April 17, 2009 – 10:51 am
From today’s New York Times: a remarkable account of a dramatic nighttime encounter between US troops and Taliban fighters. Here.
April 17, 2009 – 10:25 am
For those who like to keep an ear to the ground, Information Dissemination, as always, offers some noteworthy items. First, it’s beginning to look like al-Qaeda may be putting the squeeze on Somali pirates. And big things may be afoot once again in the Caucasus; it looks like Russia is mobilizing.
April 17, 2009 – 10:06 am
The collapse of secular government in Pakistan continues apace; the jihadist cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, imprisoned for his role in the uprising and siege at the Red Mosque, was freed on Thursday by that nation’s Supreme Court. At CNN we read: Addressing Friday prayers in the battle-scarred mosque, Aziz said he was willing to see […]
With a hat tip to Norman Geras, here’s a fine essay by Joe Queenan on the “euphemism treadmill” that is now affecting what used to be called the “War On Terror”.
There appears to be a bit of friction between the US Army and some of its Sikh recruits about whether the soldiers should be allowed to maintain the turban, uncut hair and beard that are emblematic of their faith. This is likely to be cast as a rights issue, but it is of course nothing […]
April 15, 2009 – 11:40 pm
For those of you who take an interest in our national pastime: a rare baseball oddity occurred this past Sunday, and our former skipper, Joe Torre, was at the heart of it. Read about it here, and watch the video here.
April 15, 2009 – 11:14 pm
It’s late, and I have been distracted, as often happens, by a conversation at another website — this time an engaging thread at our friend Deogolwulf’s lair on the subject of consciousness and materialism. So for tonight, here’s a glimpse, from this year’s TED conference, of some very clever engineering.
The boffins at the University of California have just alerted us that use of Twitter may imperil our moral faculties. Apparently the problem is that no sooner has the popular messaging service delivered to us a 140-character synopsis of some calamity than another “tweet” comes along, driving the old one from our consciousness before we […]
April 13, 2009 – 10:43 pm
We note with sadness the untimely death, at 56, of adult-film star Marilyn Chambers — who rose, as readers of a certain age will remember, to national celebrity back in 1972 when it was revealed that the star of the movie Behind the Green Door was also the familiar face on the front of the […]
April 13, 2009 – 10:04 pm
In case there was any doubt in anyone’s mind about the Taliban’s victory over the Pakistani government in the northwestern valley of Swat, President Zardari today formalized his nation’s abject surrender with a signed document. This means that the imposition of the Taliban’s barbaric totalitarian theocracy, a central feature of which is the sexually perverted […]
The US Navy SEALs have rescued Captain Phillips. He jumped overboard for a second time, and the SEALs (probably, according to my sources, with their “ears on the lifeboat’s hull” and using Drager rebreathers to avoid showing bubbles) shot and killed the pirates in the lifeboat before they could recapture him as they did before. […]
At work today someone mentioned the Amazon Kindle, and a lively chat ensued. The people I work with are, for the most part, highly intelligent and much younger than I — and they generally, and probably correctly, see printed books as increasingly quaint, and ultimately doomed.
April 10, 2009 – 12:09 pm
The cult-like animal-rights organization PETA, sparing no exertion in its mission to make a laughingstock of itself, continues fearlessly to explore the remotest frontiers of pop-culture idiocy. Here.
The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, is something of a contradiction: though a Republican, he is a committed nanny-stater. A little while back he led an initiative to outlaw the serving of trans-fats in Gotham’s restaurants, and he offered praise for Governor Patterson’s ridiculous and insulting “obesity tax” on soda pop. Now he […]
There are new facts emerging in the Maersk Alabama hijacking. Apparently an 18-man guard detail is aboard, as reported here and here. Interested observers may also find this item relevant. And as always, InfoDiss is following the story attentively, here, here, and, with informative background analysis, here.
