With a hat-tip to Charles Murray on X: The Seven Tribes of Intellect. (One has to wonder: what must it have been like to be John von Neumann?)
April 16, 2024 – 12:08 pm
We’re in NYC for a couple of days, where my lovely wife is having surgery for one of those damned basal-cell carcinomas that seem to afflict so many people these days. Back soon.
In a development that has medical and longevity experts scratching their heads, the recording/mixing engineer, former martial-arts instructor, acidulous opinionator, and bibulous curmudgeon Malcolm Pollack celebrated his 68th birthday on April 13th. Asked to comment, one leading expert said that the news has “made us wonder if we have to re-examine some of our most […]
Well, the Eclipse has come and gone, and as far as I can make out, there’s no sign of either the Rapture or the Apocalypse. (I realize such things might take some extra time to reach us here in the Outer Cape, but even on social media things just seem to be blaring away as […]
The White House has decided to dedicate this Sunday to its malevolent, Gnostic project of obliterating every sacred thing, every natural category, and every stone in the foundation of the American nation. “But wait,” you say, “this Sunday’s Easter!! Couldn’t they at least have picked some other day?” Gosh, you’re right. I’m sure they’d just […]
We’re away in NYC for a few days. Back soon. (Will be glad to get home.)
I haven’t been able to do any substantial writing for a bit – I’m still foggy from this virus I’ve had (though I’m recovering now, it was a nasty bug, with fatigue and cognitive wooziness to rival the Wuhan Red Death itself). I also had to make around trip from Wellfleet to JFK on Monday […]
Commenter “Landroll” asks, in response to my previous post about the incremental militarization of the New York City subway system: Like the line from the song says, “Whatcha gonna do about it?” I don’t know what song that is, but: So far, what I’ve done about it has been to move out of New York, […]
Our reader and commenter ‘mharko’ has left some excellent remarks on a thread at Bill V.’s place about our worsening political situation. Go and have a look, here. (Sorry not to have responded myself, mharko. I’m still quite foggy and unwell with this damned respiratory virus I’ve been battling, and it’s been all I can […]
February 29, 2024 – 6:09 pm
I’ve been nursing a surprisingly debilitating cold (or flu, or something) for the past few days. It makes it difficult to summon up the energy to do much of anything, and I’ve been unable to concentrate the little grey cells enough to write anything worth reading. (I did manage another comment or two in that […]
February 25, 2024 – 9:29 am
On the road. Back Tuesday. Update, Tuesday evening: I’m back home, but after dropping the lovely Nina at JFK last night for a 1:35 a.m. flight to Hong Kong (to visit our grandkids), and then driving five hours back to Wellfleet, getting to bed just before sunup, and sleeping fitfully for a few hours, I’m […]
February 22, 2024 – 10:34 pm
My friend “Spandrell” has a new version of his blog up and running. I’ve linked to several of his posts over the years, in particular his 2017 three-part essay on what he calls “Bioleninism”. (You can read that here.) Span is a very smart guy, and he’s one of the OGs of what used to […]
February 13, 2024 – 10:03 pm
As I write, the House has impeached Homeland Security secretary Mayorkas: a pointless gesture, a little kayfabe for the fans. Yes, he’s lied to us, and to Congress. Yes, he’s an enemy who hates us. But he’s an underling, a myrmidon, a stooge, an infantryman, a dogsbody. His impeachment will die in the Senate, like […]
February 12, 2024 – 2:31 pm
Well, the site’s all fixed up; I just spent hours recreating all the old linked-series entries in a new plugin (fortunately I was able to pull all the info I needed from the backend database, though it’s been six years since I’ve had to write any SQL, so it took me a minute to remember […]
February 9, 2024 – 5:08 pm
I’ve been having some backend issues with the website: page links, comments, etc. aren’t working, and for a while today the site was completely inaccessible. I’m trying to get it all fixed, but until I do things won’t be working properly, and the site may be down from time to time. Update, 2/11: I’ve had […]
January 28, 2024 – 1:12 pm
I’m saddened today by some bad news: the death of guitarist Dean Brown, who was a beautiful, gifted musician and a hell of a nice guy. He had for several months been battling a mysterious form of cancer, and on January 26th he lost the fight. My deepest sympathies to his wife Ruth, and his […]
January 21, 2024 – 1:08 pm
OK, folks, we are heading into a year that will likely make the last few seem like “the good old days”. I have put together a bluntly and unsentimental list of some of the direst possibilities. Which of these seem likely? 1) 9/11-level terror attack 2) New and far deadlier pandemic 3) Trump jailed 4) […]
January 13, 2024 – 12:35 pm
We’re back home — my lovely wife Nina had some surgery on Thursday, and is now resting and recovering. Back to posting shortly.
