Ed Koch, 1924-2013

February 1, 2013 – 12:53 pm

Ed Koch died today. He was a good mayor (not perfect, but who is?), a hell of a character, and a real New Yorker. We Gothamites will miss him.

R.I.P., Ed. You did just fine.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Machines Making Machines

January 31, 2013 – 12:13 am

This is fantastic: Japanese robots making German cars.

Hat tip: William Gibson.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

It Can Happen Here

January 30, 2013 – 11:19 pm

Here’s a timely quote from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, in which he describes the same liability that so vexed the Founders:

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Isn’t It Romantic?

January 28, 2013 – 6:13 pm

More on why women in combat units is a really bad idea. Will somebody remind me again why this is necessary?

(HT- Laura Wood.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Military | Comments (2)

Competition For Excrement Is Fierce

January 28, 2013 – 12:38 pm

If you’re like me (of course you are!), you’ve been lying awake at night, asking yourself:

“How the hell do South African dung beetles roll their balls in a straight line? Sure, polarized light from the Sun works fine during the day (duh!), but what about at night, when many of them do their best work?”

Well, fret no longer. The answer is here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Science, Curiosities | Comments (3)

Uff Da!

January 28, 2013 – 12:11 pm

The latest global-warming story from the Research Council of Norway: things aren’t as bad, perhaps, as Mr. Gore, IPCC, and the rest of the AGW syndicate might have you believe.

Excerpt:

After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise.

Didn’t Lord Monckton just get frog-marched out of a climate conference for pointing this out? Whoops…

A number of factors affect the formation of climate development. The complexity of the climate system is further compounded by a phenomenon known as feedback mechanisms, i.e. how factors such as clouds, evaporation, snow and ice mutually affect one another.

Uncertainties about the overall results of feedback mechanisms make it very difficult to predict just how much of the rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature is due to manmade emissions.

Uncertainties! Complexity! “Difficult to predict”!! Who knew??

Jeez, you could knock me down with a feather.

More:

Professor [Terje] Berntsen explains the changed predictions:

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.

“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system ”“ changes that can occur over several decades ”“ and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now.

Crikey — “natural variations”! Whoever could have imagined such a thing? (Well, that is, aside from those detested kuffar who’ve insisted on pointing out that the Earth has gone through many cycles of warming and cooling in the distant past, long before we arrived on the scene.)

Boy, if this keeps up, we might even have to cancel that whole subjugate-the-world’s-economy thing we’ve all been looking forward to, dang it.

More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Global Warming | Comments (0)

Stairway To Hell

January 27, 2013 – 1:15 pm

In case you haven’t been paying attention, a major Egyptian city has descended into anarchy and violent chaos. I’ve no time for commentary, but you can read about it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

Epochs Sometimes Occur

January 27, 2013 – 12:39 am

More from Tocqueville’s Democracy In America:

There is one sort of patriotic attachment which principally arises from that instinctive, disinterested, and undefinable feeling which connects the affections of man with his birthplace. This natural fondness is united to a taste for ancient customs, and to a reverence for ancestral traditions of the past; those who cherish it love their country as they love the mansions of their fathers. They enjoy the tranquillity which it affords them; they cling to the peaceful habits which they have contracted within its bosom; they are attached to the reminiscences which it awakens, and they are even pleased by the state of obedience in which they are placed. This patriotism is sometimes stimulated by religious enthusiasm, and then it is capable of making the most prodigious efforts. It is in itself a kind of religion; it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and of sentiment.

…But there is another species of attachment to a country which is more rational than the one we have been describing. It is perhaps less generous and less ardent, but it is more fruitful and more lasting; it is coeval with the spread of knowledge, it is nurtured by the laws, it grows by the exercise of civil rights, and, in the end, it is confounded with the personal interest of the citizen. A man comprehends the influence which the prosperity of his country has upon his own welfare; he is aware that the laws authorize him to contribute his assistance to that prosperity, and he labors to promote it as a portion of his interest in the first place, and as a portion of his right in the second.

But epochs sometimes occur, in the course of the existence of a nation, at which the ancient customs of a people are changed, public morality destroyed, religious belief disturbed, and the spell of tradition broken, whilst the diffusion of knowledge is yet imperfect, and the civil rights of the community are ill secured, or confined within very narrow limits. The country then assumes a dim and dubious shape in the eyes of the citizens; they no longer behold it in the soil which they inhabit, for that soil is to them a dull inanimate clod; nor in the usages of their forefathers, which they have been taught to look upon as a debasing yoke; nor in religion, for of that they doubt; nor in the laws, which do not originate in their own authority; nor in the legislator, whom they fear and despise.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (0)

Gotcha!

January 25, 2013 – 11:29 pm

Remember those “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board that President Obama went ahead and made last January, when the Senate wasn’t in recess? The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today ruled them unconstitutional. The Obama administration seems inclined to ignore the ruling, with Jay Carney today declaring that it will have “no impact” on the NLRB’s activities. (Because, you know, it’s just some “court” or whatever.)

Well, we’ll see about that. There might be an interesting separation-of-powers scuffle shaping up here.

