October 2, 2020 – 3:30 pm
Sorry to have been so neglectful here. I’m recovering normally, but am still supposed to keep use of my right arm to a minimum for another week or two, and am living in a sling. Typing is slow and uncomfortable. Meanwhile the lovely Nina had surgery yesterday to remove a basal-cell carcinoma from the bridge […]
September 13, 2020 – 12:00 pm
Shoulder surgery tomorrow, 9/14. I’m glad to be getting it done, but my right arm’s going to be in a sling for six weeks, so it’s going to be hard to write. Back when I can. Update, typed with left hand only, Monday 7 pm: All done. Supine and resting at home, generously medicated and […]
August 30, 2020 – 10:56 am
Essential reading: Michael Anton explains, more persuasively than I’ve read anywhere else, why we must have a Trump win in 2020. You may not fully understand the scope of the calamity that awaits us if the Democrats consolidate their power; read his essay and you will. Here.
August 19, 2020 – 7:11 pm
Our August hiatus continues. I’m a little hampered by the painful shoulder (broke a toe yesterday as well), and there have been the usual distractions of this late-summer season. (There’s a lot going on in the world, as always, but I’m taking a little break.) What time I’ve had for writing I’ve been using to […]
August 10, 2020 – 12:33 pm
Sorry, readers, for the quiet around here. (August is always a bit of a hiatus for the blog.) I’ve been back and forth to NYC to get the shoulder looked at (will head back for surgery in a few weeks), and have been distracted in other ways as well. I’ve also been working on some […]
August 3, 2020 – 11:43 am
Off to NYC for a couple of days to have the shoulder looked at. Back soon. Update, 8/4: Surgery it is; seems I tore it up as badly as I had feared. September, most likely.
You may have noticed an uptick in mobs surrounding drivers in their cars, and an increasing willingness in drivers thus imperiled simply to step on the gas. “What shall we call this?” wondered someone on Twitter. The answer, of course, is obvious: Accelerationism.
Sorry (again) that it’s been so quiet here. I’ve been nursing this shoulder injury — due to insurance-coverage issues I’ve had trouble getting an MRI, and will end up traveling from Wellfleet to Connecticut next week to get it done — and although it’s been getting a little better, it’s still been uncomfortable to type. […]
Slipped on a puddle in the kitchen last night, caught my right elbow on the counter as I was falling, and tore my right shoulder to pieces. Back from the ER at Cape Cod Hospital — lovely people there! — but will need MRI and orthopaedic consultation. Judging by the tearing and crunching sounds as […]
Sorry it’s been so slow around here — summer doldrums, mostly, and lack of anything interesting to say. (We also have our son Nick, whom we haven’t seen for months due to the Wuhan Red Death, paying us a brief visit.) Should be back with something soon. Thanks all for coming by, and please feel […]
Haven’t looked at the news much for a week or so. Did I miss anything?
From John Hirschauer at National Review: “More Men Die, But Women Bear The Brunt“.
Here’s a sharp little item on the miscalculation of risk.
The apt metaphor, I think, for what we have done to ourselves in response to this virus is the tourniquet. Leave it on too long and gangrene sets in. You can watch your own body begin to die and rot and stink. “Ah, but it’s just a limb,” you say. “It’s worth losing a limb […]
It’s Mothers’ Day. Here was mine. I miss her.
Longtime readers will have noticed the lack of substantial content here recently – just little odds and ends, mostly. It’s mostly the Groundhog-Day monotony of this new life: the days, and the news they bring, never vary much. There is very little vitality or energy in the air, or on the air — just the […]
Here’s the question that interviewers should be putting to governors: “If, in normal times, you were to announce as a matter of executive fiat that people must close their businesses, could not assemble in groups over a certain size, and must stay home except for travel you deem essential, it would seem an absurdity. People […]
In times of crisis, it’s important to do what we can. One of the ways good citizens have responded to our current health emergency has been by sewing their own protective face-masks. Given that many of you, I’m sure, would find it easier to shove a camel through the eye of a needle than to […]
April 13, 2020 – 11:57 am
When I get older, losing my hair Many years from now… Or, as it happens, today. My, how time does fly when you’re having fun. As always: natal salutations to Guy Fawkes, Thomas Jefferson, F.W. Woolworth, James Ensor, Butch Cassidy, Sir Arthur “Bomber’ Harris, Robert Watson-Watt, Samuel Beckett, Harold Stassen, Stanislaw Ulam, Eudora Welty, Howard […]
Just to remind you, readers, as you contemplate the millenarian tableau unfolding before us: yes, there is also a comet. (Of course.)
In response to Friday’s post about the different emotional reactions of Democrats and Republicans to the Wuhan-virus pandemic, our longtime commenter, the indefatigable JK, posted a link to a thoughtful essay on the topic. I though it worth promoting to a post of its own, so here it is.
March 27, 2020 – 12:23 pm
Make of this what you will:
Here’s a brief video from an infectious-disease specialist. Well worth watching.
Having survived our trip to Charleston (a beautiful place, as we expected), we are now hunkered down in the remote precincts of our little peninsula in the North Atlantic. Self-isolation comes naturally to me. Confining myself to the basement music studio, a comfy chair with a book to read, and contemplative hikes in the nearby […]
March 11, 2020 – 12:00 pm
The lovely Nina and I are off to Charleston, SC for a few days. (We’d heard it’s nice, so we thought we’d go and see for ourselves.) Back next week.
