Magnitude 7.7

October 27, 2012 – 10:28 pm

Breaking: big quake in the Queen Charlotte islands, off British Columbia.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Methinks They’re Going To Need A Bigger Rug

October 27, 2012 – 10:25 pm

Here’s a story that’s making the rounds today. I have no way of assessing its veracity.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad, Politics, Foreign Affairs | Comments (0)

Movie Night

October 27, 2012 – 8:26 pm

By now you’ve probably seen the Obama campaign’s video featuring Girls star Lena Dunham. It’s a pitch to female first-time voters, and the conceit of the video is to liken a girl’s first voting experience to her first sexual experience. “Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody,” the tattooed Ms. Dunham explains. “You want to do it with a great guy.”

Conservatives think this is just unspeakably creepy, for all the obvious reasons (and there are many, including that this is actually an imitation of a campaign video by Vladimir Putin), but liberals think it’s just funny and clever, in a worldly, sophisticated way.

If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

 

Today I found an amusing parody:

 

Both of these are trumped, however — and not by a little — by this horrifying, cult-like ad:

 

Ten days to go.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (7)

Wild Kingdom

October 26, 2012 – 10:31 pm

It being a lovely day yesterday, I stopped by the harbor to take in the view. Here’s the vista from Mayo Beach:

After a minute or so I noticed that there was some sort of large animal in distress just offshore. All I could see was a single dark flipper lifting out of the water and flapping about. I thought it must be another of the small cetaceans that beach themselves so often in the harbor at low tide (see here). I used my phone to take a low-res video:

(This is a really terrible video, but it’s that black blob popping in and out of the water in the middle of the picture. It looks much father away than it actually was.)

A fellow sitting on his porch nearby noticed this thing in the water too, and waded out in his shorts to get a better look. It turned out not to be a mammal at all, but a mola — a strange critter, also known as the ocean sunfish, that looks like a huge swimming head with one long fin on top pointing up, and another on the bottom pointing down. Here’s a picture of one:


Mola mola

 
As you can imagine, shallow water is a problem for these guys, and it turns out that the large swift tides in shallow Wellfleet Harbor often catch them unawares. (Regular readers may recall I found a dead one on the same beach about a year ago, as documented here.) This hapless mola was in a similar pickle — caught in about eighteen inches of water, it was unable to get vertical enough to swim properly, and so was just floundering along sideways, making very little headway.

I hope it got out of there eventually.

Meanwhile, as I was standing on the beach I noticed something else flopping about, this time on the mud-flat just a few feet away. I went over for a look, and saw that it was a razor clam on the move. For the benefit of those of you who have never seen a razor clam in full flight, I shot a video of that, too.

Here it is:

There you have it, readers: nature red in tooth and claw.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler, Cape Cod | Comments (5)

The Apology Tour

October 24, 2012 – 3:58 pm

Mitt Romney drew scorn from Obama supporters, and warm approval from the rest of us, when he referred to Barack Obama’s “apology tour” during Monday’s debate. Obama apologizing for America? Never happened, says the Left. (Indeed, they even said it here.)

Pah! Mere pettifogging and hairsplitting. Blogger Jeryl Bier explains, deftly and succinctly, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (13)

Aid And Comfort

October 24, 2012 – 11:52 am

As we all know by now, the “Arab Spring” has led not to a flowering of pro-Western secular democracy, but instead has brought about a profound shift toward Islamist government throughout the region. Barry Rubin examines the President’s influence on this process, here.

Hat tip: VFR.

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

Currency Wars

October 23, 2012 – 5:49 pm

Do forgive me for all that doom & gloom in our previous thread.

Here, this’ll cheer you up. From Jim Rickards.

By Malcolm | Posted in The Economy | Comments (5)

All Done!

October 22, 2012 – 10:47 pm

Well, there you have it, America. We don’t have to watch any more debates until the next presidential campaign gets underway, which won’t be for several months yet.

Romney held his own well enough, and landed a few good blows (best of all: the apology tour). He looked steady and calm, and plausibly Presidential. That said, he seriously blew, in my opinion, the answer to “What is the greatest threat to America’s national security?” His answer was Iran’s nuclear program, but that was off by two. Closer would have been Pakistan (excuse me: “Pock-ee-stahn”), which is disintegrating into Islamizing chaos and owns at least a hundred nuclear weapons. The best answer, though, would have been to say that the biggest threat to America’s security is its unsustainable debt and deficit spending.