Blogger Moe Lane comments here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

No Big Deal

January 25, 2013 – 4:27 pm

Here’s a refreshingly forthright article about abortion, in which the author, one Mary Elizabeth Williams, avoids altogether the impossibly difficult task of parsing exactly when life “begins”. She cuts the Gordian knot by conceding, arguendo, that life begins at conception, and then justifies abortion on the grounds that some lives are simply worth more than others.

The article, published at Salon, bears the title So what if abortion ends life?

Ms. Williams writes:

Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word “life.’ Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants be on the side of ”¦ not-life? That’s why the language of those who support abortion has for so long been carefully couched in other terms. While opponents of abortion eagerly describe themselves as “pro-life,’ the rest of us have had to scramble around with not nearly as big-ticket words like “choice’ and “reproductive freedom.’ The “life’ conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.

As Roe v. Wade enters its fifth decade, we find ourselves at one of the most schizo moments in our national relationship with reproductive choice. In the past year we’ve endured the highest number of abortion restrictions ever. Yet support for abortion rights is at an all-time high, with seven in 10 Americans in favor of letting Roe v. Wade stand, allowing for reproductive choice in all or “most’ cases. That’s a stunning 10 percent increase from just a decade ago. And in the midst of this unique moment, Planned Parenthood has taken the bold step of reframing the vernacular ”“ moving away from the easy and easily divisive words “life’ and “choice.’ Instead, as a new promotional film acknowledges, “It’s not a black and white issue.’

It’s a move whose time is long overdue. It’s important, because when we don’t look at the complexities of reproduction, we give far too much semantic power to those who’d try to control it. And we play into the sneaky, dirty tricks of the anti-choice lobby when we on the pro-choice side squirm so uncomfortably at the ways in which they’ve repeatedly appropriated the concept of “life.’

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your-grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

Ignore the insulting tone; at least Ms. Williams is staking out a coherent position. (She isn’t, however, looking at “the complexities of reproduction”; what she is attempting here is in fact a radical simplification.) We’ll want to come back to that last line.

Ms Williams continues:

When we on the pro-choice side get cagey around the life question, it makes us illogically contradictory. I have friends who have referred to their abortions in terms of “scraping out a bunch of cells’ and then a few years later were exultant over the pregnancies that they unhesitatingly described in terms of “the baby’ and “this kid.’ I know women who have been relieved at their abortions and grieved over their miscarriages. Why can’t we agree that how they felt about their pregnancies was vastly different, but that it’s pretty silly to pretend that what was growing inside of them wasn’t the same? Fetuses aren’t selective like that. They don’t qualify as human life only if they’re intended to be born.

When we try to act like a pregnancy doesn’t involve human life, we wind up drawing stupid semantic lines in the sand: first trimester abortion vs. second trimester vs. late term, dancing around the issue trying to decide if there’s a single magic moment when a fetus becomes a person. Are you human only when you’re born? Only when you’re viable outside of the womb? Are you less of a human life when you look like a tadpole than when you can suck on your thumb?

This is what’s called “grasping the nettle”. Very good. So, then, on what does the value of a human life depend?

We’re so intimidated by the wingnuts, we get spooked out of having these conversations. We let the archconservatives browbeat us with the concept of “life,’ using their scare tactics on women and pushing for indefensible violations like forced ultrasounds. Why? Because when they wave the not-even-accurate notion that “abortion stops a beating heart’ they think they’re going to trick us into some damning admission. They believe that if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder. And I think that’s what concerns the hell out of those of us who support unrestricted reproductive freedom.

But we make choices about life all the time in our country. We make them about men and women in other countries. We make them about prisoners in our penal system. We make them about patients with terminal illnesses and accident victims. We still have passionate debates about the justifications of our actions as a society, but we don’t have to do it while being bullied around by the vague idea that if you say we’re talking about human life, then the jig is up, rights-wise.

It seems absurd to suggest that the only thing that makes us fully human is the short ride out of some lady’s vagina. That distinction may apply neatly legally, but philosophically, surely we can do better.

Well! “Wingnuts”. “Archconservatives”. Those, apparently, are the only sort who might believe that “if we call a fetus a life they can go down the road of making abortion murder”. (We’ll just ignore that silly bit about the “not-even-accurate notion that ‘abortion stops a beating heart'”. Of course it does.)

Well, how would you define “murder”? Presumably, it’s the taking of a life without the consent of the person being killed. As Ms. Williams suggests, though, we do in some cases consider such killing justifiable, in which case we stop calling it “murder” and use some other word instead, like “execution”, “euthanasia”, “manslaughter”, “accidental death”, or in the case of military action, just “killing”. Let’s look at the examples given:

Men and women in other countries: We do consider enemy combatants to have forfeited their right to life (by trying to kill us), and so we view our killing them as morally justifiable, as an act of self-defense. How about those innocents within the blast radius, who die right along with the guys we’re after? Clearly we don’t feel so comfy about killing them, but we go on doing so anyway. (We do try to avoid it, though.)

I’ll bet that if your own kin were one of these victims, you’d have no qualms about calling it “murder”. I’ll also point out that these innocents are killed “collaterally”, as a regrettable side-effect of a justifiable and necessary military operation; if we were to focus on killing them singly, however (as we do, for example, with aborted fetuses), it would clearly be murder.

Prisoners in our penal system: The key point here is that they are not innocent; they have by their free choice voided their right to life. In this they are obviously in a vastly different moral category than unborn children.

