April 22, 2008 – 10:41 pm
This entry is part 2 of 15 in the series
Free WillYesterday’s musings about free will led us to the question of where our decisions actually come from. Even in our own inner experience, our choices seem simply to float up into our consciousness, and indeed, experimental results strongly suggest that our awareness of our decisions comes after they are already made. Our commenter Pat Goldsmith […]
April 21, 2008 – 11:57 pm
This entry is part 1 of 15 in the series
Free WillThe question of free will has been in the air around here lately, and more than one voice has been heard decrying the awful prospect of determinism. I have a rather blithe attitude toward the problem: I don’t think there’s any need to be upset by the notion that our minds are a product of […]
April 20, 2008 – 11:35 pm
…but not forthcoming, I am afraid. Worn out and feeling a little under the weather, I am neglecting my duties here for at least another day. Apologies to all.
April 18, 2008 – 10:48 pm
As suddenly and astoundingly as ever, it is Spring again in New York. The weather these past few days has been simple perfection, and the trees and flowers, having awakened in a celebratory mood, are getting about their morning’s work with extravagant exuberance. But not all is renewed, and even as the living world stirs […]
April 17, 2008 – 11:43 am
Having toiled at my Midtown office until 3:15 a.m. last night — and with a joint-locking seminar to attend this evening at the kwoon, and a long mixing session coming up on Saturday — published content may be rather thin these next few days. I apologize: in particular, I owe the estimable Deogolwulf a better […]
April 15, 2008 – 11:12 pm
What is strange to me now, after 15 years of steady Internet use — during which time an truly ungraspable immensity of information has become available to all — is when there is something I can’t get hold of online. Sometimes it is a particularly obscure quotation, or passage from a book that I would […]
April 14, 2008 – 10:54 pm
An awful lot of people attach tremendous importance to the notion that our decisions are somehow the uncaused product of our consciousness: that they happen not amongst the deterministic web of brain tissue, but impose themselves on that tissue, somehow, from without. I’m not one of them.
April 14, 2008 – 12:23 pm
We note with sadness the death of this great scientist. He was one of the giants of 20th century physics, and mentor to an extraordinary assortment of disciples. His New York Times obituary is here.
April 12, 2008 – 10:08 pm
It’s my birthday this weekend, on Sunday, April 13th. (I’m 52.) I’ve been taking a little break: just reading and puttering around up here in Wellfleet, and scrupulously avoiding any serious brainwork or controversial posts (I love the rough-and-tumble of a good debate, but the little grey cells needed a rest). So here’s another undemanding […]
Last Tuesday’s New York Times carried a tragic and fascinating story. It was about Anne Adams, a scientist who was sticken by a degenerative and ultimately lethal brain disease called FTD, which is an acronym for frontotemporal dementia. The disease attacks particular portions of the brain only, with the effect that as the damaged parts […]
Here’s another item from Physorg.com: it appears that there might have been something to the old saying after all.
I’ll be traveling later today, and off the air until tomorrow at the earliest. So for now, here is an enormous, time-wasting distraction to keep you occupied.
Since the Big Bang was first proposed as a cosmological model for our universe — a model that has since been accepted with confidence by the astrophysical community — it has been assumed that it might well be impossible in principle to say anything about the state of the world prior to the initial singularity. […]
If you’re like me, you like nothing better than tucking into a heaping plate of short-snouted seahorses. Problem is, they’ve become annoyingly rare. Well, I’ve got good news! Story here.
While looking over the latest from our friend The Stiletto (who, by the way, has just been chosen as a Webby Awards Official Honoree for her “tart” political commentary), I ran across a story about Arizona’s efforts to deal with its enormous influx of illegal aliens. I was struck by one passage in particular: [E]nough […]
As a paternalistic and morally deficient bigot, I of course have a collegial interest in the ideological shortcomings of others — an interest that is not limited to my own species. So I was gratified when a recent item over at Dennis Mangan’s place led me to an engaging and informative piece about the extent […]
I must apologize to the reader for the lack of variety around here lately; our little clash of civilizations has occupied me almost exclusively in recent days. I’m afraid that this post will not interrupt the streak, but it will be brief: I just want to call attention to an outstandingly informative series of posts […]
As long as I am to be pilloried as a racist and reactionary xenophobe anyway, I might as well carry on. Here’s the latest cave-in, this time from Britain.
No matter what your reaction — snarling in defiance, as are the conservative voices of the West, groveling in awe, as are the liberal governments of Europe, or exulting, with growing confidence, as in the mosques and madrassas — radical Islam is rising. Those who see it, rightly, as a potentially lethal threat to all […]
In a recent post, Silence!, we remarked upon the indictment of an Austrian politician, Susanne Winter, for her having suggested that there might have been a whiff of sexual impropriety in the Prophet Mohammed’s taking of the six-year-old Aisha as his wife (though to his credit, he did not consummate the marriage until she was […]
I’m sorry to have been off the air yesterday; I spent a long day with the promising young band Bulletproof Soul at Avatar Studios, mixing some of the material we recorded a few weeks ago. I am also working at the office all day today, so can’t write at length now either — but it […]
Christopher Hitchens weighs in, with customary acerbity, on Hillary Clinton’s audacious Tuzla whopper. Here.
I have often, in posts having to do with foreign policy, expressed the sentiment that it is in our interest to foster “democracy”. It has occurred to me, however, in the course of a recent conversation, that the essential point is to promote regimes that rule with the consent of the governed. I’m not sure […]
For the crime of expressing dissatisfaction with his government, Chinese freethinker Hu Jia has been sentenced to prison, despite an international chorus of protest. His wife remains under house arrest. Meanwhile, when not distracted by its ongoing bludgeoning and suffocation of Tibet, China preens in the global spotlight as the host of the impending Olympics. […]
We’ll all sleep a little better knowing that monsters like these are off the streets. Story here.