Romney also has his head in the clouds regarding the Muslim world generally; he seriously seems to believe that America actually has some chance of noodging the Ummah world into rejecting Islamic “extremism”, and that pinning our hopes on this constitutes a realistic policy. But I have long since given up on any mainstream politician, or pundit, or pretty much anybody with a career in public affairs to worry about, ever saying anything sensible or realistic on that score.

I think that Mr. Obama made a serious mistake with all that snark about horses and bayonets, and how we have “these things called aircraft carriers — planes land on them.” It was snotty and unpresidential, and it ignored, sarcastically, a legitimate point about naval strength. It seemed he often answered serious criticisms with petty personal retorts.

The snap polls are giving this one to Obama, and overall he probably gave as good as he got tonight, I think; he more than held his own in several exchanges. He needed more than that, though, and I don’t think he reversed Mr. Romney’s momentum. He also made one startling remark: that sequestration is “not going to happen”. Whut? Front page news, if true.

Bob Schieffer was by far the best of the moderators (save for jumping in to debate the Republican once or twice). I thought he did a good job.

So! Just some last-minute chess-playing on the hustings, and then off to the only poll that matters. I’ll be glad when it’s over. Keep in mind: no matter who wins, we’re completely screwed.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (36)

Final Round

October 22, 2012 – 5:55 pm

Readers, today we have come to the last debate of this historic election cycle. The stakes couldn’t be higher: upon this election hinges the very survival of this great Republic, and the security of our children, and our children’s children.

So here’s tonight’s drinking game.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

An Old Hand

October 21, 2012 – 11:05 pm

From about 1580, in fact. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (2)

Losing Our Lease!

October 20, 2012 – 9:06 pm

Just got this in the mail from the Obama campaign:

 

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (11)

The New Navy

October 20, 2012 – 8:25 pm

I’ve been hearing a lot lately about defense-spending cuts. All I can say is they’d better not cut this.

By Malcolm | Posted in Military | Comments (0)

Strengthen That Brand !!!

October 20, 2012 – 12:30 pm

With just over two weeks to go until the election, I know many of you are still in the critical “undecided” column. If so, then perhaps this rousing exhortation, sent to me this morning by African Americans for Obama, will help you make up your mind:

The American people and President Obama know how to create jobs right here in America to produce innovative quality products that strengthen the American brand, brings our needy people out of poverty, strengthens American small businesses, the middle class and strongly grows our national economy !!!

Do we want America fall behind the other nations of the world? Do we want to have regrets because we did not vote? Do we want to regret because we voted for someone, we do not know the agenda, we do not know the truth, we do not know the values, believes and commitment to our democracy and the American People?

NO, NO, NO !!!

The choice is yours, America !!! Get out there and vote.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (4)

“What Makes Your Big Head So Hard?”

October 20, 2012 – 11:23 am

Here’s a gloomy piece about my genetic homeland.

It contains this priceless quote from P. G. Wodehouse:

“It is never difficult to distinguish between a ray of sunshine and a Scotsman with a grievance.’

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

Too Bad ‘Chartwell’ Was Already Taken

October 19, 2012 – 8:20 pm

Here’s an odd little story — a million maps found in a 948-square-foot cottage about to be torn down.

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia | Comments (0)

Forward!

October 19, 2012 – 8:14 pm

Want more of this? It’s up to you. Sixteen days and counting.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

And What A Scene It Is

October 19, 2012 – 8:09 pm

Some “random thoughts on the passing scene” from Thomas Sowell:

Not since the days of slavery have there been so many people who feel entitled to what other people have produced as there are in the modern welfare state, whether in Western Europe or on this side of the Atlantic.

Yes, so much so that it doesn’t even seem audacious or remarkable any more. Eric Hoffer marked this as well:

The change that matters is the change of a society’s axioms. The 1960s saw a slaughter of axioms. It would be interesting to identify the new axioms. I can think of a couple: (1) The object of life is fun. (2) The world owes everyone a living.

Sowell again:

How are children supposed to learn to act like adults, when so much of what they see on television shows adults acting like children?

