December 13, 2008 – 1:00 pm
We are back in Wellfleet for the next few days, having driven up here after work yesterday. We arrived at about one a.m., under a startlingly brilliant full moon, with an icy wind shaking the pines and bare oaks.
December 11, 2008 – 11:24 am
With yet another hat tip to our friend JK, who has been tirelessly throwing odds and ends over the fence, here is an item that falls squarely in the “odds” category (though I suppose it involves “ends” as well).
December 10, 2008 – 11:33 pm
My insider sources tell me there is an “uptick” in the “chatter” lately; this is their way of saying that the murmurous rustle of nefarious voices has got louder, or more insistent, or something, and that it seems more likely than usual that some horrible and murderous attack might be imminent.
December 9, 2008 – 9:29 pm
Here’s an item I meant to mention a few days ago. Published on December 5th, the 75th anniversary of Prohibition’s repeal, it is an eloquent call for an end to our nation’s misguided war on drugs. While our neighbor to the south sinks into violent anarchy, and the Taliban enriches itself producing opium, we continue […]
December 8, 2008 – 10:45 pm
Number 47, in the Krailsheimer edition: Justice and truth are two points so fine that our instruments are too blunt to touch them exactly. If they do make contact, they blunt the point and press all round on the false rather than the true.
December 8, 2008 – 10:35 am
In commenting on a recent post, our reader and commenter Addofio, parsing the distinction between truth and opinion, says that “it all depends on what we mean by ‘true’”. Kevin Kim takes a good preliminary poke at the question over at his place. Or, as my friend Anthony Bouza once explained it, in closing a […]
December 7, 2008 – 10:20 pm
Something new for our sidebar, courtesy of our friend David Duff: Sister Wolf.
December 7, 2008 – 8:41 pm
Reader JK, who has his ear to the ground at all times, alerts us to some worrisome news. Apparently the prevalence in the environment of certain chemical pollutants has reached such high levels that a broad assortment of vertebrate species are producing increasingly “feminized” males.
December 6, 2008 – 9:18 pm
There was a news item a day or two ago about some advertising put up in several cities by an association of Godless heathens. The ads suggested that folks should reconsider their belief in a supernatural deity; one went so far as to make the direct assertion that there is no God at all. The […]
December 5, 2008 – 11:27 pm
Any one who has paid any attention to neuroscience in the past few decades knew of the sad, strange case of “H.M.”, who, as a young man in 1953, underwent brain surgery to control persistent seizures. The operation did indeed quiet the storm inside his skull, but a terrible cost: the surgeon had removed part […]
December 4, 2008 – 11:09 pm
Number 47, in the Krailsheimer edition: “We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we […]
December 3, 2008 – 10:27 pm
Thomas Friedman, in his column in today’s Times, notes the usual silence from the world’s “moderate” Muslims in the wake of yet another despicable act of mass murder in the name of their religion.
December 3, 2008 – 10:05 pm
I have several email accounts, and I get plenty of spam, just everybody else. Every now and then, though, something comes in that I simply cannot, for the life of me, imagine why anyone would bother to send. Here’s the latest example: Hello , Am David i want to know if u carry (Aluminum Planks) […]
December 2, 2008 – 10:29 pm
In yesterday’s Times the conservative columnist William Kristol notes how reluctant some are to acknowledge the Islamic roots — and explicitly Islamic agenda — of the terrorists who attacked Mumbai last week.
November 30, 2008 – 11:09 pm
I do hope readers will forgive me for rather a rambling post yesterday. (My editorial staff was off for the holidays.) I think some clarification is in order. The post was written as part of an ongoing discussion of the appropriate limits of tolerance. I have been upbraided on occasion for discussing certain topics, particularly […]
November 29, 2008 – 5:02 pm
In a challenging and thoughtful comment on our recent post about tolerance, our reader Addofio chides me for the disdainful tone I have taken in some of my criticism of religion. She recommends that we discuss ideas, however preposterously absurd, in emotionally neutral terms, as a gesture of respect for the people who hold them. […]
November 29, 2008 – 12:29 am
I have a difficult time, occasionally, maintaining a seemly façade of unconditional respect for my fellow hominids. I try, I really do, but the older I get, the more I see of my conspecifics, and the more I come to understand of our origins, the more difficult it becomes. The recent sectarian barbarism in India […]
November 26, 2008 – 11:25 pm
To all of you, a safe and happy Thanksgiving. Even on this day, as civilization’s foundations shudder and its enemies raise their bloodstained hands once again, we have much to cherish, and to be grateful for. “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” […]
November 25, 2008 – 10:10 pm
More about Somali pirates: reader JK directs us to this insightful item by “Galrahn” over at Information Dissemination.
