We see in today’s news that Pakistan has announced that it is in contact with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, and would like to arrange negotiations between Omar and the US. Have we learned nothing? What possible value could such negotiations offer? What conceivable compromise could there be between the Taliban and a […]
I have always, since the earliest days of boyhood, been a nocturnal sort. If I were free to set my own schedule (which I hope, inshallah, someday to be), I would retire sometime between two and three in the morning, and rise at about eleven — or, if it’s been a busy day, perhaps noon. […]
I always enjoy David Brooks’s column in the Times. He has an impeccable conservative pedigree, but never seems to take sides on any issue out of sheer partisanship, and even when he has strong opinions (with which I do not necessarily agree), he is unfailingly civil, and never shrill. Best of all, he writes well. […]
As I had hoped, things have finally settled down, and the lovely Nina and I have withdrawn to the Outer Cape for a brief but restorative interval of dietary indiscretion (on my own part at least), healthful physical activity, and diminished reponsibility. As always, there is much of interest going on in the world beyond […]
Here’s something curious. I have no idea if this video — allegedly taken from a camera being snaked through a sewer line in North Carolina — is real or fake, or, if real, whther it depicts something already well-known or utterly strange. What the hell are these things? They look like mighty good eatin’.
It is morning again, and I am back at my desk (technically speaking, it was also morning when I left). Although it has been heavy slogging these past six weeks or so, with many long nights of darkness both inner and outer, today there grows within me a slender reed of hope, a delicate wisp […]
Once again, it is approaching midnight, and I am still at the office, lashed to the wheel. This should not last much longer, I hope — perhaps things will be back to normal next week — but for now, serious bloggery remains entirely out of the question. Fortunately, you needn’t turn away empty handed, for […]
Today we offer a heaping helping of heresy, cooked up by some of our hardest-hitting, highest-profile heathens. First, as a little amuse-bouche, we have a recent editorial by the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, in which the author argues that, despite conciliatory efforts to get “militant” atheists to stop being such party-poopers, the fact is that religion […]
Readers will have noticed that output has fallen off drastically here lately; the demands of the workplace have continued to press heavily upon me. There seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, however, and in fact I am actually spending this weekend doing things other than writing and debugging program code — […]
We have all had the harrowing suspicion, rising at times almost to a dreadful certainty, that the inanimate objects of the world are arrayed against us with bloodless and implacable malice. We pop the window open on a fine spring morning and it falls back down, shattering the glass. We grab the only pencil at […]
French president Nicolas Sarkozy announced yesterday that the burqa — the head-to-toe garment worn by some Muslim women — is “not welcome” in France, and the French National Assembly is now preparing an inquiry into whether the enshrouding of women to shield them from the view of men other than their owners is so fundamentally […]
We’re talking about opinions, of course. Here are two takes on the situation in Iran: from Fouad Ajami, and from Pat Buchanan. And if you have a little more time, and would like to be better informed about elections in Iran generally, and about that nation’s political structure, read this.
As the situation in Iran devolves further into violence, we note that two Ph.D. candidates at Columbia have done some clever statistical work on the official election results, and have concluded that they are almost certainly fake. Story here.
We’ve been on the road for the past two days, and have just got home late on this Sunday evening. There’s been no time for keeping up with events, or for the brooding and rumination necessary for the germination of a serious post. So here’s another pungent item plucked from the ether by our reader […]
I’ve been letting things go to hell around here the past few weeks — there’s been little more than the odd news item or random piece of Internet flotsam — and I do hope things will be getting back to normal soon. Unfortunately, not being a man of independent means, I depend for my solvency […]
I am working late once again, and have as yet been unable to return to normal operations around here. So for tonight here’s a little item about physicsists and mysticism.
In an important development that may have far-reaching consequences, recent reports appear to confirm the suspicion, long held by many, that most people are in fact massively ignorant about almost everything. See here, and here.
With a hat tip, once again, to reader JK, here’s a thoughful item by Leslie Gelb on how the situation in Iran may evolve.
Apologies to all who have commented or emailed over the past few days: I am still spending nearly every waking hour either at work or aboard one of Gotham’s luxurious subway cars, and probably will be doing so through the first half of this week at least. There are a great many important and interesting […]
It is heartening to see the momentum changing, for the moment at least, in the Muslim world. The excesses of the Taliban have provoked a vigorous response, it seems, in northwestern Pakistan, and there are reports that an al-Qaeda exodus to Yemen and Somalia may be beginning – which may in many way be more […]
With conservatism back on its heels all over America, loyalty to tradition seems everywhere to be a waning virtue. Not so in New York State politics, where the stewards of the commonweal are every bit as venal and corrupt as they have been since before the Revolution, as we see in this heartwarming item from […]
With an impending deadline to meet, I shall remain fettered to my oar till the wee hours for the rest of the week at least. While I am surely grateful, during this disruptive economic paroxysm, to have the opportunity to spend a healthful fifteen hours a day sitting in a cubicle writing code so as […]
I’m working very late tonight (and for the rest of the week), and have no time for brooding and scribbling — so for this evening, I’m afraid all I have to offer is froth and diversion. Here, then, are the great Harpo Marx, and his namesake, collaborating on a familiar theme.
Here’s an odd little video clip, showing something or other having a swim in Lake Champlain.
North Korea, which is by some accounts facing catastrophic internal crises as Kim Jong-Il attempts to engineer the transfer of absolute power to his youngest son, has pressed its policy of brinkmanship even further by sentencing two US reporters to 12 years in a labor camp for an alleged border violation. Everyone is, as might […]
The Islamic mystic al-Kharraz tells us: “Only God has the right to say ‘I’.” This necessary insight has nothing to do with Islam, or even God.