How, indeed? I call what he’s referring to “cultural neoteny“.

Sowell:

Whenever you hear people talking about “a living Constitution,” almost invariably they are people who are in the process of slowly killing it by “interpreting” its restrictions on government out of existence.

Not much I can add to that. The Commerce Clause and the General Welfare Clause have holed our Republic below the waterline.

One more:

I have never known a word to become absolute dogma, without a speck of evidence, the way “diversity” has.

Quite so. God help us all.

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

Comic Relief

October 18, 2012 – 10:04 pm

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama did a little standup comedy at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner tonight. Have a look.

I’ve seen the President cracking wise before, but never Mr. Romney. I have to say, he was downright Carsonesque.

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (2)

Jay Mark Johnson

October 18, 2012 – 7:44 pm

Amazing slit-camera photography. See here and here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Art | Comments (0)

Be Very Afraid

October 18, 2012 – 7:16 pm

I haven’t posted anything about martial arts in quite a while, so I thought I’d share this clip of some truly remarkable practitioners.

Hat tip: Matt Blazon.

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (0)

Romney, Syria

October 18, 2012 – 3:29 pm

I wouldn’t want anyone reading the previous post to think I’m particularly stoked about Mitt Romney; he’s a total squish on many issues of importance to conservatives, and just another democracy-exporting dreamer when it comes to foreign affairs.

Speaking of which: in this weeks Radio Derb, John Derbyshire zeroed in on the same comment from Mr. Romney’s VMI speech that I had singled out earlier:

In Syria I’ll work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and then ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks helicopters and fighter jets.

Here’s Derb:

Quote from the Governor, quote: “In Syria I’ll work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and then ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets ”¦ It’s essential that we develop influence with those forces in Syria that will one day lead a country that sits at the heart of the Middle East.” End quote.

In other words, Syria is Libya Two. Isn’t that what Romney’s saying? “Work with our partners ”¦” I guess that means NATO ”” you know, that military alliance set up to prevent Soviet forces from surging through the Fulda Gap into West Germany. So we and NATO are going to do what? “Organize those members of the opposition who share our values.”

Let’s see: Who have we got in the Syrian opposition? Some middle-aged clerks and schoolteachers who kinda like the idea of representative government, separation of powers, free press, et cetera, and who would like nothing better than to sit around in dusty rooms talking about those things all day long. Well, nothing except perhaps a U.S. refugee visa ”¦ None of these people could tell you how to strip a light machine-gun, but never mind: They share our values!

Who else have we got in the Syrian opposition? Tens of thousands of cold-eyed young fanatics, armed to the teeth by Iran, led by fighters hardened in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, ready to die for their faith, or to keep fighting for twenty years if necessary. Do they share our values? No, they spit on our values.

So tell me again, Governor, who are we going to help here? Who are we going to arm?

Who, indeed?

Meanwhile, somebody‘s been arming some of the Syrian rebels with MANPADS — portable surface-to-air missiles. This means that Syrian planes have to attack ground positions from higher altitudes, which in turn means less-effective air assaults with higher collateral damage. (Among other things, the latter makes the world humanitarian crisis that much more unbearable.)

I suspect the stuff is from Libya. After all, who benefits? If the international interest (shared by, among others, Turkey, Iran, and the U.S.) is converging on a truce, on getting Assad out without the pain of de-Baathification — in other words maintaining an Alawite regime, or at least strong Alawite influence in a new coalition — that seems to me at odds with the interests of the sort of folks who would be at the other end of a supply line in Libya. I’ll presume also that Egypt would have some role too, because the factions in Libya who would be involved in this are also well-represented there. It seems to me that the question of regional stability around Syria means a lot less to the Islamists in the Maghreb than it does to, say, Turkey (who will face a terrible refugee problem in the event of an all-out civil war in Syria) or Iran (who wants to maintain its influence in Syria, and a Mediterranean corridor, by way of its Alawite allegiances).

All this this is idle speculation on my part, of course. There are so many competing and overlapping interests at play in this conflict that it would be very difficult for someone like me to keep on top of it all, even if I spent all my time doing nothing else. Just following all the open-source material would be a more-than-full-time job.

