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 Reason and Philosophy, Religion, Society and Culture | 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 Society and Culture, Religion | 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 Politics, The Economy, Society and Culture | 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)

Change We Can Believe In

January 4, 2013 – 1:08 pm

In this brief item, Jim Pethokoukis weighs the various options for dealing with the looming debt-ceiling battle. Among them, in case you haven’t heard: trillion-dollar platinum coins.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, The Economy | Comments (2)

Vomiting Larry

January 3, 2013 – 12:35 am

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (1)

Air-Ball

January 2, 2013 – 11:56 pm

On February 15th, the asteroid 2012 DA14 will be passing by at the rather intimate distance of 21,500 miles. That’s mighty close: it’s actually within the Clarke orbit used by geosynchronous communication satellites, which circle the planet 22,300 miles up.

It definitely will not hit us, say the boffins, and when it comes to this sort of celestial-mechanics stuff I’m inclined to trust them. (After all, we aren’t talking about climate forecasts here, or Ivy-League economic scapulomancy.)

If you are interested in this sort of thing, you may already know that there are two systems commonly used to assign collision-hazard values to “near-Earth objects”: the “Torino” scale, and the more complex “Palermo” scale. (In case you’re wondering about those names: the Torino scale got its name after it was introduced at a conference there, and the Palermo scale, which came along later, simply carried on the tradition of naming asteroid-hazard scales after populous Italian tourist destinations.) For vastly more information about the Palermo scale, have a look here.

This particular boulder, which is about 150 feet across and weighs something in the order of 130,000 metric tons — that is, roughly equal in size and mass to film-maker Michael Moore — would strike the Earth with an impact equal to a 2.4 megaton bomb. That’s actually pretty paltry compared to some of our more impressive thermonuclear ordnance, and anyway, it’s going to miss us. DA14 has been assigned a zero on the Torino scale, and gets a wimpy Palermo score of -3.19.

So, nothing to worry about, folks, at least this time around. But my sources tell me that there are more than a million of these smallish NEO’s whizzing around, and we only learned about this one just a few months ago. So keep an ear to the ground, or whatever.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (1)

Search Me!

January 1, 2013 – 5:30 pm

In keeping with our ancient tradition, here’s this year’s selection from the searchphrases that brought readers to our doorstep in 2012:

man in chicken suit flying on hang glider
lwica lwica
race map
the boy who cried sheep
thats a moray
freedom go to hell
ice tricks
darkie toothpaste
pelicans eating other birds
no bikini in beach in iran
saucy minx
waka waka cold comfort
hes no fun he fell right over
when push comes to shore indian larry
outwash plain brooklyn
what is a moral fact
when shepherds pipe on oaten straws
holly jolly diwali
makatea terrain
the edge of love 2008
decomposing ocean sunfish
sallow face
god must love the poor
obama rowboat
bukimi no tani gensho
our father who arent in heaven
what is monsterous about heart of darkness
islam will dominate
lichen on pitch pine
gurdjieff annihilationism
bokanovskys process
zbotrz
drink while effervescing
strange railway equipment
dcduxpdswdn
behead those
may god thy gold refine
fat people are disgusting
iron wire form
eastern cod
better boners
indian harcor girls
pictures of what are the problems of a tornado
tastes like shit….but its good
donkey going to the market
beautiful maja exclusively shot by me in continuing series for
why cant the government just leave us alone
fallen pine branches
figure and ground puzzle geb number sequence 1 3 7 12 18
what up as they say in these here parts?
mission incomprehensible
fire vortex
elisabeth sabaditch wolff nude
Arctic Snorkel Long Parka
skimpy maverick uniforms
grammar cohesion chart
longitudinal estuary
bagdad pigeon
the bearded lady in cape cod mass
etymology of flivver
charming little house
schick lously
nude walking trail

This year’s winner:

what muscles do you news in waka armor

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia | Comments (3)

2013

January 1, 2013 – 1:10 pm

Happy New Year to you all! (I know it’s a long shot, but what the heck.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Winter Wonderland

December 30, 2012 – 11:49 am

Well, all that rain turned to snow last night. Here’s the view out the front window, looking west across a mile of woodland to the bay.

 

 

The little camera in my phone is not the best, but that new-fangled HDR software makes everything look pretty.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (7)

Service Notice

December 29, 2012 – 6:33 pm

We’re sequestered in the rainy and windswept Outer Cape for the next few days, enjoying a warm fire and a little intercalary downtime with some old friends.

Back soon.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Raising The Bar

December 27, 2012 – 5:21 pm

Move over, Tom Friedman! Here, from Sean Penn, is a late entry for Worst Writing of 2012.

It really is just unspeakably awful. Enjoy!

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (11)

Down The Rabbit Hole

December 26, 2012 – 2:32 pm

Consistent, at least.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (13)

Better Late Than Never

December 26, 2012 – 1:19 pm

Best Christmas song ever. Sorry I wasn’t able to post this before the Big Day.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (3)

Merry Christmas

December 25, 2012 – 3:15 pm

To all of you, with my thanks as always for reading and commenting.

I’ll make up for my own laziness at the keyboard today by pointing you to this delightful Christmas meditation by our friend Kevin Kim.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Fog Of War

December 24, 2012 – 12:50 pm

According to this report, the Assad regime has deployed poison gas in Homs, killing 7 and injuring others.

The quoted source is “opposition activists”, by way of al-Jazeera, so the story may not be veridical. But if so, in we go, I’d imagine.

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

Santa, Shamanta

December 22, 2012 – 10:54 pm

If you’ve seen Walt Disney’s Fantasia, which featured an animation of Tchaikovsky’s Christmas suite The Nutcracker, you’ll likely remember the fairy-circle of mushrooms performing the Chinese Dance. The mushrooms have white stalks, with red caps that are also speckled with white.

Such mushrooms are a common theme at Christmas, as we see in the assortment of images below:
 

 

 

 
This mushroom is the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria. They grow in cool temperate regions all over the world, and have psychoactive properties.

So what do they have to do with Christmas? Thereby hangs a tale.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (4)

Testa di Cazzo!

December 21, 2012 – 11:06 pm

Here. Also, as an “extra added bonus”, a new word: ctenactinium.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (17)

Yes, A Bulwark Against Tyranny

December 21, 2012 – 12:43 pm

Reader ‘Up2L8’ has added an excellent comment to the end of our “Hell On Earth” thread, in which he lists the various drafts of the Second Amendment that preceded its ratification.

By Malcolm | Posted in Guns | Comments (2)

Morbid Obesity

December 21, 2012 – 11:33 am

One of our foremost gloominaries is Patrick Buchanan. Today, in a ringingly despondent essay, he looks at the past and the future of the Republican Party, and considers its prospects in light of the inexorable trend, in all democracies, toward relentless government expansion and ultimate exhaustion.

His concluding remarks:

If we would see our future, we should look to Europe. There, the governments consume more than 40 percent of GDP and, in countries like France, almost 60 percent.

In Europe, the militaries have been hollowed out. Political parties face repudiation. Taxes in France have hit 75 percent. The wealthy flee. Pension promises are reneged upon. Government salaries are cut; employees laid off. Unemployment is astronomical for the young. The divisions deepen; the protests grow. Now, Europe’s banks, fearing social unrest, have started to emulate the Fed and buy up regime debt.

Looking at the West over the last century, the arc of history bends toward socialism and insolvency.

Read the whole thing here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (8)