who didn’t?’
According to a new study, Russians dwell on gloomy thoughts more than Americans, but are less likely to let it all get to them. We read: Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy portrayed Russians as a brooding, complicated people, and ethnographers have confirmed that Russians tend to focus on dark feelings and memories more than Westerners do. But […]
As you all know by now, NASA’s mission has been redefined by the Obama administration. The conquest of space having lost its luster, the agency’s new primary objective, as explained by director Charles Bolden, is to make the Muslim world “feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.” Our investigative-reporting […]
In a heartening development, the lower house of France’s parliament has voted 335 to 1 to ban the burqa. The measure, which is overwhelmingly supported by the French people, will go to the Senat in September. Reaction was swift, and predictable. “A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to […]
Reader JK calls our attention to a post over at InfoDiss: an animated rendering of nuclear detonations around the world from 1945 to 1998. It’s 14 minutes long, and very simply done, but I couldn’t pull away. Here.
Writing in the Washington Post, one Stan Cox, who presumably grew up in the jungles of New Guinea, suggests that we abolish the air conditioner, an artifact of human ingenuity that I consider to be roughly on a par with the invention of the wheel, or the taming of fire. Mr. Cox (rhymes with “pox”) […]
Suppose you were to come round a street corner and almost bump into a person going the other way. Odds are, nowadays, that one or both of you will say “sorry!”. This is new. Once upon a time we would have said “excuse me.” What changed? I think it must be that the primary sense […]
We note with sadness the death, at 99, of longtime Yankee announcer Bob Sheppard, and of the era he helped to define. From his New York Times obituary: From the last days of DiMaggio through the primes of Mantle, Berra, Jackson and Jeter, Sheppard’s precise, resonant, even Olympian elocution ”” he was sometimes called the […]
Readers of these pages will know by now that America, along with Western civilization generally, is most likely headed straight down the toilet. But it wasn’t always so. We’ve been focusing so relentlessly here of late on our accelerating collapse that I thought it might be nice to take a look back at a happier […]
Living as we do in a world of chaos, crime and corruption, we should all thank Heaven for that citadel of Justice, that beacon of moral clarity, the United Nations — and for the courage and forthrightness with which it deals swift and righteous judgment to the world’s vilest blackguards, reprobates, and scoundrels. Just today, […]
Within the IRS is an agency called the Taxpayer Advocate Service. Here’s what it is, according to the IRS.gov website: The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within the IRS whose employees assist taxpayers who are experiencing economic harm, who are seeking help in resolving tax problems that have not been resolved through […]
According to a graph-theory analysis of the two teams’ passing strategies, Spain will defeat Holland in the World Cup final. Here.
An unconfirmable truth: the unexamined life is not worth living.
With all the fuss lately about LeBron whatsizname (and some soccer match that has apparently been taking place, I believe, in Africa), you may, like me, have been worrying that one of our most venerable sporting traditions was dying of popular neglect. Well, worry no more.
As the Obama administration revs up its lawsuit against Arizona, we learn that meanwhile, across the porous border, schools are now teaching children to dodge bullets. Story here.
The DOJ has now uncorked its long-threatened lawsuit against Arizona for the latter’s audacity in attempting to enforce Federal law to stem the disastrous tide of undocumented Democrats streaming into the state from across the border. Blogger Ann Althouse examines the suit’s premises here. Her commenter “Mesquito” crisply summed up the seething frustration of a […]
Here’s a timely collector’s item, if you can find one. (Hat-tip to my colleague Yaniv Sarig.)
103° today. It’s hard to think original thoughts while undergoing massive organ failure, so for tonight I will just add my own to the chorus of voices yelping in indignation over the interview that NASA director Charles Bolden gave to al-Jazeera. Here’s what he said (starting at about 1:11): “Before I became the NASA administrator, […]
We’re back in Gotham, where, as it does every July (though somewhat tardily last year), the Hell-mouth has opened once again. It will be about 100° tomorrow, with suffocating, hope-crushing humidity. As always, I have begun to panic, to despair, to long to sleep at last in the cold, cold ground. That said, it was […]
We’re sequestered in Wellfleet, taking a breather for the holiday weekend. Things will probably be quiet in this space till sometime early next week, though you never know. As usual — thanks as always for visiting, and feel free to give our “View a Random Post” link a try.