January 10, 2024 – 1:06 pm
I’m not likely to be able to post for a couple of days. Back by the weekend.
January 8, 2024 – 2:55 pm
Over at Maverick Philosopher, Bill Vallicella links to two contrasting articles. The first, by Binyamin Applebaum, an editor at the New York Times, is a panegyric on the presidency of Joe Biden. The second, by Peter van Buren at American Conservative, is a jeremiad called “Evening in America”. It’s a stark and fascinating juxtaposition. In […]
January 2, 2024 – 8:09 pm
I am very sorry to tell you that our longtime friend and commenter here at this blog, Robert (a.k.a. “Whitewall”) has very suddenly and unexpectedly lost his wife. I can only imagine the terrible shock and sorrow he must be going through, and I ask you all to think of him and to keep him […]
January 1, 2024 – 9:52 pm
To kick off 2024 — a year in which I think we all will be tested — here is an important reminder from David Bowie (PBUH): Great advice from David Bowie pic.twitter.com/CheUp389ow — Darrell Craig Harris Pro Bassist (@DarrellCBassist) January 2, 2024
December 31, 2023 – 6:09 pm
Happy New Year, everybody! Take a deep breath. 2024 is going to be “interesting”.
December 27, 2023 – 10:24 pm
I was saddened today to hear news of the death of Tommy Smothers, whose wholesome, good-natured comedy (and fine guitar playing) I, and all of my generation, grew up with. The America of that bygone era all seems like a fading and faraway dream. Here he is with another iconic figure from the Before Time: […]
December 24, 2023 – 11:16 pm
I hope you all have a happy and peaceful day, and that you can set all this tumult aside for a moment, enjoy the company of those you love, and think about higher, better things. Thank you all for stopping by here, especially those of you who kept checking in during the long interval when […]
December 20, 2023 – 12:41 pm
We live in a world of obvious lies. Magna est veritas, et praevalebit, goes the old saying — “the truth is mighty, and will prevail” — but “will prevail”, as should be apparent to all at this moment in our history, is clearly not the same thing as “does prevail”. I’m fond of quoting Theodore […]
December 17, 2023 – 11:59 pm
I’m just putting a placeholder here lest anyone think the blog is sinking back into desuetude (I’m not going to let that happen again). It’s Christmas season, and there’s a lot going on around here — for example, tonight we went to Chandler Travis’s annual Christmas Cavalcade charity show here on the Cape, which was […]
December 13, 2023 – 10:05 pm
I am very sorry to say that our longtime e-pal (and commenter) Bill Keezer has died. Our friend the Maverick Philosopher has written a remembrance of him, here. Rest in peace, Bill. It was a pleasure, and a gift, to have known you all these years.
