November 26, 2010 – 5:07 pm
A little while back we posted an item about the purpose of the sophisticated “Stuxnet” computer virus, which appears to have been aimed at Iran’s nuclear program. Everybody agrees it was one hell of a piece of work. Now, here’s an update on how it did what it did. This is some serious programming, folks. […]
November 25, 2010 – 11:33 am
To all. And my thanks to you, readers.
November 23, 2010 – 8:18 pm
I’m working late again tonight, and haven’t had the time to write anything interesting, or to work on any of the longer posts I’ve been gestating. So here’s some truly shameless filler.
November 20, 2010 – 2:51 pm
The lovely Nina and I are recuperating in the Outer Cape for the weekend, so there’ll be none of the usual long-winded bloviation here for now. Instead, here’s an enjoyable diversion, featuring an extraordinary young Scotsman and some lovely footage of my ancestral homeland.
November 16, 2010 – 6:15 pm
It appears that the linked video in our recent post Is This A Great Civilization, Or What? wasn’t working for some readers. I’ve since found it on YouTube, and updated the link.
November 7, 2010 – 10:17 pm
I’ve twice mentioned my mother-in-law, Lily Renée Phillips, in these pages — first here, a few years back, and then again just a few months ago, when an article about her appeared in Newsweek. Now, fittingly, she has herself appeared in a panel of a syndicated comic strip, which was found and sent our way […]
November 2, 2010 – 9:33 pm
Ah, Election Night at last! The wigs are accumulating on the green even as I write. It will be some time before the casualty count is tallied, however — so for tonight, we need a little diversion, with an appropriately conservative theme. I’ve found just the thing, from the fertile pen of John Derbyshire, who, […]
October 28, 2010 – 4:46 pm
Here’s an amusing distraction: someone has noticed, in a clip from Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 movie The Circus, what appears to be a woman talking on a cell phone. Less amusing, for those of us of a certain age: that the newswoman relating the story seems not to know who “Charlie Chapman” is. Here.
October 27, 2010 – 8:06 pm
We’ve been hearing for quite some time now that the stupendous haymaker awaiting the Democrats next week has nothing to do with amply justified outrage over their policies, tactics, and sneering unconcern for public opinion and the consent of the governed, but is simply the unfortunate result of how difficult it has been for them […]
October 24, 2010 – 8:56 pm
Not much to comment on tonight. The top story appears to be that Tony Blair’s sister-in-law, in what must surely be an irritating development for the former P.M., has made an ostentatious conversion to Islam. (This woman, whose name is Lauren Booth, has been a burr under Mr. Blair’s saddle for some time now. Meanwhile, […]
October 20, 2010 – 9:55 pm
I’ve long argued that we ought to legalize marijuana — for several very good reasons, each of which would, I think, be compelling in its own right. First of all, legalization would be a heavy, if not mortal, blow to the black-market economy that supports the drug gangs that have made Mexico an earthly hell […]
October 12, 2010 – 9:57 pm
Satoshi Kanazawa, writing at Psychology Today, discusses an interesting scientific finding, namely that intelligent people drink more alcohol. Over at Mangan’s today there is an engaging discussion about his essay. Dennis’s commenter Pat Hannagan takes issue with Kanazawa’s assumption about the correct order of precedence as regards beer-making and agriculture: Kanazawa says: The production of […]
October 2, 2010 – 10:38 pm
It’s been a busy couple of days, and I haven’t had much of the solitary time that brooding and writing requires. Today, for example, we spent gallivanting around the city, and at one point we found ourselves harborside in the out-of-the way Brooklyn neighborhood known as Red Hook. The weather was splendid, and we took […]
September 27, 2010 – 11:16 pm
Poking around in the news this evening, I saw that UFOlogist Robert Hastings had held a news conference today with a number of retired Air Force servicemen. The panel claimed, in no uncertain terms, that they had had first-hand close encounters with strange flying machines at various nuclear-weapons sites, that they had been ordered to […]
September 25, 2010 – 11:58 pm
We’ve been off the air for a couple of days, due to workplace emergencies and, last night, a concert by the British prog-rock band Porcupine Tree at Radio City Music Hall. The concert was fabulous: the band were in mid-season form, and Gavin Harrison’s mind-boggling performance was worth the price of admission all by itself. […]
September 18, 2010 – 1:02 pm
Making the rounds yesterday was a video clip of some of the most astonishing flying I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even know things like this were possible. The accompanying email offered the following information: This is all real and there is no trick photography. Not only is the airplane unbelievable but the pilot is also […]
September 16, 2010 – 11:32 pm
We’ve just had some very violent weather here in Brooklyn and other parts of Gotham. It all happened in the space of a few minutes, late this afternoon. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Many, many trees are down, cars smashed, etc., and I believe at least one person was killed. There are photographs […]
September 12, 2010 – 11:51 am
Thanks to Kevin Kim for pointing out an HTML problem with last night’s post: the WordPress engine didn’t like some empty ‘div’ tags I had sprinkled in to add space at the bottom, and had completely mangled the website. I had published the post, taken only the most cursory glance, switched off the computer, and […]
September 10, 2010 – 9:38 pm
You may have heard about the recent rescue of the Magellan Star from pirates in the waters off Yemen. Here, if you’re interested, are the details, by way of Information Dissemination and our indefatigable sources.