I am startled, and terribly sorry, to hear that Christopher Hitchens appears to have esophageal cancer. Story here.
Australia has a new Prime Minister. Her name is Julia Gillard, and in a gesture that would be utterly unthinkable here in America, she has announced that she doesn’t believe in God. Being an atheist myself, it is difficult for me not to be delighted. But recently I’ve come to wonder, as a purely practical […]
Which way is she spinning? Are you able to get yourself to see her going the other way? This thing drives me crazy. Sometimes I can reverse it at will, other times it seems quite impossible. Forgive me if you’ve seen it before; it’s been around for a while. I just ran into it again, […]
What will become of Stanley McChrystal now that he has been relieved of his command? How did this sort of thing play out in a different era? Here are a few thoughts on the matter, courtesy of the Churchill Centre. [This item filed under category “General”, of course.]
Here’s an interesting little item. In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion. In their decision they cited a policy report by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). A key phrase in the report said that the procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular […]
This was just a matter of time.
If you’re like me (which, of course, you are) you’ve been saying to yourself, as you have watched the accelerating march of technological progress these past few decades, “Yes, yes, all very nice — but where’s my flying car?” Well, according an item in today’s news, it may now be on the way. Have a […]
Kevin Kim continues his discussion of theodicy, here and here.
John Derbyshire (who, by the way, if he ever finds himself at loose ends in midtown Manhattan at the end of the workday, should get in touch with me because I will buy him a good glass of whisky), aired a particularly snappy episode of his “Radio Derb” podcast last week. Have a listen here.
Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history, died this morning. I will leave it to others to provide the eulogy. It’s unclear what will happen to his seat. The state’s Democratic governor will appoint an interim Senator, but whether a special election will be held this […]
In an enormously gratifying decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled that Second Amendment rights are binding on local governments. The decision was close, and split along the usual ideological fissure, but a win’s a win. Story here, text of the decision here.
Our friend Kevin Kim, whose academic specialty is theology and comparative religion (I recommend to you all his excellent book Water From a Skull), has been involved in a lively discussion about theodicy (also known as “the Problem of Evil”) over at Bill Keezer’s place. Bill’s position is that in order to arrive at a […]
I’ll confess I’ve always had a soft spot for the A-10 Thunderbolt. Slow and ugly, loud as hell — they’re about as far from “stealthy” as a 747. But they are the last thing you want to see coming at you on the battlefield, because in just about every case “the last thing you’ll see” […]
About a month ago the New York Times ran an aggrieved piece, on its front page, about the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk statistics. The article, clearly intended to tar the police as racists, opened with: Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, […]
Here’s Peggy West, Democratic county supervisor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explaining why all right-thinking people should support a boycott of Arizona over SB1070.
From a comment on today’s topic at Mangan’s, here is James Bowery, Chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, testifying before the House Subcommittee on Space July 31, 1991: In short, the lack of a frontier is leading us away from the progressive values of the Age of Enlightenment, upon which our country was […]
In today’s Best of the Web James Taranto points out something both funny and sad. It’s the website of the Democratic candidate for governor of Nevada. His name is “Rory”, and the site is called “Rory 2010”. But what’s his last name? It doesn’t seems to say anywhere… how odd! Odd, that is, until you […]
Having got fed up with official press releases, oleaginous presidential puffery, and melodramatic news items, I decided to do a little spadework to find out what the experts are saying about this leaking oil well. I’ve found out, and it isn’t pretty. What I came across was an fantastically long and detailed comment, fairly bristling […]
I hate to pile on, but I just had to post this. It’s a 2007 clip of Nobelist Steven Chu (now Energy Secretary), speaking, um, gushingly, about how he and BP were going to “save the world”.
This afternoon, a commenter on our previous post asked me: Malcolm, are you cynical? Meanwhile, an old friend wrote me today to quote something I had, apparently, said to him when I was about 17 or 18. I don’t remember saying it, but here it is anyway: Everyone needs a pack of lies to live […]
There’s a savory juxtaposition on the Op-Ed page of today’s Times. In the top-left position we have yet another column from former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, calling for further government stimulus of the economy (he’s been tag-teaming with Bob Herbert on this theme for months now). It begins: Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; […]