Patients with terminal illnesses: The key here is consent. Patients with terminal illnesses can grant their informed consent; unborn children cannot.

Accident victims: At issue here is what is being terminated. When a patient is taken off life support, it is because there is no longer the potential for life, or at least for life of the sort that we consider to be worthy of protection. Why? Because in our view the essence of human life, and the basis of moral consideration, is consciousness and subjective experience — so we consider it morally neutral to remove life-support from a body for which this is no longer possible. Clearly this is not the case with an unborn child.

At the conclusion of her essay, Ms. Williams writes:

My belief that life begins at conception is mine to cling to. And if you believe that it begins at birth, or somewhere around the second trimester, or when the kid finally goes to college, that’s a conversation we can have, one that I hope would be respectful and empathetic and fearless. We can’t have it if those of us who believe that human life exists in utero are afraid we’re somehow going to flub it for the cause. In an Op-Ed on “Why I’m Pro-Choice’ in the Michigan Daily this week, Emma Maniere stated, quite perfectly, that “Some argue that abortion takes lives, but I know that abortion saves lives, too.’ She understands that it saves lives not just in the most medically literal way, but in the roads that women who have choice then get to go down, in the possibilities for them and for their families. And I would put the life of a mother over the life of a fetus every single time ”” even if I still need to acknowledge my conviction that the fetus is indeed a life. A life worth sacrificing.

So! Let’s review. Can we find a coherent principle in all of this?

Ms. Williams argues that yes, life begins at conception, and so a fetus is no less a life than a new-born infant (i.e., in Ms. Williams’s words, a person who has recently made “the short ride out of some lady’s vagina.”) She points out also that “we make choices about life all the time in our country.” Finally, she says, regarding the mother of the condemned party, that:

“She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.”

Given what Ms. Williams has said elsewhere in her essay, particularly that business about the “short ride out of some lady’s vagina”, that last sentence states the case far too narrowly: the phrase “inside of her” has no good reason for being there. To be consistent, the sentence should read:

“Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of her child, whether born or unborn. Always.”

(If my understanding of this is wrong, please tell me why.)

This may seem a harsh interpretation of Ms. Williams’s position, but she‘s the one, after all, who threw away the one limiting principle that has heretofore made abortion morally justifiable, in most peoples’ eyes: to wit, that somehow a fetus is not fully alive, and so is exempt from the moral consideration that the rest of us expect. If that’s the hand Ms. Williams wants to play, then she has to play it out. It’s an admirably consistent position — which is clearly why she espoused it — and it does get around the impossibility of defining some post-conceptual “bright line” where life begins. But taken to its logical conclusion, it grants to individual women the absolute power, at their whim or convenience, to dispose of the lives of their offspring, even after they’ve been born. Maybe even until they’re headed for college.

What say you, readers?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy | Comments (15)

Tocqueville on Civic Engagement

January 25, 2013 – 12:27 am

I’ve just read through both volumes of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, which I had never read before in full.

Tocqueville’s task throughout the book was to take the splintering-off of America from Europe as a controlled experiment on the grandest scale — and by identifying the independent variables, thereby to come to a deeper understanding of the nature of both democracies and aristocracies. It was an enormously ambitious project, but such was the strength of his formidable intellect that he brought it to a breathtakingly successful conclusion. His insights are as relevant now as they were in the 1830’s, and his prescience seems at times almost superhuman.

Given that I prefer old sources to newer ones, the version I’ve just read was the original (1839) translation by Henry Reeve. It was not until I was very far along that I learned that Tocqueville himself didn’t like the job that Reeve had done, thinking it to show a somewhat aristocratic bias. (Really, I should read the book in French, but I fear my command of that language is unequal to the task. On the other hand, it would be hard to find a better way to brush up.)

I highlighted many passages as I went through the books, and will be posting them here from time to time. Here’s one in which Tocqueville contrasts the civic-mindedness of the free and equal Americans with the disengagement of their European counterparts. This is due, Tocqueville had earlier argued, to the radically local structure of American political life, in which townships generally managed their own affairs, and in which the governing hand of the Federal sovereign (or, for that matter, even of the State) was hardly felt at all. In America (at least the America of the 1830’s), a citizen’s “vertical” relationships with the people and powers above him were a negligible part of his life, whereas in aristocratic, post-feudal European societies — where even the administration of local municipalities was conducted in large part by an aloof and distant central authority — they were everything.

Granting for an instant that the villages and counties of the United States would be more usefully governed by a remote authority which they had never seen than by functionaries taken from the midst of them – admitting, for the sake of argument, that the country would be more secure, and the resources of society better employed, if the whole administration centred in a single arm – still the political advantages which the Americans derive from their system would induce me to prefer it to the contrary plan.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority should protect the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly avert all dangers from my path, without my care or my concern, if this same authority is the absolute mistress of my liberty and of my life, and if it so monopolizes all the energy of existence that when it languishes everything languishes around it, that when it sleeps everything must sleep, that when it dies the State itself must perish.