September 8, 2010 – 11:20 pm
It’s always rather a jolt getting back to Gotham after a long absence. Autumn is, as the old song reminds us, a fine time to be in New York, but I must say the adjustment was especially jarring this time around, and today the place seemed noisier, dirtier, and more chaotic than ever. Sirens wailed. […]
September 7, 2010 – 10:23 pm
We’re back from our August break, and after some catching-up, should be getting back to normal operations around here. (Gotham, I must say, seems a very crowded and messy place. I just can’t wait to ride the subway tomorrow morning; I’ve hardly even worn shoes for almost a month.) Speaking of shoes: some time ago […]
September 4, 2010 – 12:19 pm
Well, we made it. Having dropped four-and-a-half inches of rain into the lobster pot I left out on the deck, Earl, hurtling northeast into oblivion, is now watering the meadows and forests of the Canadian Maritimes. In its wake, the weather today in the Outer Cape is splendid: clear, dry, breezy and cool, and everyone […]
August 30, 2010 – 12:29 pm
We are still “off the grid” on the Outer Cape, paying the least possible attention to events in the news, and switching on our electronic gadgets as infrequently as possible. (If Hurricane Earl pays us a visit this weekend, we likely won’t be switching them on at all.) It all comes to an end sometime […]
August 27, 2010 – 12:30 am
I’ve been too busy relaxing to have any time for writing, so for tonight here’s another interesting item for you to watch: Philip Zimbardo on The Secret Powers of Time.
August 24, 2010 – 11:01 pm
For tonight, two videos. The first shows you the state of the art of autonomous walking robots; I think you’ll agree that they are coming along nicely. The second is a live-in-the-studio performance by the Fab Faux. If you haven’t heard of them, they are five of New York’s top session players (including the ubiquitous […]
August 22, 2010 – 10:10 pm
We’ll be on a reduced schedule here until a day or two after Labor Day. I’m sure the world will still be going to hell, but I’m not going to pay any attention for a couple of weeks, and will only be posting sporadically, if at all. As always, please feel free to browse our […]
August 20, 2010 – 8:53 pm
Last January, we remarked on some odd doings in the sky over Norway. The Pakistan Times did too. Well, now the sky over Pakistan itself has been acting up a bit, and the PT sees a pattern emerging. Here.
August 16, 2010 – 11:22 pm
As Christopher Hitchens publicly stares death in the face, Bill Vallicella offers an excellent meditation on the man, on men such as he, and on mortality. Hitchens will live on, in some sense, in his writing, but as Bill points out, that is cold comfort. Woody Allen summed it up: “I don’t want to achieve […]
August 14, 2010 – 8:17 pm
We’re in Wellfleet for a few weeks. Yesterday was a beautiful day out here — not too hot, with low humidity and a cloudless sky, an indescribably welcome relief from the sweltering summer we’ve had in New York City. By ten or eleven in the evening the temperature was down in the lower sixties, and […]
August 13, 2010 – 8:48 pm
Here is the latest dispatch from Christopher Hitchens, who, as I’m sure you know by now, is up against metastatic esophageal cancer.