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

Galluping To The Finish

October 18, 2012 – 2:45 pm

Mitt Romney’s “steady erosion in the polls” continues: as of this afternoon’s Gallup survey, Romney now leads fifty-two percent to forty-five percent among likely voters.

Not that I put a lot of stock in polls, mind you — after all, only about nine percent of the people pollsters call actually respond. Nice to see this anyway, though.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)

Not Politics!

October 17, 2012 – 3:03 pm

From Edge.org, here’s a fascinating article about human athleticism, and how it compares to that of other mammals.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (2)

Whack-A-Mole

October 16, 2012 – 3:39 pm

Tim Carney brings the mallet down on a load of tendentious hogwash from Politico. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Let’s Get Ready To Rumble!

October 16, 2012 – 3:03 pm

Here we go again, folks. Tonight’s debate is now considered to be a must-win for the incumbent, thanks to what one of our commenters referred to not long ago as Mr. Romney’s “steady erosion in the polls”.

So what’s tonight’s drinking game? Well, this time, readers, you get to take your pick.

Sadly, I won’t be joining you; I’ll likely be somewhere on Route 95 as the bout gets underway, listening on the radio (a poor substitute for watching on TV while following along on Twitter, but it can’t be helped).

Bottoms up! And may the worst man lose.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (11)

1000 Words

October 16, 2012 – 2:30 pm

Possible debate strategy for Mr. Romney tonight: just stand there holding this chart.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Génération Identitaire

October 15, 2012 – 8:30 pm

Here. Hat tips to Bill Keezer and GoV.

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

This And That

October 15, 2012 – 2:15 pm

I must apologize for the thin content here over the past few days — from time to time the demands and obligations of personal life leave me no time for blogging. (I realize that for waka waka waka to go dark for a day or two deprives no one of oxygen, but a lot of people do pass though here each day looking for something new, and I hate to disappoint them.) So distracted have I been this past week that I’m rather badly out of touch with just about everything. My inbox is filled with personal correspondence, notes from readers, and digests of the latest scientific, political, and strategic-security news, and it will be several days yet before I can wade through it all.

Here’s a link, at least: reader Bill Keezer directs our attention to Victor Davis Hanson’s latest look at the Obama campaign. It would be naive to imagine that it will sway anyone’s vote at this point, but even if it serves only to encourage the Right and to vex the Left, that’s still a job well done, I think.

Here’s another: a new look for some old utensils.

And this: riots in the wake of an Obama victory? See here and here.

Kevin Kim comments on Sam Harris’s latest.

Muslims assemble at Google’s London offices to demand compliance with Islamic blasphemy laws. Money quote:

One of the speakers, Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui, told The Daily Telegraph: “Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.

Riiight.

Blue-state blues.

Finally: aircraft carriers in space.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Narcissist-In-Chief

October 12, 2012 – 10:48 pm

For weeks now the Obama campaign has been offering a chance at dinner with The One to those who chip in a few bucks. (We commented here on one such solicitation.)

That dinner has now taken place, it appears. I know this because Mr. Obama just tweeted a picture with the heading:

Table for four: Kimberly, Mario, Joe, and Barack, at dinner in D.C. tonight.

“Okay,” I say to myself, “let’s have a look at the lucky, lucky winners.”

Here’s the picture:

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)

It Ain’t Necessarily So

October 12, 2012 – 10:30 pm

Some house-guests arrived sometime after midnight Thursday night  —  the night of the bizarre VP debate  —  and of course before anyone could go to bed we had to spend an hour or so arguing about politics. (They’re liberal sorts.)

Healthcare came up. So did the alleged “fact” that the healthcare system of the  U.S.A. is ranked 37th in the world.

You hear this often. It’s based on a notorious report by the World Health Organization, and it’s utter rubbish. Fully two-thirds of the score used in the rankings has nothing to do with actual health, but with how each nation rates on purely ideological metrics, such as whether the system is funded according to a sufficiently progressive policy of income redistribution. The rest is made up of manipulative jiggery-pokery. For example, the U.S.A. is ranked a lowly 19th in life expectancy. Take away death from fatal injuries, however, and we’re number 1. (How my driving my car off a cliff, or being shot, is any reflection on our healthcare system is not explained.) Our low ranking in infant mortality turns out to be due to the fact that we actually try to save a great many babies that would simply be recorded as “stillborn” elsewhere. If they persist for a few days and die, into the infant mortality stats they go. And so on.

