December 23, 2007 – 6:38 pm
Well, today is the first full day of winter, so it’s time for some spiritually uplifting and seasonally appropriate material. Have a look here.
December 21, 2007 – 11:40 pm
I’ve mentioned the website Edge.org on several occasions; it is a fascinating place, an online salon where some of the world’s brightest minds exchange ideas — and occasionally “cross hands”, as we say in the martial-arts racket. In its most recent newsletter, its founder, John Brockman offers us the site’s annual recommended-reading list, and laments […]
December 19, 2007 – 11:50 pm
One of the pitfalls of airing one’s thoughts in public on a daily basis is that one’s thoughts vary in quality, and some are better left unexpressed. I wrote a post a few days ago about falsifiability and theism that was a pretty poor piece of work, and so I have taken it down. Apologies […]
December 17, 2007 – 12:21 am
The city government here in Gotham has been wringing its hands for some time now about how to reduce traffic congestion, which is indeed very bad. The suggestions that have been aired so far have generally taken the form of small-bore monetary disincentives: a fee for driving below 96th street during the week, tolls on […]
December 13, 2007 – 12:52 am
After eleven hours in the office (and an hour each way to get there and back), I’m simply too depleted tonight, dear readers, to whip up a new tub of froth. But there’s no need to look so glum, because I still have a little treat for you all. As it happens, my old friend […]
November 25, 2007 – 12:49 am
About two weeks ago, I posted a little item called The Teflon God, about the highly evolved and adaptive unfalsifiability of religious “memeplexes”, in response to an item by William Vallicella. My post attracted the notice of Dennis Mangan, proprietor of Mangan’s Miscellany, and he commented on it in a post of his own, which […]
November 22, 2007 – 1:45 pm
I’m too busy with the delightful chores of feast-preparation to write at length, so I just wanted to extend warmest wishes to all of you. High on the long list of things I have to be thankful for is the community of new friends I have met here at waka waka waka.
November 17, 2007 – 3:20 am
One of the men I admire most — a genuine intellectual hero — is the coruscatingly brilliant (and untimely departed) physicist Richard Feynman (he was from Brooklyn, of course). Here he is.
November 16, 2007 – 6:41 am
I’m in San Marcos, San Diego County, California, for a couple of days, visiting my father. After a two-hour weather delay at JFK, another 50 minutes queued up on the runway waiting to take off, a six-hour flight, a fifteen-minute wait at LAX for an avaliable gate, a twenty-minute wait for luggage, and an hour […]
November 2, 2007 – 10:10 pm
We’re up at our little retreat on the far end of Cape Cod tonight, awaiting the arrival of the former Hurricane Noel, which is supposed to give these parts a pretty good thumping over the next 24 hours or so. I’m glad to be here for the storm — not only because I enjoy dramatic […]
October 25, 2007 – 10:54 pm
It’s late, and I haven’t had time to prepare anything for this evening, so for now I invite you all to go and read two interesting posts over at Kevin Kim’s place. The first is his reaction to the D’Souza – Hitchens debate, and the second is an item about Hugh Everett’s “Many Worlds Interpretation” […]
October 17, 2007 – 12:30 am
I took a stroll through town this evening after work: from Grand Central down to the Lower East Side, with a stop at Pete’s Tavern to have a drink with a friend. The night air was enjoyable, and it was good to stir my bones after sitting at my desk in the office all day. […]
October 7, 2007 – 12:30 am
I’m sorry to have been off the air yesterday; it’s been a busy couple of days.
October 2, 2007 – 2:57 pm
The latest NASA newsletter contained an unusual item: it’s a video clip of Comet Encke (looking for all the world like a plucky little spermatozoon), which, having passed too close to the Sun, has its tail ripped off by a “coronal mass ejection”. Have a look here.
September 29, 2007 – 10:48 pm
I expect things to settle down a bit as of tomorrow, but writing at any length requires, for me at least, quiet time alone, which has been in short supply all week. So for tonight, I find myself reduced not just to “meta-blogging”, which is simply pointing readers to the work done by others, but […]
September 21, 2007 – 11:09 am
Further wisdom from the Sage of Baltimore.