In certain countries of Europe the natives consider themselves as a kind of settlers, indifferent to the fate of the spot upon which they live. The greatest changes are effected without their concurrence and (unless chance may have apprised them of the event) without their knowledge; nay more, the citizen is unconcerned as to the condition of his village, the police of his street, the repairs of the church or of the parsonage; for he looks upon all these things as unconnected with himself, and as the property of a powerful stranger whom he calls the Government. He has only a life-interest in these possessions, and he entertains no notions of ownership or of improvement. This want of interest in his own affairs goes so far that, if his own safety or that of his children is endangered, instead of trying to avert the peril, he will fold his arms, and wait till the nation comes to his assistance. This same individual, who has so completely sacrificed his own free will, has no natural propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between servitude and license are perpetual. When a nation has arrived at this state it must either change its customs and its laws or perish: the source of public virtue is dry, and, though it may contain subjects, the race of citizens is extinct. Such communities are a natural prey to foreign conquests, and if they do not disappear from the scene of life, it is because they are surrounded by other nations similar or inferior to themselves: it is because the instinctive feeling of their country’s claims still exists in their hearts; and because an involuntary pride in the name it bears, or a vague reminiscence of its bygone fame, suffices to give them the impulse of self-preservation.

Which of these societies America of 2013 more closely resembles I leave to the reader’s opinion.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (3)

Fun With Science

January 23, 2013 – 10:58 pm

How to make a rail gun. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Professional Hard-Asses

January 23, 2013 – 8:02 pm

If, like most folks, you’re a bit fuzzy on the historical context of that Algerian hostage-taking affair, here’s an excellent article.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (1)

War On Women

January 23, 2013 – 5:27 pm

The Secretary of Defense today announced that women will now have a front-line role in combat.

Here’s why this is such a bad idea that virtually every society everywhere in the world throughout history has used only males as warriors:

– War is an existential conflict. Nations that lose wars stand to lose everything.

– In war, therefore, a society’s highest priority is to protect that which is essential to its continued existence as a distinct nation or people.

– If a people loses the ability to renew itself by having children, all is lost.

– The limiting factor that determines any population’s fertility is the number of women of childbearing age. This does not apply to men. In principle, you could kill off all but a handful of a nation’s males, and in a generation or two you could still be back where you started.

– Therefore, in just about every society, throughout history and everywhere on Earth, male warriors have fought to protect their most precious resource, the one resource above all that is absolutely essential to the survival of their people: their women. (They will continue to do this, of course; now, though, they’ll busy protecting what should instead have been other men fighting next to them.)

It’s that simple. I don’t even need to bring up women’s disadvantage in hand-to-hand combat, the certainty that they will be raped if captured, their lack of physical strength, the sexual tension that exists in mixed units, the high incidence of pregnancy among females in the military, the erosion of traditional male cohesion among warriors, the distractions created by the need to “clean up” military life to make it a suitable “workplace” for women, the cost of providing separate accommodations, the fact that what is now being instituted as an accommodation for those few women who want to fight in combat will be forced on all women in the event of a draft, and so on.

But this is America 2.0. The military, like every other government agency, now is first and foremost a jobs, Diversity, and self-actualization program, in which everyone has a “right” to participate. What was once the military’s only reason for existing at all — to fight and kill our enemies as effectively as possible — is now way, way down the list. To acknowledge that there are fundamental, natural differences between men and women, and that these differences matter, would be to discriminate — and therefore would violate liberalism’s Prime Directive.

And so we have today’s announcement. It should surprise nobody.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (22)

Wond’ring Aloud

January 22, 2013 – 11:25 pm

Can anyone explain to me why the United States is giving Egypt two hundred tanks and sixteen F-16s?

The answer should not be that “we signed an agreement that we are now honoring”. We signed that agreement with Hosni Mubarak, a man we could rely on to maintain a stable peace with our principal ally in the region, Israel.

Since then, we have assisted in Mr. Mubarak’s overthrow and subsequent replacement by an Islamist regime whose leader has made very clear that his sentiments are entirely different. Any weapons that we provide to the new Egypt will be used to oppose U.S. interests in the region, not to advance them.

So can somebody explain to me, then, why on earth we’d want to do this? I’m sorry to be so dense.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (4)

Cards On The Table

January 22, 2013 – 3:51 pm

Yuval Levin has written an excellent, and even-tempered, response to yesterday’s unapologetically collectivist speech by the President. Levin seizes on what I also thought was a key point, namely that Mr. Obama remains frankly and resolutely committed to the hollowing out of the essential layers of civil society that stand between the individual citizen and the Federal sovereign. (Recall the chilling campaign slideshow The Life of Julia, in which a radically atomized and deracinated American female goes from cradle to grave in near-solipsistic isolation from any human interaction, reliant only upon the nurturing State as the wellspring of all of life’s blessings.)

Mr. Levin writes:

The ideals of the Declaration of Independence are praised mostly for their flexibility in the face of their own anachronism, as their early embodiment in a political order (that is, the Constitution) proves inadequate to a changing world and must be gradually but thoroughly replaced by an open-ended commitment to meeting social objectives through state action.

The only alternative to state action, in this vision of things, is the preposterously insufficient prospect of individual action. “For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias,’ the president said.

“No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

The individual acting alone or the entire nation acting through its government, those are the only options we have. The space between the individual and the state is understood to be empty at best, and at worst to be filled with dreadful vestiges of intolerance and backwardness that must be cleared out to enable the pursuit of justice.