November 25, 2008 – 7:05 pm
Ah, the Clintons. Ah, Christopher Hitchens. In a brief and piquant essay, the latter reminds us why the last thing we need is another stiff dose of the former. Here. Also, if you feel like a longer and deeper mud-wallow, Mr. Hitchens’s piece links to this eight-page article by Todd Purdum on how the former […]
November 25, 2008 – 10:50 am
In today’s news, we read that pirates have seized yet another ship off the Somali coast. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens asks why we no longer hang pirates when we catch them. A fair question, I think.
November 25, 2008 – 12:30 am
I tend to rail about religion now and then; some of you may have noticed. I’ve even suggested that we’d all, in the long run, simply be better off without it. Such remarks tend to evoke indignant responses, in which I am tartly reminded of the value of “tolerance”. But I must say that I […]
November 22, 2008 – 6:59 pm
As I mentioned last night, there’s a discussion underway about interreligious dialogue at Kevin Kim’s place. The thread began with Kevin’s link to an article about Karen Armstrong’s call for worldwide interreligious harmony. I’ve been taking fire for my flint-hearted remarks, and would like to comment further here.
November 22, 2008 – 12:04 am
Nothing here tonight, I’m afraid; I’ve spent my spare time this evening in a discussion about interreligious dialogue over at Kevin Kim’s. It’s an interesting conversation, which I will probably follow up with a post of my own. But for now, read the post and thread here.
November 20, 2008 – 3:52 pm
Should Hillary Clinton be the next Secretary of State? I’d rather she weren’t, and here’s why.
November 19, 2008 – 11:56 pm
It has been a long day: it is almost midnight, and I’ve only just got home from the Manhattan hospital where my frail and elderly mother-in-law was admitted for tests. She is not so well. My lovely wife Nina is still there with her. So, nothing long-winded tonight, I’m afraid. Although there are in fact […]
November 18, 2008 – 10:55 pm
This from entertainer Kanye West, whom some of you may even have heard of: “I realize that my place and position in history is that I will go down as the voice of this generation, of this decade… …Because I have sacrificed real life to be a celebrity and to give this art to people, […]
November 17, 2008 – 10:30 pm
We hear a lot these days about inter-religious dialogue, and I suppose it’s a nice enough idea, in a surreal sort of way. It’s even, perhaps, a plausible one, as long as we are talking about, for example, a dialogue between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians — which would surely be a generous and genteel […]
November 17, 2008 – 12:24 am
With a hat tip to our friend Jess Kaplan, here is P.J. O’Rourke’s wistful assessment of the wreckage of American conservatism.
November 15, 2008 – 10:04 pm
I recently began a careful re-reading of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, a book I had not looked at closely in decades. The work is primarily an argument for Pascal’s Jansenist Christian beliefs, but prepares the soil with a searching review of Man’s transience and wretchedness. The genius Pascal, in his cruelly foreshortened life, acquired wisdom far […]
November 15, 2008 – 9:00 pm
Well, seven, now; I should have penned this post back in August, when the title was most apt. But there are definitely strange things afoot in British Columbia: story here.
November 13, 2008 – 10:09 pm
I managed to get home from work by eight-fifteen this evening, which, in the context of the past week, feels like playing hooky. The little grey cells, however, are in weary and mutinous disarray, so I will probably be leaning on the “Shameless Filler” category for another few days. But I do want to direct […]
November 13, 2008 – 10:04 pm
This from today’s Borowitz Report: November 13, 2008 Bush in Race against Time to Wreck Country Legacy of Destruction at Stake Confounding the conventional wisdom that he is a lame duck president with no agenda as his days in office dwindle, President George W. Bush is redoubling his efforts to mutilate the country before his […]
November 13, 2008 – 10:02 pm
If you think your IPhone can do it all, you ain’t, as they say, seen nuthin’ yet. Have a look here.