There is a characteristically penetrating conversation underway over at The Maverick Philosopher on the subject of whether mere thoughts can be morally wrong (Bill Vallicella says yes.) I’m still mulling over the arguments made, and haven’t had time myself to read all of the latest contributions, so am reserving comment for now. Go and have […]
Readers have probably heard by now that a US-flagged Maersk ship has been hijacked by Somali pirates. This is surprising, to say the least; it seems odd that a ship of the Maersk line, which provides logistical services to many U.S. government agencies, would be operating in these perilous waters without adequate security, indeed without […]
It’ll be Father’s Day before you know it. Problem is, the old man already has all the neckties he needs — and one “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee-mug is probably enough. But don’t despair: find the perfect gift here.
Gates of Vienna has posted a video of Geert Wilders’ speech to the David Horowitz Freedom Society in Beverly Hills last weekend. Wilders, as you probably know, has been demonized, not only by Islamists, but also by his own government, that of Britain, and well-intentioned but myopic cultural relativists everywhere, for his commitment to the […]
I have for many years held the opinion, shared by many, that Winston Churchill was the greatest prose stylist in the modern history of the English language. That opinion was reinforced the other day when, in search of a historical reference, I took down from my bookshelf The Gathering Storm, the first part of Churchill’s […]
Recently the crumbling government of Pakistan handed over the valley of Swat to the Taliban. For those of you who were unaware of what the consequences of that surrender would be — or who need reminding that there is abroad in this world a perverse and despicable religious ideology, as vile an abomination of the […]
We note that a British-owned ship has just been hijacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden. This bears watching: the British, however much their star may have fallen in the world, do not fool around when it comes to matters naval, do not look kindly upon piracy, and will not have forgotten that it […]
In an important step toward bringing the noble and vitalizing spirit of Juche to faraway worlds, the peaceable space program of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea took a great leap forward today with the launch of a mighty rocket, carrying a glorious payload of prosperity and self-reliance into space. Meanwhile, the running dog lackeys […]
There has been yet another sickening homicidal rampage today, this time in an immigration-services center in the decaying city of Binghamton, New York. It seems that horrors of this sort are happening more and more often in recent years. Incidents like this throw fuel on the gun-control debate, with restrictionists arguing that the problem is […]
I’m puzzled by something. About three years ago I wrote a brief post that linked to an online essay by computer scientist Jaron Lanier about the shortcomings of collaborative projects like Wikipedia. For some reason, since last November the post has attracted a steady stream of visitors (several an hour), from scattered locations. There are […]
In yet another alarming sign of accelerating environmental deterioration, astronomers have reported that Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, one of the outer Solar System’s best-loved natural attractions, is shrinking. “I’m not surprised,” said well-known leaflet-wielding vegan subway pest Persephone Finch, when told of the recent diminution of the iconic gas giant’s most distinctive feature. “This is […]
A little while back I confessed my infatuation with Porcupine Tree‘s extraordinary drummer Gavin Harrison, who is, I still think, pretty much the bee’s knees when it comes to tapping the tubs. In that recent post I encouraged readers to go have a look for themselves, and linked to a YouTube clip of one of […]
Like, for example, this from Google.
Here, if you haven’t seen it, is an amusing item from YouTube: how would Microsoft have marketed the iPod?
March 31, 2009 – 12:06 pm
Here’s more good sense about our nation’s demented and obsessive “War on Drugs”, this time from Jack Cafferty: Someone described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. That’s a perfect description of the war on drugs. Exactly right. (That “someone”, by the way, was Albert Einstein.) […]
March 30, 2009 – 11:47 pm
It is a truism these days that any claim relating the statistically varying abilities and aptitudes of human beings to, say, skin color, or “gender”, is a shocking and benighted atavism, a pernicious throwback to the bad old days of racism and sexism. If such correlations emerge, as they occasionally do, from a “scientific” study […]
March 29, 2009 – 11:19 pm
An item at the CNN website reports that a study from Queen’s University, Belfast suggests that crabs “feel” pain. The study, by researchers Bob Elwood and Mirjam Appel, examined the behavior of hermit crabs subjected to electric shocks. Hermit crabs, as I am sure you know, live in the abandoned shells of other animals, and […]
March 29, 2009 – 11:01 am
I’ve been reading the book Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, by Arthur Herman, and was taken by this description of Churchill’s close friend F. E. Smith, the 1st Earl of Birkenhead, and Secretary of State for India from 1924 to 1928: “F.E. to his friends, his […]
We’d like to thank G. Orcalimbo Jones, host of the Friday night show at WOMR in Provincetown, for the mention he gave this website on the air last night. If any of you have found your way here as a result, welcome, and thanks for dropping by.