Read the rest here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (0)

Cap And Tirade

January 22, 2013 – 1:58 pm

Speaking of yesterday’s inauguration, some of you might not have seen the hat that Justice Antonin Scalia wore. More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

The Next Generation Of Democrats

January 22, 2013 – 12:00 pm

Commenting on a recent item, one of our regular readers shared with us a fulsome effusion about yesterday’s reinstallation of our nation’s chief executive.

Monday’s re-enactment of the actual swearing in, which took place on Sunday, was attended by the usual pomp and pageantry. It was attended also by a heterogeneous conglomerate of ethnic, cultural, religious and racial taxa, which happy fact caused many a tingle up many a liberal leg. Our reader comments:

The flag-waving multitudes today represented as diverse a crowd as one could imagine, in age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

Yes! Our reader reminds us again of the pre-eminent importance of Diversity, the summum bonum of all goodthinkful people: that magical elixir that brings naught but increasing happiness to any community, and of which more — and more and more and more and more — is always better.

Why? Because it’s Vibrant®, that’s why!

Still puzzled? Well, just think about it: what could be better for a society’s general well-being than to have no distinguishing cultural characteristics at all? How better to improve the harmony, cohesion, political stability, and overall joie de vivre of any nation or people than to purge, by undeviating dilution, admixture, and suppression, all public preferences favoring its shared and ancient traditions of language, history, folkways, social mores, custom, religion, music, and manner?

(What’s that? You still don’t understand?? At this point I think you’d better just keep still about it, then, if you know what’s good for you. Do you have any idea what sort of impression you’re making?)

But wait, there’s more! As Vibrant® as these inauguration festivities may have been, the crowd, it seems, was not as Diverse as “one could imagine”. Not, that is, if “one” is one George Church, professor of genetics at Harvard, thanks to whose inspired vision and sedulous efforts things may soon get even better for us all.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (1)

Crush! Kill! Destroy!

January 20, 2013 – 9:55 pm

In case any of you (perhaps those of you who have been held prisoner in a sub-basement by your evil stepfather for the past few decades, or you folks miraculously emerging from a persistent vegetative state) have any lingering doubt about the partisan alignment of certain media outlets, here’s the political director of CBS News to clear things up.

That would be the same CBS whose Bob Schieffer just likened taking on the NRA to fighting the Nazis.

Mind you, I have no problem with partisanship in the media. I just think it’s good to get it out in the open, and cut all this crap about “objective” reporting.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (11)

Talking Sense About Semiautomatics

January 20, 2013 – 1:19 am

Champion sharpshooter Jessie Duff demonstrates a variety of semiautomatic firearms for Sean Hannity, making clear once again that the hysterical focus on so-called “assault rifles” is ignorant idiocy. (Look, for example, at the damage done by that 12-gauge.)

As with all semiautomatics: one round per trigger pull.

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (6)

Google Taketh Away

January 20, 2013 – 1:01 am

Gates of Vienna is down again.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (2)

Heavens!

January 18, 2013 – 11:56 pm

There’s a truly shocking news item making the rounds: an inspection of Air Force facilities has turned up — you’d better sit down first — inappropriate material. There were calendars with scantily clad women, R-rated movies, and even — it’s hard for me to bring myself to tell you this, readers, but in the interest of hard-hitting journalism, I feel I simply must — an unprofessional lamp.

I’ve found an online listing of this catalogue of depravity. You can see it here.

If this sort of thing continues, we may, as David Himrich suggests, have to shut down the Air Force altogether, and replace it with some sort of military organization.

By Malcolm | Posted in Military | Comments (3)

Want Kraken On That?

January 18, 2013 – 11:43 pm

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Art | Comments (1)

Clarity vs. Claptrap

January 18, 2013 – 12:43 am

Here’s an informative slideshow about so-called “assault weapons”.

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (4)

Far Away, Long Ago

January 17, 2013 – 11:45 pm

Here’s an interesting little item: a collection of maps, from 1932, showing how long it took to travel in the U.S., in days of yore.

(From New York, of course.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Then Play On

January 17, 2013 – 12:40 pm

Some very nice bass-playing here (reminds me of Paul Jackson, from Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters band). Fun to watch, too.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (0)

Come ON, People

January 16, 2013 – 10:46 pm

Criminy. Gates of Vienna has now been taken down. That’s very bad. And it didn’t have to happen.

Attention, thoughtcrime bloggers: GET YOUR OWN DOMAIN AND HOSTING. It’s easy.

You know who you are. Your voices are vitally important, and more so every day, as the shades of night descend upon the West. Are you so cheap that you have to depend on the generosity of Google? You can’t spend ten bucks a month?

Baron, Dymphna, if you are reading this, I’ll be glad to help you migrate your site. I hope you have backups.

*

Update, 1/17: Thankfully, GoV is now back online. It looks like it was a technical problem after all. The Baron emails:

If we had violated [Google’s] terms of service, we should have received an email, according to their own established procedure. But we received no email.

Now it has reappeared just as mysteriously as it disappeared. No message, no explanation.

I think this was a technical glitch at Google, given how many other blogs were affected, including lots of non-political ones. We will continue with our “disaster preparedness’ policy, with an eye towards a migration to a secure platform that we have complete control over.

Excellent.