Although I am not a theist myself, and sympathize broadly with the current crop of prominent atheist authors, we obviously cannot ignore the central role that religion has always played in the organization and cohesion of human groups. I think, along with Sam Harris and others, that it ought to be possible for human societies […]
My friend Salim Ismail, with whom I have just enjoyed a delightful lunch, has introduced me to a marvellous website that I must share with you all. It’s called Idle Words, and features the writings of one Maciej Ceglowski, who seems to get around a bit. You can find it here, or from today forward, […]
With a hat tip to Baron Bodissey at Gates of Vienna, we offer yet another frightening example of the withering of essential Western liberties under the steady pressure of Islamism. The latest gesture of craven appeasement comes from Austria, where a politician has been indicted for expressing an unfavorable opinion of Mohammed’s having married a […]
One of the little advantages of living in the pre-Internet world was that it was far easier to flatter myself, in my cleverer moments, that I’d had an original idea. It now requires only a trivial exertion to confirm that I haven’t.
As long as we’re on the subject of spineless capitulation to religious extremism, here’s a relevant post over at Gates Of Vienna.
March 31, 2008 – 11:42 pm
On the opinion page of today’s New York Times was an insightful essay, by business editor Eduardo Porter. In it Mr. Porter makes the case that to the extent that societies are fragmented along ethnic, racial, linguistic and religious lines, they are less inclined to support public spending for social programs. While this may be […]
March 31, 2008 – 11:06 pm
I have often expressed the opinion that the United Nations, though an appealing notion, is so feckless and corrupt, and so utterly devoid of any real power to inhibit the ambitions of scoundrels and tyrants, that the civilized nations of the world might simply be better off without it. Certainly the United States would; at […]
March 31, 2008 – 12:35 am
Like may others I am an admirer of Winston Churchill, and have lately been reading an excellent book by the managing editor of Newsweek, Jon Meacham. It’s called Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship, and as you can imagine from the title, it chronicles the enormously important friendship between Churchill and […]
I tend to be a fairly hard-nosed naturalist, as readers may have noticed. This arises from an inveterate intellectual conservatism: I think that the most parsimonious approach to understanding the world around us is to try to explain the phenomena we observe — the “phaneron”, to use Charles Sanders Peirce’s lovely word — in terms […]
By now you have probably heard the tragic story of young Madeline Neumann, a home-schooled girl who died of easily remediable diabetic ketoacidosis because her parents thought it better to pray for her recovery than to seek medical treatment. Her mother, who says that said that she and her family “believe in the Bible and […]
Debating philosophical or religious questions in the blogosphere can be awfully unproductive; it shows you why some of the same questions that vexed the ancients are still confounding us today. People with different fundamental assumptions live in inner worlds that are quite irreconcilable: words mean different things to different speakers, and often serve only to […]
March 28, 2008 – 12:12 pm
Once again I pause to mark with sorrow the anniversary of the death of my mother, Alison Calder Pollack, a truly extraordinary woman who left us two years ago today. Time softens grief’s sting, but not its ache.
March 28, 2008 – 10:23 am
The Dutch politician Geert Wilders has released his short film Fitna, which is harshly critical of Islam. If you are interested you can watch it online here.
March 27, 2008 – 11:41 pm
The lawyer, actor, writer, economist, professor, former Nixon speechwriter, and game-show host Ben Stein is starring in a new movie, called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, that challenges the Darwinian account of life’s history. It was given a screening in Minneapolis on March 20th, and among those attending were Richard Dawkins, who had actually consented to […]
March 26, 2008 – 11:55 pm
Today’s Times carried a front-page story about Muslim families who, wishing to maintain control over their children so as to prevent their exposure to decadent Western notions, have taken to withdrawing them from the educational system. In most instances it is, unsurprisingly, the daughters who are kept apart.
March 25, 2008 – 12:35 pm
From our friend Jess Kaplan comes news of a new breed of bank robber. Story here.
March 25, 2008 – 10:47 am
In what may mark, depending upon your perspective, either the zenith or nadir of Western civilization, the makers of South Park have now put every episode on line for your viewing pleasure. Or the irrevocable corruption of your eternal soul. Whatever.
March 25, 2008 – 10:36 am
From today’s CodeProject newsletter, here is an assortment of useful software that you can get for nothing.
March 24, 2008 – 11:28 pm
In a recent post, Kevin Kim offers a rebuttal to Sam Harris’s argument that religious moderates are in fact an impediment to progress toward a more rational world.
Now that you’ve joined me on a vigorous early-spring hike to Cape Cod Bay, it’s time to reward ourselves with a scrumptious local delicacy: some of our famous Wellfleet Oysters. Here’s how it’s done.
March 23, 2008 – 12:57 am
Friday, March 21st, was the first full day of Spring, and here in the outer reaches of Cape Cod, it was more lion than lamb. The temperature hovered in the thirties, and all day a steady wind roared out of the West. But the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, and after weeks cooped […]
March 21, 2008 – 10:44 pm
I normally spend at least ten hours a day at the computer; I’m taking a little break today. Back shortly.
I’ll be on the road this evening, so won’t have any time for writing. Meanwhile, though, reader Andrew Staroscik has brought to our attention an interesting discussion about consciousness over at Sandwalk. We’ll take a closer look here when we are back in harness.
March 19, 2008 – 11:21 pm
From our friend Jess Kaplan comes a link to a critique, by the British philosopher John Gray, of the “New Atheism”. It is an engaging piece, but it makes a lot of familiar and rather weak arguments, and some that are quite strange indeed. I suggest that you go and read it — it is […]