November 12, 2008 – 11:50 pm
At my age, I certainly don’t enjoy working fourteen-hour days, and right through the weekend — I had quite enough of that in my long years at the recording console (and have the receding hairline and sunken eyes to prove it). But that’s just what I’ve been doing: I have a deadline to meet, and, […]
November 10, 2008 – 9:50 pm
Work presses heavily upon me just now, leaving little time for anything else. Please feel free to wander about the archives, or try our new “Random Post” feature. Things should be back to normal in a day or two.
November 8, 2008 – 7:20 pm
Last night we had friends over for dinner, a lovely couple we know from Wellfleet. They are both academics: she is a sociologist and associate professor at Harvard. Naturally we were discussing the recently transformed political landscape, and the conversation turned to Mr. Obama’s possible choices for the composition of his cabinet. Among the names […]
November 7, 2008 – 12:31 am
I note with sorrow the success of Proposition 8 in California, which will amend the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Of all the threats that imperil us in these uncertain times, that this is what they chose to focus on is a depressing comment indeed.
November 6, 2008 – 11:54 pm
A thirteen-year-old girl, walking to visit her grandmother, is accosted and raped. She reports the assault to the local authorities, whose response is swift: they take her to a stadium, bury her up to her neck, and, with a large crowd watching, stone her to death as she begs for mercy. The men who raped […]
November 5, 2008 – 11:24 pm
I may look and sound pretty tough, but actually I’m a pushover. Beneath my gruff and menacing exterior I’m a sentimental old softie, a big ball of moosh. I’m particularly susceptible to movies: the tear-jerkers move me to unseemly and lachrymose upwellings of empathy, and the scary ones just beat the hell out of me. […]
November 5, 2008 – 2:05 pm
Both John McCain and Barack Obama gave fine speeches last night. Mr. McCain gave an honorable and gentlemanly address that was untainted by bitterness, and Mr. Obama’s speech was both sober and uplifting. I must comment on one thing in particular, before I am scooped by all the language mavens out there: Mr. Obama’s phrase […]
November 4, 2008 – 11:38 pm
Well! There you have it. The Democratic Party seems to be giving the Republicans a thumping of historic proportions. (They might have managed this four years ago, had they not put forward as their champion that pompous and insufferable windbag, the lugubrious thatch-crowned Ent John Kerry.) I have a feeling I am not the only […]
November 4, 2008 – 7:19 pm
I know I said I would shut up about Sarah Palin, and I will, sort of. But Christopher Hitchens is under no such obligation, and he wrote a tart little item a few days ago. We read:
November 3, 2008 – 11:56 pm
We’ve heard a lot lately about anti-intellectualism. The word “intellectual” often evokes, it seems, negative associations even in people who could fairly be called intellectuals themselves; we’ve even seen some of that in recent discussions here. Why?
November 1, 2008 – 3:01 pm
I have a fairly uncomplicated genealogy: Cornish, Scottish and Welsh (Pollock/Polk, and Lloyd) on my father’s side, and Scottish, back into the remotest mists of time (along the Calder/Cawdor and Morrison lineages) on my mother’s. (That my name is Pollack, not Pollock, is only due, as it turns out, to a paperwork error that happened […]
October 31, 2008 – 10:57 pm
The current presidential contest — which got underway, if memory serves, back in the late ’50s or early ’60s — appears, impossibly, to be in its final days. It has seemed so hyperbolically prolonged, like some geometric distortion of spacetime itself, that I rather suspect that when it is over the world will end in […]
October 29, 2008 – 10:49 pm
I’ve got into a bit of a scuffle commenting on a post over at The Gypsy Scholar; I made some unkind remarks about the Republican vice-presidential nominee, and elicited a snappy rebuke. I will cop to the charge of using fairly strong language, bordering on incivility. I may even be showing symptoms of what some […]
October 28, 2008 – 11:51 pm
From a commenter over at Gypsy Scholar (by way of our reader JK) comes a link to an article by George Monbiot entitled “How these gibbering numbskulls came to dominate Washington”: How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of […]
October 28, 2008 – 11:08 am
I haven’t written much about music lately, and have almost never, I think, written about my own musical background, other than as a recording engineer. But I have played the drums and the guitar since I was a boy, and before I landed my first job in a recording studio and began a career at […]
October 27, 2008 – 10:18 pm
We note with grim satisfaction the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens. It has the feeling of justice long-postponed and richly deserved. It’s just a drop in the bucket, though, as Mark Twain reminds us: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.” Celebration would […]