March 27, 2009 – 10:21 pm
We are in Wellfleet for the weekend, and earlier this evening I spent a delightful hour gathering a few dozen of our highly prized local oysters from the tidal flat at Indian Neck Beach. Though most of the critters you’ll find there at low tide are molluscs and crustaceans — clams, oysters, crabs, and the […]
Diligently doing its part to undermine America’s intellectual respectability and competitiveness, the Texas Board of Education is taking up an amendment this week that seeks to smuggle religious myths, such as the transparent Creationist fraud known as “Intelligent Design”, into the science classroom in the name of “academic freedom”. Were this dispute taking place only […]
March 25, 2009 – 11:33 am
Recently the decorated journalist Bernard Goldberg, incensed by a conspicuous left-leaning bias in many of the nation’s news and entertainment providers, published a book called A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media. In today’s Washington Post, we find a good example, in […]
I’ve just watched President Obama’s press conference on CNN. It was not an easy night for him. The focus was on the economy; in fact there was not a single mention of Iraq or Afghanistan. To illustrate this, the producers at CNN used a cute little application that generates what are called “word clouds” — […]
As President Obama sends a wave of federal agents to our border states in response to the violence now spilling over from Mexico, we find on CNN’s main page a sensible Op-Ed piece calling for an end to our bloody and puritanical “war on drugs”. We read: It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual […]
March 23, 2009 – 11:11 pm
I realize that if I am going to live and work in New York City I am necessarily going to come into contact with bothersome people, and that the effect is magnified in the confined quarters of the subway. Over the thirty-odd years I’ve been living here I have certainly met my share of unpleasant […]
March 22, 2009 – 10:32 pm
While I was doing some research for an upcoming post about last weekend’s fascinating trip to Welland, Ontario, I ran across a remarkable bit of amateur video. It shows the events of August 11th, 2001, when the freight ship Windoc, while traversing the Welland Canal, struck a lowering drawbridge at Allanburg, Ontario. Amazingly, nobody was […]
We’ve set aside our musings about free will and moral responsibility for a while now, but a story making its way around the grapevine certainly seems relevant. It’s an insanity-defense case from Texas in which the defendant killed his wife and two children.
March 20, 2009 – 11:11 pm
I’m not much of a basketball fan, but you’d have to be out cold not to notice all the bracket-related hoop-la every March. One thing that has always struck me as odd about the NCAA tournament, though, is that to a disinterested observer, the point of the whole thing seems to be the semi-finals. The […]
March 19, 2009 – 11:14 pm
With a hat tip to reader J. Kapok, we have an interesting item in which a scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls argues that the putative authors, the ascetic cult called the Essenes, never existed. Learn more here.
March 18, 2009 – 11:14 pm
Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, has written a series of posts lately about just what atheism is. In particular his aim has been to rebut the notion that atheists merely lack a positive belief in God, and that the burden of proof naturally falls upon the theist. I am not going to take up the […]
March 17, 2009 – 11:14 pm
I am more than a little concerned about our new president’s stewardship of the vital friendship between the U.S. and Britain. Mr. Obama gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown the cold shoulder during his recent visit, saying he was “too tired” for a state dinner, and later a Foggy Bottom staffer blithely dismissed the snub, saying […]
March 17, 2009 – 10:16 pm
There is an agreeable interval between childhood and marriage during which a man may eat what he pleases.
March 17, 2009 – 11:14 am
Perhaps a more accurate description would be “dim-witted claptrap”.
March 16, 2009 – 10:57 pm
I’ve just got back from a whirlwind visit to Welland, Ontario — and a most interesting and unusual trip it was (details and photos to follow shortly). It’s late, though, so rather than a meaty post, I can only offer a diverting little bon-bon, courtesy of my son Nick, for you cartoon fans out there.
March 15, 2009 – 12:28 pm
Traveling today, minus laptop. Back tomorrow or Tuesday.