*

Update, 1/20: The site is down again. This time I don’t think Google’s going to put it back.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

Have A Butcher’s

January 16, 2013 – 4:45 pm

Here’s something you language weenies will enjoy: an online dictionary of British slang.

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (7)

Sauce For The Gander

January 16, 2013 – 11:46 am

For the Consideration of the General Publick:

The Safety of its elected Magistrates being of the highest Concern to a free Society, and the presence of Fire-arms being, as we are continually assured, a Catalyst for mortal Peril, there can be little Doubt that the surest Measure for the Protection and Defense of our Chief Executive and his Staff must be to declare the White House, and its Grounds, a Gun-Free Zone.

All good Citizens, therefore, will consider it their patriotic Duty to append their Signatures to the Petition found at this Link.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (40)

Let’s Get Real

January 16, 2013 – 12:44 am

Last week the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by Susan Jacoby called The Blessings of Atheism. In it, Ms. Jacoby attempts to rebut a colleague’s remark, apropos of Newtown, that atheism has no consolation to offer when people are suffering.

I’m an atheist myself, and I think Ms. Jacoby is on a fool’s errand.

Yes, there are various positive reasons for unbelief, and for many a Godless world is preferable to one in which we exist at the pleasure, and under the continuous judgment and supervision, of an omnipotent sovereign who can read our very thoughts.

But the atheist’s Weltanschauung is hardly consoling: we are born, willy-nilly, into a world devoid of any ultimate meaning or purpose, a place in which pleasure and pain are dispensed with remorseless indifference. We live briefly, snatching for ourselves a little happiness along the way if we are lucky, and all too soon are utterly annihilated. Those we love, and everything to which we form our most comforting attachments, will die, or crumble to dust. Ultimately, if the boffins are right, the expanding and ever-attenuating Universe itself will fade out into cold, eternal blackness. Those precious abstracta we call Good and Love and Beauty have no existence beyond our intuitions of them, which in turn are grounded in nothing more than a sequence of antecedent evolutionary contingencies. Because belief in an afterlife extends one’s timeframe indefinitely, and because salvation must be earned, religious belief trains the mind to look to the future; it encourages what the psychologists call “low time preference”. This attitude in turn carries over into our worldly affairs, and encourages responsibility, thrift, industriousness, and various other salutary habits. In its absence, and in the belief that this life is all we get, we incline instead toward maximizing the pleasures of the here and now.

(I could go on, and would probably warm nicely to the job of fleshing out this description at some length, but you get the idea.)

Yes, we atheists are spared, as Ms. Jacoby points out, the intellectual contortions of theodicy, but that’s pretty small beer compared to immortality. It bothers me no end that our prominent atheists refuse to swallow this pill, and insist instead that all we need is a few secular churches and a catchy slogan or two and we’ll have everything the faithful get, at an enviable discount. Yet they persist.

Dennis Prager, unsurprisingly, agrees, and in a brief essay sharply rebuts Ms. Jacoby’s comforting delusion. You can read it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion | Comments (4)

Tread Carefully

January 15, 2013 – 7:54 pm

Seizing its chance, New York’s legislature has now, in a breathless rush of immoderate and ill-considered haste, passed one of the nation’s strictest gun laws. Similar measures are soon to be attempted at a national level.

Those in power should be mindful, just now, not to push too hard, too fast; there is a tremendous groundswell of resentment building. It is clearer every day that the very qualities that in bygone days would have distinguished good Americans from bad, and that hundreds of millions of Americans still cherish — beliefs in the importance of personal responsibility, self-reliance, public decency, limited government, piety, traditional folkways, civil society, fiscal responsibility, fidelity to America’s founding principles as enshrined in the Constitution, and the courage to defend our essential liberties at whatever cost (in other words, all the essential qualities that made America “1.0” a great and prosperous nation) — are now seen by our ruling class as varieties of “extremism” to be suppressed and reviled. Their attitude, as they savor the full flush of their power in the heady afterglow of the recent election, is no longer one of respectful disagreement, as parties to a philosophical debate among equals. It is at best the patronizing condescension of adults toward children; lately it more closely resembles the easy disdain of masters for their servants, or of conquerors for the vanquished.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill:

The American eagle sits on his perch, a large, strong bird with formidable beak and claws. There he sits motionless, while his keepers come day after day to prod him with a sharp pointed stick — now his neck, now under his wings, now his tail feathers. All the time the eagle keeps quite still. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that nothing is going on inside the breast of the eagle.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (16)

Then And Now

January 14, 2013 – 11:05 pm

Barack Obama vs. Barack Obama on the debt ceiling. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (0)

Hard Science

January 14, 2013 – 5:17 pm

Here’s another shocker from the frontiers of medical research:

Slimmer Women’s Waist is Associated with Better Erectile Function in Men Independent of Age

IIEF scores don’t lie, folks. Story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (1)

Target-Rich Environment

January 13, 2013 – 11:22 pm

I haven’t posted anything for a while about the Left’s latest spasm of gun-control hysteria, so let’s catch up a bit with some miscellaneous items.

By far the loudest of the torch-and-pitchfork mob has been the swinish, unapologetically ignorant prig Piers Morgan, whose idea of a “debate” has been to insult and shout down his guests, mock the rationale behind the Second Amendment, point out in a plonking tone that Britain has a lower gun-homicide rate than the U.S., and wave around pictures of AR-15s. If he were serious about using gun-control legislation to reduce homicides, he’d be focusing on handguns, which account for the vast majority of gun deaths. But, statistics be damned (along with the Fallacy of Misleading Vividness); he’d rather talk about rifles, which kill fewer people each year than hammers and clubs.