Och aye. (Full screen recommended.)
I haven’t commented much on this Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. Clearly it is a serious issue, but it is just as clear that it is being whipped up as much as possible by our domestic media to create fear and chaos, in the interest of hanging a millstone around Donald Trump’s neck. When the swine flu […]
February 29, 2020 – 10:05 pm
We must note the passing of Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest minds of our era. He died yesterday, at 96, after a fall. Read about the life of this extraordinary man here.
February 14, 2020 – 11:22 pm
I’ll ask your forgiveness once again for the lack of substantial posts here over the past few weeks. Regarding the political scene, I’m finding it awfully difficult right at the moment to summon up the will to comment on any of it — not that there isn’t plenty I could say, but at this point […]
February 11, 2020 – 10:21 pm
There are times when it seems more important to me to read and think than to write, and these past weeks have been one of those times. I do apologize to those of you who come by here regularly, and I promise that these lulls are always temporary. But I hate to send you away […]
February 3, 2020 – 5:03 pm
I was shocked and saddened just now to learn that Rush Limbaugh has been diagnosed with “advanced” lung cancer. Mr. Limbaugh, a brilliant analyst of the American political scene, has most importantly been, for decades now, a vital brake (to the extent that such a thing is possible) on the entropic forces of the American […]
January 31, 2020 – 9:21 pm
The Senate has voted to shut down the Democrats’ impeachment stunt, and the U.K. has officially left the E.U. It’s nice to see things work out now and then.
January 26, 2020 – 1:07 pm
I’ve been a little preoccupied this week with family matters and other offline distractions. Back soon.
January 13, 2020 – 4:51 pm
As they all said, in bone-chilling unison: this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
January 12, 2020 – 1:50 pm
It was with terrible sadness that I learned today that Sir Roger Scruton has fallen from the ramparts at age 75. He was a man of incomparable culture, erudition, discrimination, and integrity. Not only has Western civilization lost one of its greatest defenders; it is also as if a magnificent library has just been burnt […]
January 5, 2020 – 11:45 pm
I hate awards shows, and never watch them (full disclosure, though: when I was nominated for an engineering Grammy in 2004, I did go) — but I rather have to hand it to Ricky Gervais for tonight’s monologue at the Golden Globes, which was splashed at once all over social media. You can watch it […]
January 1, 2020 – 12:37 pm
Buckle up, everybody – I have a feeling 2020 is going to be an eventful year. “Interesting”, even.
December 28, 2019 – 9:33 am
Taking a little holiday break. Back soon.
December 12, 2019 – 10:10 pm
Outstanding news: it looks like the Right has won a major victory in Britain’s national elections today.
November 29, 2019 – 8:50 pm
I’ve been thinking some more about the Curtis Yarvin essay we looked at a couple of days ago. There were good comments on the previous post. A couple of readers pointed out that, despite Mr. Yarvin’s assertion of the scarcity of sociopaths in the general population, many political systems (and in particular ours, I think) […]
November 28, 2019 – 11:42 am
We all have a lot to be thankful for, even in these uncertain times (and when were the times ever not uncertain?). I’m grateful to all of you for reading and commenting. Enjoy this special day — my favorite holiday of the year.
November 24, 2019 – 8:43 pm
Sorry for the thin content here lately. Now and then I just don’t have much to say: I’ve written 5,030 posts over the past 14 years, and sometimes I feel as if anything I’d write would, at this point, just be repeating myself. (And then the muse grants me her favor once again, and I’m […]
November 12, 2019 – 8:42 pm
I’m back in Wellfleet, after an interesting weekend in Baltimore. It’s snowing here — on November 12th. The temperature is supposed to drop well down into the twenties overnight. I have a feeling, on no particular authority, that it’s going to be a long, cold winter.
November 7, 2019 – 10:40 pm
I’ll be in Baltimore this weekend at the annual conference of the H. L. Mencken Club, and driving back to Cape Cod on Monday. Should get back to business here after that.
October 17, 2019 – 12:26 pm
The lovely Nina and I are “stateside” once more after a two-week visit with our daughter’s young family in Vienna. It was wonderful to see them — in particular, to be with our three-year-old and ten-month-old grandsons Liam and Declan gives us great happiness — but as someone once said, the best part of traveling […]
October 2, 2019 – 1:49 pm
The lovely Nina and I are on the road again: back to Vienna to visit our daughter and the wee bairns, and to celebrate Nina’s birthday (it’s one of those “big ones”). We’ll back in about two weeks, though I may post a thing or two from abroad. Please feel free to browse our vast […]
September 28, 2019 – 10:57 pm
Curtis Yarvin, alias ‘Mencius Moldbug’, seems to be getting back in the game. He discontinued his enormously influential blog Unqualified Reservations years ago (it has now been archived and reorganized here, minus the comment-threads), and seemed for a while to have tried to keep his head down, concentrating on his (apparently quite successful) computer-science career. […]
September 11, 2019 – 2:38 pm
I see that the Kakistocracy blog, which Bill Vallicella had linked to just yesterday, is gone. That’s bad: the author, Porter (who used to comment here occasionally), had exceptional sharpness of mind, wit, and pen. Porter, if you should see this: what happened? Drop me a line.
September 10, 2019 – 8:31 pm
I’m back from my annual musical get-together on Star Island, but am in no shape for writing just yet. It was a fantastic weekend — we spent the days working out the more difficult material, and hosted performances/parties for all the other guests on the island every night into the wee hours — but after […]