In grappling with persistent questions regarding key aspects of human existence and the natural world — intentionality, free will, morality, and so on — it is very easy to become entangled in terminological difficulties. Here’s a particularly contentious example.
From E.A. Robinson, 1931: “If a man is a materialist, or a mechanist, or whatever he likes to call himself, I can see for him no escape from belief in a futilty so prolonged and complicated and diabolical and preposterous as to be worse than absurd: and, as I do not know that such a […]
Many years ago, the historian, philosopher, and author Will Durant asked an assortment of his eminent contemporaries for their opinon of the meaning of life, and gathered the responses into a book, now rather obscure. It happens that I own a first-edition copy, and the other day I took it down from the shelf. The […]
Mulla Nasrudin once undertook to take nine donkeys for delivery to a local farmer. The man who entrusted them to him counted them, one by one, so that Nasrudin could be sure that there really were nine. On the road his attention was distracted by something by the wayside. Nasrudin, sitting astride one of the […]
Religious fanatics have been spreading the love again. First we had Sunday’s murder of Dr. George Tiller by a paranoid Christian extremist — in the sanctuary of a Christian church, no less — and then, Monday morning, a lethal assault on an Army recruiting station by a Muslim zealot. The latter item, in particular, bears […]
As has been the case for over thirteen centuries, East and West are still glowering darkly at one another across a deep cultural divide. One hopes always for harmony and rapprochement — themes that Mr. Obama will, I am sure, focus on in his upcoming speech from Cairo — and perhaps, in this small and […]
So distracted am I, and so out of touch with the world of music just at the moment, that I didn’t know it until I read it in today’s Times: the incomparable Manny’s, midtown Manhattan’s Mecca of musical merchandise, has closed its doors. This lavish emporium, set in “Music Row” on West 48th Street amongst […]
In a brief item posted today, Bill Vallicella wonders: Does it matter whether life has an ultimate meaning or not? Someone might be satisfied if he has a good chance of attaining middle-sized happiness: peaceful days, restful nights, an adequate supply of health and wealth, satisfying employment, a loving spouse, friends, progeny, long life, and […]
The link in the previous post was taken from a comment thread in a blog-post called to our attention by reader JK. The post, from the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Blog, is an attempt to assess the import of North Korea’s recent nuclear test (if that is indeed what it was).
Here’s a handy item for you hobbyists out there: courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists, it’s the Nuclear Weapon Effects Calculator. Enjoy!
I’ve just got back from class, it’s almost eleven, and I haven’t the time or energy tonight to write the longish post I really want to be working on. So for this evening I’ll just leave you with a bit of froth from our friend and commenter “the one eyed man”: Old Jews Telling Jokes. […]
The latest phase in the persecution of the brave Burmese dissident Daw Aung San Suu Kyi by Burma’s odious and repressive ruling junta is underway, and today testimony was given in this bizarre case by the American John Yettaw, who swam across a lake to reach Ms. Suu Kyi’s house on May 3rd, and spent […]
The Pakistani army’s new offensive against the Taliban has been underway for several weeks now, and it does appear that they have applied considerable heat. In today’s Wall Street Journal we find an article by Fouad Ajami in which the noted Mideast scholar weighs in on the struggle for the survival of the secular Pakistani […]
It appears that the California Supreme Court has decided to uphold the ban on same-sex marriages that the state’s voters passed in November. There would have been vociferous manifestations of outrage no matter how the decision might have gone — either from those who felt that an activist Court had overridden the expressed will of […]
Some years ago, anthropologist Donald Brown compiled a list of “Human Universals”: cultural traits that seem to be instantiated by all human societies. The list is broad, and contains almost all the things you’d expect to see: the collection includes belief in supernatural/religion, for example, as well as sucking wounds and language employed to misinform […]
We are still on vacation, but I did find some time for the blogosphere this evening. I spent it, though, reading and commenting on a fascinating thread about free will over at Bill Vallicella’s place. Here.
From our friend Sarah Zimmerman comes a link to an article by Steven Van Zandt about just what it is that ails the music business. Readers will know Steve as Bruce Springsteen’s long-time associate in the E Street Band, and as consigliere Silvio Dante from The Sopranos. I got to know Steven myself during the […]
We’re on vacation through Monday, and will likely not be writing much (though you never know). Please feel free to browse our extensive archives, or try the “View a Random Post” link at right.
From number 720, in the Krailsheimer edition: Ethics and language are particular, but also universal, branches of knowledge. In this illuminating insight the great Pascal anticipates moral philosophers and evolutionary biologists such as John Rawls and Marc Hauser by over 300 years. As homo sapiens we all share an innate moral faculty and finite ethical […]
By way of Dennis Mangan, here is a review of the new hybrid car from Honda. It is less than favorable.
The government of Sri Lanka has announced that the leader of the “Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam”, Velupillai Prabhakaran, was killed in the sanguinary denouement of that nation’s long civil war. This news will certainly come as a great relief to a great many people in that tormented island. Mr. Prabhakaran was a ruthless terrorist […]
It’s been a busy weekend — it often seems there is less free time on the weekends than during the week — so there has been little opportunity for brooding and writing. For tonight, then, here’s a cheery little item about Google and you.
From commenter JK comes a link to a story about a young girl with juvenile diabetes who died because her parents, besotted by delusional religious fantasies, saw fit only to pray for her, rather than seek simple and effective medical treatment. We read: Last Easter Sunday, 11-year-old Kara Neumann of Weston, Wisconsin, lay motionless on […]
In what may be an enormously important piece of scientific work, chemist John D. Sutherland of the University of Manchester has discovered a reaction path by which RNA nucleotides can have been assembled from molecules likely to have been present in the Earth’s early environment.