After shouting down the soft-spoken gun-crime expert John Lott, and then scoring cheap points by hosting the stentorian loony Alex Jones (the one adversarial guest he’s refrained from interrupting), Mr. Morgan made the tactical error of inviting Breitbart’s Ben Shapiro, a whip-smart young man with good manners and a solid command of the issues. Mr. Shapiro, unfazed by Mr. Morgan’s self-righteous indignation and barrage of non-sequiturs, pressed him sharply, demanding that he show some intellectual rigor on two key issues: first, on not going after handguns if you’re really serious about reducing gun murders, and second, on the very reason we have a Second Amendment at all — namely that the Founders, in their wisdom, saw the pre-existing right of the people to bear arms to be a necessary safeguard against tyranny, and so insisted that it must never be infringed. Mr. Morgan’s response to this last was to splutter and jeer; he asked Mr. Shapiro if he had any idea “how absurd” he made himself look by suggesting something so silly. Mr. Shapiro pointed out that history is replete with examples of free societies, including many Western democracies, descending into tyranny — and that the Founders saw very clearly that this was serious risk that could arise very naturally in any society, thanks to permanent and self-evident realities of human nature. Mr. Morgan, busy sneering, didn’t bother to reply. He still hasn’t.

I don’t think Piers Morgan is a stupid man (though I’ll admit I’m beginning to wonder). But if he actually wants to be taken seriously in this “debate”, he should be trying to persuade gun-rights advocates, rather than insulting them. In particular, if he really thinks that, despite the clear lessons of history, the United States of 2013 is somehow immune to tyrannous usurpation of the peoples’ liberty, he should use his television program to explain why. He should invite historians to join him in examining the countless examples we have of such usurpations, both in the West and elsewhere, and then make a persuasive case that it simply can’t happen here. Don’t hold your breath, though: leaving aside the fact that it can’t be done, I don’t think Piers Morgan is man enough to try.

OK, moving right along: Here’s a fine piece by Mark Steyn on what totalitarian gun control has done for Britain. (Britain’s rate of violent crime is far higher than our own, in case you hadn’t heard.)

Here are two items from blogger, author, and armorer Michael Z. Williamson:

First, a proposal to regulate cars as we regulate guns.
Second, a gun-control catechism.

Here’s a brief exegesis of the Second Amendment, by another Williamson.

Lastly: if gun-ban zealots could stop shouting at us long enough to do so, and would open their minds just wide enough to admit some actual data, they might take the time to read this report, issued from the heart of the Cathedral itself.

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (10)

Down In The Valley…

January 12, 2013 – 11:42 pm

The Uncanny Valley, that is.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

In ? We Trust

January 11, 2013 – 11:08 pm

I’m an admirer of the philosopher Daniel Dennett. He can be overconfidently brusque and dismissive, and in particular I have parted company with him on the issue of activist atheism (more about that in a minute), but he has an enviably fertile and wide-ranging intellect. He’s also a terrific writer; in particular I highly recommend his books on Darwinism (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea) and free will (Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves).

He’s just been featured in a video at Edge.org, talking about a variety of topics. (There’s also a transcript.)

Early on in his talk he returns to the topic that first brought him to a wider audience: how the activity of the brain gives rise to the human mind. His model is still very much a work in progress. Here’s a longish excerpt:

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (1)

Gotta Look Sharp!

January 11, 2013 – 4:35 pm

Spring’s on its way, guys! If you want to nail that big job interview, or just look your best at the local biker-bar, it’s time to hit the stores.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)

Here Comes The Sun

January 11, 2013 – 2:50 pm

The National Research Council has issued a new report, considering in unprecedented depth a startling possibility: that variability in the energy output of the sun might have an effect on Earth’s climate.

Watts Up With That has posted a lengthy and detailed discussion here. (Hat-tip: David Duff.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Global Warming | Comments (2)

Meh

January 10, 2013 – 11:46 pm

Well, the Oscar nominations are out, and the nation is abuzz as always.

Tell you what, though: ever since this groundbreaking film didn’t make the cut a couple of years ago, I’ve kind of lost interest.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Belief In Belief

January 10, 2013 – 11:11 pm

Since emerging, chastened, from the militant atheism of my not-so-distant past, I have in recent years come round, despite being an unbeliever myself, to the opinion that wide-scale secularism is a maladaptation that sharply — perhaps even lethally — reduces a society’s fitness.

In a recent lecture at Washington University in St. Louis, George Will discussed the continuing importance, and necessary role, of religion in America. It is brilliantly done, and I urge you all either to watch or read it.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion, Society and Culture | Comments (5)

Seen With Just The Right Faces

January 9, 2013 – 10:25 pm

Courtesy of Bill Keezer, here’s Victor Davis Hanson on the exculpatory blessings of hipness.