August 11, 2010 – 10:14 pm
I’ve been awfully busy the past couple of days, and haven’t had much time for writing. (If all goes well, however, I won’t have to be a wage-slave much longer: I’m working on a brand-new idea that’s sure to be a gold mine. It’s a social-networking site for gay Christians; I’m going to call it […]
As I expect you already know, Christopher Hitchens is battling esophageal cancer — a fight that very few people win. He recently gave an interview to Anderson Cooper. Watch it here.
August 5, 2010 – 10:25 pm
This has been a historically brutal summer here in New York; July was the second-hottest on record, missing top honors by a mere fraction of a degree. Stoical Scot that I am, I haven’t complained much in these pages, but I have lived at the edge of despair for weeks now, and several times recently […]
The other day I read an article about an extraordinarily gifted seven-year-old painter. Prodigies come and go, and often don’t live up to their early promise, but I have to say this young lad — Keiron Williamson, of Norfolk, England — is just astonishingly talented. See for yourself, below.
August 1, 2010 – 10:39 pm
We are drinking more lately, it seems. (I’ve been doing my part, but certainly can’t take all the credit.) It’s not hard to understand why, with the shape things are in (I will spare you an enumeration of all the things that are wrong with the US and the world just now; it’s late, and […]
A few years ago I wrote a brief item about my mother-in-law, Lily, who is really rather an extraordinary woman. There is now an article about her in Newsweek. Here.
I’ve written before about the A-10 Thunderbolt (AKA “Warthog), the nastiest aircraft ever built. Sure, others may fly higher, or faster, or do a lot of high-tech parlor tricks — but when it comes to sheer pugnaciousness, this snarling airborne Rottweiler is in a class by itself. Here’s another look.
How they made the bed rock in Bedrock.
In a heartening development, the lower house of France’s parliament has voted 335 to 1 to ban the burqa. The measure, which is overwhelmingly supported by the French people, will go to the Senat in September. Reaction was swift, and predictable. “A complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to […]
Reader JK calls our attention to a post over at InfoDiss: an animated rendering of nuclear detonations around the world from 1945 to 1998. It’s 14 minutes long, and very simply done, but I couldn’t pull away. Here.
We’re back in Gotham, where, as it does every July (though somewhat tardily last year), the Hell-mouth has opened once again. It will be about 100° tomorrow, with suffocating, hope-crushing humidity. As always, I have begun to panic, to despair, to long to sleep at last in the cold, cold ground. That said, it was […]
We’re sequestered in Wellfleet, taking a breather for the holiday weekend. Things will probably be quiet in this space till sometime early next week, though you never know. As usual — thanks as always for visiting, and feel free to give our “View a Random Post” link a try.
I am startled, and terribly sorry, to hear that Christopher Hitchens appears to have esophageal cancer. Story here.
Which way is she spinning? Are you able to get yourself to see her going the other way? This thing drives me crazy. Sometimes I can reverse it at will, other times it seems quite impossible. Forgive me if you’ve seen it before; it’s been around for a while. I just ran into it again, […]
What will become of Stanley McChrystal now that he has been relieved of his command? How did this sort of thing play out in a different era? Here are a few thoughts on the matter, courtesy of the Churchill Centre. [This item filed under category “General”, of course.]
Kevin Kim continues his discussion of theodicy, here and here.
I’ll confess I’ve always had a soft spot for the A-10 Thunderbolt. Slow and ugly, loud as hell — they’re about as far from “stealthy” as a 747. But they are the last thing you want to see coming at you on the battlefield, because in just about every case “the last thing you’ll see” […]
Having got fed up with official press releases, oleaginous presidential puffery, and melodramatic news items, I decided to do a little spadework to find out what the experts are saying about this leaking oil well. I’ve found out, and it isn’t pretty. What I came across was an fantastically long and detailed comment, fairly bristling […]
I hate to pile on, but I just had to post this. It’s a 2007 clip of Nobelist Steven Chu (now Energy Secretary), speaking, um, gushingly, about how he and BP were going to “save the world”.