December 12, 2023 – 8:12 pm
There’s a branch of science called “forensic entomology”. It’s used in criminal investigations to determine the time of death for corpses by examining them to see what species of insects have invaded the body. There are specific timelines for this, depending on where the body is found, and I understand that it provides a pretty […]
September 24, 2023 – 6:16 pm
Worm that jumps from rats to slugs to human brains has invaded Southeast US
September 12, 2023 – 12:16 am
Once again I must apologize for the spotty content here lately (aside from the item I popped up for discussion yesterday, which is really just me picking at a very old scab from a different direction). I’ve had enough of jeremiads about the state of our decline and misrule; it would be easy enough to […]
August 22, 2023 – 6:13 pm
Here is a brief and almost impossibly concise rationalist apologia for Christian belief, given by the Oxford mathematician John Lennox. I’ll quote just two little gems from his speech. The first: “People are so desperate now to show that the universe created itself from nothing – which seems to me to be an immediate oxymoron: […]
August 19, 2023 – 11:36 am
Sorry — even though the kids and grandkids (who were here for more than a month) have gone, I still haven’t been writing much here at the blog. We’re still in that lazy summer mode, and have been fully occupied with, as they say, “touching grass” (and, in our case, sand and water as well). […]
I learned with great sadness the other day that my good friend of more than thirty years, Anthony V. Bouza, died late last month in his adopted hometown of Minneapolis. He was 94. In his long career as a policeman Tony rose from his humble origins, and the lowest rank, to the penultimate pinnacle of […]
Happy Independence Day, everybody. Attending the 4th-of-July parade in a small New England town — lots of smiling happy families, and Old Glory on display everywhere — is a reminder that wherever things are headed in America, it ain’t over yet. Our daughter, her husband, and our three young grandsons — Liam, almost seven, Declan, […]
For years now I’ve been writing, in these pages, about a few points that I think are central to understanding the decline of American — and, more broadly, Western — society and culture. (I might as well have been yelling up a drainpipe, for all the good it’s done, but at least I’ve been trying.) […]
Sorry for the scanty content; I’m away on one of my musical retreats with the Shoal Survivors. Back this week, with plenty to talk about.
I’m at the point where I don’t see much use in banging on endlessly about how broken things are, and about what a decadent position we’ve reached in the great cycle of civilizations — but every now and then I suppose we need a little reminding, just to keep the fire going, and today at […]
An important concept, and one that I’ve written about myself, is the idea of “time preference”: how willing a person is to defer present consumption or enjoyment in order to earn a dividend in the future. The classic example is the “marshmallow test”, in which small children are given a marshmallow, told that the adult […]
Sorry to have gone quiet again. I’m now back at home in Wellfleet after spending a few days in New York City (where we’ve spent much less time since selling our house in Brooklyn in October of 2021). I’m glad to be back on my little dirt road in the woods — NYC this time […]
It’s jarring when, at a dinner gathering or small social event, you encounter a mind that conceives reality in a way so utterly, radically, axiomatically alien that you cannot believe you both could possibly inhabit the same objectively existing world. This happened to me recently at a friend’s house. The person in question — a […]
February 4, 2023 – 9:33 pm
Well, that was one of the odder news-items of recent years: a Chinese balloon drifting over the continental U.S. while we all just sort of gaped at it — as it if were some wandering heavenly body, like a comet or Oumuamua, rather than an floating intruder sent into our airspace by our most formidable […]
February 2, 2023 – 2:46 pm
After nearly a month in Thailand, we are back in Wellfleet at last. It took us 38 hours of traveling just to get home, and together with a 180° day/night phase-reversal, we’re pretty whipped. Thailand was a pretty place, the food was good, and the people seemed unvaryingly friendly, kind-hearted, and cheerful, but it was […]
January 20, 2023 – 1:17 am
Just a post here to let readers know that I haven’t fallen off the Earth, although I am on the other side of it – the lovely Nina and I are currently in Koh Yao Yai, Thailand, where we went (on the world’s longest nonstop flight!) to meet up with our daughter, son-in-law, and three […]
December 31, 2022 – 11:50 pm
So long, 2022. (I wonder how long it will be before we once again have a year that we aren’t glad to put behind us.) It was a difficult year personally (though not nearly as bad as for some of our friends in the blogosphere). I grappled with a dark cloud of weariness and depression […]
December 21, 2022 – 9:46 pm
It’s been a very long time since I posted anything here – or anywhere. I’m hoping to be “fit for purpose” again soon, but until then, I’ll just wish you all a happy Christmas, and good health and fortune in the New Year.
September 14, 2022 – 7:58 pm
The lovely Nina’s mother Lily died a couple weeks ago, at 101. Her obituary is here.
I’ve been enjoying a respite from online engagement this summer, for reasons given in the previous post. Our daughter, her husband, and their three young sons (one is three-and-a-half, one turned six yesterday, and one is five months old) are staying with us, and the days are a noisy, happy chaos that leaves a bloke […]
I’m writing to acknowledge the sorry state of this blog of late. I keep thinking I’m going to snap out of this slump and start writing regularly again, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening. It’s partly that I’m getting on a bit (though I’m only sixty-six, and can easily manage my daily mile […]