I used to be pretty hip myself, you know. After reading this, I’m starting to think that maybe I should give it another go.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (3)

Tectonics

January 9, 2013 – 4:04 pm

America’s ideological landscape is like the continent itself: transected by deep fault-lines at the irregular boundaries of rigid plates. Though crushed tightly together, these great masses seek to move in different directions, and so they strain relentlessly against one another. The pressure builds, and builds — until, sooner or later, it must release itself in a destructive convulsion. In the weeks following the Newtown massacre, it has suddenly become clear that one of these fault-lines is under particularly dangerous stress.

Since Newtown, gun sales have rocketed as Americans, anticipating severe restrictions, rush to arm themselves while they still can. It seems that their concerns are amply justified, as executives prepare to act at the state and local level: New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, is expected to announce major new gun-control initiatives in his State of the State address tonight, and Joe Biden today hinted darkly about “executive orders” from the White House.

In announcing Biden’s remarks today, Matt Drudge provocatively accompanied his banner headline with photographs of Hitler and Stalin:

 

 

To those on one side of the fault-line, this is paranoid, inflammatory hysteria. To the rest of us, however, it is a reminder that the most profligate killers in modern history have not been private citizens, but their governments. As Hitler explained: “History teaches that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.’

A great many Americans are keenly aware of this, as were the nation’s founders. They consider themselves not subjects, but free citizens of a republic of their own making. They will consent, within limits, to be governed, but they will not be ruled. And they will not surrender their arms.

The plates press and moan and grumble. The water in the wells is rising, and muddy. Dogs and cats fidget restlessly. Farm animals are balky and skittish. Migraines are up sharply, and radios are on the fritz.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Guns | Comments (9)

Long Ago And Far Away

January 8, 2013 – 11:43 pm

From 1967: Woody Allen and William F. Buckley.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

All Is Not Lost

January 8, 2013 – 4:01 pm

There’s been so much focus lately on the senescence and decline of Western culture that I think it’s important to take a minute, now and then, to remind ourselves that we still possess much of great and lasting value — and that the magnificent legacy of Plato and Aristotle, of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Beethoven, Goethe, Newton, Michelangelo, Bernini, Voltaire, Galileo, Mozart, Gauss, Aquinas, Kant, Bacon, Keats, Hume, Carlyle, Chopin, Byron, and the rest of our immortal pantheon still inspires, even in the autumn of our civilization, creations of transcendent beauty.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (11)

Coarse And Strong And Cunning

January 7, 2013 – 12:21 pm

Here’s a heartwarming item from the Windy City.

As Sandburg said:

“Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action.”

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (1)

The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be

January 7, 2013 – 12:39 am

Boy, you can say that again. Here’s a glimpse from the year of my birth: cars, kitchens, and kitsch, in an unforgettable nine-minute movie.

Hat tip to Iowahawk.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

The Ol’ Slush Pump, Like You’ve Never Seen It Before

January 7, 2013 – 12:21 am

I’m whipped tonight. So here’s…

A camera mounted on the slide of a trombone. Oddly entertaining.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording, Shameless Filler | Comments (0)

Proto-Synth

January 6, 2013 – 12:44 am

The composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett died this past Christmas Eve, and tonight WQXR played a selection of his works.

One of them was from his score for the 1967 film Billion Dollar Brain, and it featured an eerie, flute-like instrument. At first I thought it was a Theremin, but then I realized it must be an ondes Martenot.

If you haven’t heard of this gizmo — one of the earliest electronic instruments, among whose charming idiosyncracies is a troika of loudspeakers including one made of metal and another strung like a lyre — you should go and have a look at Wikipedia’s excellent article.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording, Curiosities | Comments (0)

A Cautionary Tale

January 5, 2013 – 5:54 pm

California, not so long ago the flagship of the American federation, has been going under for quite a while now: overfreighted with lavish entitlements, embarnacled with suffocating regulation, and holed below the waterline by demographic disintegration. Because attacking the root of the problem by reducing the expansion of government is for deep-blue California an ideological impossibility, the Golden State, its gunwales now awash, has sought to stay afloat by the only means its ruling class can imagine: siphoning even more wealth from the dwindling few who still produce any of it.

As sensible men like Thomas Sowell and Arthur Laffer have reminded us for years, however, raising taxes quickly reaches a point of diminishing returns.

Well, lo and behold: as more and more of its productive citizens and corporations abandon ship, California’s returns have done exactly that — diminished.

What’s that, America? Oh, right. Nothing to see here. Yes, we’ll move along.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics, The Economy | Comments (18)

Penitentes

January 5, 2013 – 12:28 am

There’s no shortage lately of the sort of topics I’d normally be commenting on. The ongoing Second Amendment “debate” is certainly one (this Vanity Fair piece deserves a good going over, for example, and I’ve piled up a lot of related material that needs organizing into a post). The eternal and stupendously useless budget war in Washington is another. There’s Al Gore’s sale of his cable network, Current TV, to al-Jazeera (the saintly Mr. Gore decided to cash out for a pile of Qatari oil money, after turning down an offer from Glenn Beck on the grounds that he was concerned about the station’s “legacy”). There’s the increasingly brazen disdain for the Constitution itself, and savage contempt for those who take it to mean what it says, that we see in the emboldened mainstream press. And so on.

I’m just too weary of it all tonight, though, to muster up much enthusiasm for the cause. Maybe tomorrow.

For tonight, then: an odd natural phenomenon, from the roof of the world.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (0)