September 14, 2007 – 11:07 pm
It startles me how differently people can see things. We all like to flatter ourselves that our opinions are guided by naught but sweet reason, but we overlook that reasoning is in general terms simply a manufacturing process, and like all such processes its output depends sensitively upon its input. That input, however, depends in […]
September 7, 2007 – 12:20 am
I am not, nor have I ever been, a “morning person”. I enjoy the peace and solitude of the nighttime; it’s my only opportunity to think long, slow thoughts without interruption.
September 5, 2007 – 1:45 pm
From Reuters, by way of our friend Jess Kaplan, comes a reassuring item about airline safety. Have a look here.
September 2, 2007 – 10:52 pm
In Kevin Kim’s excellent book Water from a Skull (which I will be commenting on in greater detail as time permits — meanwhile, follow this link and buy a copy), he quotes Mark Salzman’s book Iron and Silk, in which kung fu master Pan Qingfu says “live each moment as if it were your last.” […]
September 1, 2007 – 10:02 pm
I realize, to use an apt metaphor, that when it comes to sports reporting lately here at waka waka waka, we’ve dropped the ball. Sure, we’ve covered some important events from time to time (see here, here, and even here), but when the deadline arrives each day, we usually find ourselves running other material: a […]
September 1, 2007 – 12:46 am
It’s been a long day of work and travel, so we won’t be going to press tonight. However, please join all of us here at waka waka waka in wishing our friend Kevin Kim a very happy 38th birthday!
August 30, 2007 – 11:07 pm
Labor Day weekend is here, and while a lot of folks are moping about summer coming to an end, you won’t hear any griping from me. Just as the advancing weeks of May and June fill me with a gathering dread each year as the heat and fetor approach, when I get to the end […]
August 7, 2007 – 10:42 am
Kevin Kim, in today’s edition, outlines the typical career arc of a successful stand-up comic, from early aspirations at the microphone to washed-up Hollywood star. After spending many years doing freelance recording for the music-for-hire houses here in New York, I can offer a similar timeline, The Life of a Jingle Singer. Let’s say his […]
August 5, 2007 – 11:54 pm
Here, from the journal Foreign Affairs, is Barack Obama’s obligatory term paper on foreign policy. (Thanks to my friend Jess Kaplan for sending the link our way.) Though the paper deals mostly in generalities, its tone is encouraging, and although I doubt Obama will get the Democratic nod next year, I was pleasantly surprised to […]
Readers will recall that the bloated Bible-beater Jerry Falwell died a little while back; here’s a related item I ran across earlier today. It’s a video clip of Christopher Hitchens offering, to CNN’s ubiquitous Anderson Cooper, a post-mortem opinion of the porcine preacher (whom Hitchens refers to, at one point, as a “Chaucerian fraud”). See […]
We have learned today that Chief Justice John Roberts, while vacationing in Maine, was stricken by an “idiopathic” seizure, and taken to the hospital. This case is not without precedent, as apparently he suffered a similar episode some years ago, but at a robust 52, he seems the very picture of health. Or, to put […]
A recent post on the cold-blooded murder of a Korean hostage by the Taliban drew a great deal of commentary. We’re on the road today, but having a free moment and online access, I thought I’d re-examine the original post in the light of some of the criticism it has received.
We will be away from the waka waka waka command center from Friday afternoon until Sunday or Monday, with no guarantees of having either Internet access or anything worthwhile to say. We’ll be back in harness as soon as possible, but meanwhile please do browse our richly diverting archives, and be sure to visit the […]
As it happens, your humble correspondent was approached on the street by a Washington Post reporter yesterday, an affable young fellow who asked for an opinion about Wednesday’s events. I did offer a few observations, which found their way, with some looseness as to accuracy and context, into today’s edition.
Well, after all the excitement in midtown yesterday, things are mostly back to normal, save for a few “frozen” blocks right around the site of the explosion (including, sadly, all of the places I usually go for lunch). We all know that one of these days we’re in for the real thing again, but this […]
I can see why living in New York City isn’t for everyone, and today was a good example. If nothing else, the weather, as is so often the case around here this time of year, was awful. Gotham is currently straddling a stalled frontal boundary, and with customary perversity we are just on the warm […]
Here’s a stunning headline, from the Toronto Star: Toronto’s Population Ages What were they expecting?
Given recent comments and emails, I should probably clarify my thoughts about religion’s place in the world. Though I have written rather disapprovingly on the topic lately, and although I do indeed think that religion is, and has been, an enormous retrograde influence on civilization’s progress (some lovely music and architecture notwithstanding), and an inexhaustible […]
In a post a while back I explained why I don’t own an iPod or similar such gadget, the main reason being that I don’t enjoy the acoustic isolation they impose. Well, it turns out that there’s another reason you might want to doff those ear goggles from time to time; learn more here.
We seem to have been delivered, however briefly, from the suffocating heat and humidity that have tormented us for the past few days. During the afternoon a robust frontal boundary made its way Gothamward across the Keystone and Garden States, and at about 5:30 or so the sky turned as black as an old bruise, […]
Alright, so much for “Back in Black”. Thanks to those who contacted me to tell me how much they disliked that new theme; I’ll find something else.
I was tired of the old look. What do you think? [Note: I had experimented with another visual theme, but nobody liked it, and I soon reverted. So this post might make little sense now.]
Well, after such a plangent cri de coeur, it’s time to lighten up a little; one thing I always find amusing is to have a look at the search keyphrases that have brought folks here. Here’s a sampling of the current year’s crop:
We had a real treat Thursday night: the Celebrate Brooklyn outdoor-concert series presented a performance by the Richard Thompson Band at the Prospect Park Bandshell. If you aren’t familiar with Richard Thompson, you should be: since his early days as a member of Fairport Convention back in the 60’s, he has been regarded as one […]
While poking around at Andrew Staroscik’s brand-new biology weblog Mixotrophy, I found a link to a remarkable presentation, by one Blaise Aguera y Arcas, from this year’s TED Conference. He is describing a new image-display technology called Seadragon, which is in turn the engine that powers a new system, Photosynth, that programmatically assembles tagged photos […]
We don’t often offer video selections in this space two days running, but time, unfortunately, does not permit a lengthy post today. So here is a remarkable glimpse of the vicissitudes of life on the veldt, featuring a herd of Cape buffaloes, a hunting party of lionesses, and even a crocodile or two. Place your […]
The late Victorian era was a time of smug certainty in the scientific world. The Darwinian revolution had the God of the Gaps on the run, technological innovation was accelerating briskly, and the great intellectual cataclysms of the 20th century — relativity, quantum mechanics, and GÁ¶del’s theorem, foremost among many — were still nothing more […]
Among the books and periodicals I have hoarded here at home are quite a few old issues of National Geographic: I’ve been a subscriber since the early 80’s, and don’t throw them away. I’ll often pull out an old copy in an idle moment, and yesterday I was looking at one from December 1988. The […]
Today I drove my son Nick up to Becket, MA, in the heart of the Berkshires, where he will be spending the summer as a counselor at Camp Becket, a healthy and wholesome place if ever there was one. This morning my car was parked several blocks from my home, and as I was walking […]
One of the warmer and more persistent disagreements between liberal and conservative viewpoints in recent years has been over the commingling of religion with politics. We hear a steady drumbeat from the Left alleging that the Bush cadre is trying to turn the USA into a “theocracy”, and in academic circles, where the prevailing attitude […]
We are back from San Francisco, having enjoyed ourselves immensely. We stayed at the highly recommended Huntington Hotel, on the Matterhorn-like eminence known as Nob Hill, with a delightful view northward over the Bay from the 10th floor. We dined at a succession of splendid restaurants (in particular I recommend Venticello and Rue Lepic), and […]
We will be gone for a few days: my lovely and patient wife Nina and I are off to San Francisco to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. I may have a moment here and there to write, but quite possibly not. We’ll be back at the beginning of next week, but meanwhile, please browse our […]
We call your attention to a recent addition to our sidebar: Duff and Nonsense, a website maintained by one David Duff, who lives and writes, I believe, in Ireland. Mr. Duff has commented on some recent posts here at waka waka waka, and upon following the links back to his own site, I spent a […]
Well, it’s begun again: the annual descent into Hell that is summer in Gotham. Today got up to around 90°, with life-threatening humidity, and a pitiless white sky. These are, of course, optimal conditions for moving furniture up and down several flights of stairs, which was how I spent much of the afternoon, as my […]