Writing at Commentary, Scott W. Atlas, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of radiology and chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center, explains just how bad this oft-cited “study” really is.

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

In Cold Blood

October 11, 2012 – 10:40 am

From Danger Room, here’s a damning summary of the runup to the assault in Libya (thanks to Lokilinkster for the link).

An excerpt (emphasis added):

The security situation in Benghazi was “a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,’ (.pdf) said Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, the State Department’s Site Security Team commander in Libya from February to August 2012. Wood, who is to testify to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, added that “targeted attacks against westerners were on the increase.’

By July, the three diplomatic security teams on the ground in Libya were whittled down to one team “restricted from performing security work and limited to only training local guard force members,’ according to Wood. That team was eventually withdrawn too. [State Department security officer Eric]Nordstrom asked for an extension of the SST teams, but said he was turned down because there “would be too much political cost.’

“There was a complete and total lack of planning for what was going to happen next,’ he added. “There was no plan, there was just hope that everything would get better.’

As Danger Room first reported, security was then largely left in the hands of British security firm Blue Mountain, which employed unarmed Libyan guards and paid them $4 per hour.

Our enlightened Mideast policy: hope for change, but mind the “political cost”. Our ambassador and three others murdered on American soil in an act of war  —  and our President, who had ample warning of their peril but chose to do nothing about it, swans off to Vegas and the Letterman show, meanwhile deploying his sock-puppets to lie to the American press about what he knew and when. Just a “bump in the road”, after all, and there’s an election to win.

Are you angry yet, readers?

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (2)

You’ve Got Mail!

October 10, 2012 – 11:44 pm

OK, enough grim reality. Let’s all lighten up and take a break. Here, for example.

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (0)

The Truth, For Once

October 10, 2012 – 10:41 pm

You’ve probably heard people mentioning Lara Logan’s blunt talk about Afghanistan last week, but you should take twenty minutes and actually watch it. It’s here.

If you are informed enough, and wise enough, not to be taken in by the steady diet of lies and self-serving propaganda this administration feeds us about our Mideast adventures (the latest being the transparent fairy tale we were told about Benghazi), you’ll find it refreshing to see a mainstream journalist like Ms. Logan (who was stripped naked and sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square by the “Facebook revolutionaries” our useful idiots were cheering for at home) pushing back.

 

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (22)

Bump In The Road

October 10, 2012 – 11:16 am

From the Heritage Foundation, here’s a sharp video on the Obama administration’s deceitful, ass-covering response to the Benghazi attack.

But hey, look  —  Big Bird!

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (0)

Time Out

October 9, 2012 – 9:33 pm

I haven’t said much about politics for the past few days; that’s because I haven’t had much to say. It’s been delightful to watch the discomfiture of  Mr. Obama’s media catchfarts as they’ve watched the momentum shifting sharply in Mr. Romney’s direction, though.

A couple of things worth mentioning:

First, Mr. Romney’s foreign-policy speech certainly did little to make me excited about the man. He clearly harbors the same hopeful delusions about the Middle East that most American politicians seem to, whether on the Left or the Right. An excerpt:

In Syria I’ll work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and then ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks helicopters and fighter jets.

Yeah, that’s bound to go well.

Second, I hope you’ve all noticed Ms. Clinton’s efforts to distance her State Department from the Obama administration’s lies about the nature of the Benghazi attack. Obviously the chummy façade those two have presented since the inauguration is starting to crack; perhaps Ms. Clinton is beginning to see this campaign taking on water, and is thinking about 2016.

I’m looking forward to the VP debate. Don’t be surprised if Joe Biden acquits himself rather well.

 

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

As Good As it Gets

October 9, 2012 – 7:53 pm

I’m working a long day today, so for tonight here’s another musical item: a clip of the one and only Steve Gadd taking some extended solos.

These aren’t your typical drum solos. What I love about Gadd’s soloing is the depth of the groove that’s always playing in his head, and that he expresses just as clearly with empty space as by actually striking the drums. He isn’t flashing his chops; he’s dancing.

This is real mastery, and musicianship at the highest level. Enjoy.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (1)

Please…

October 8, 2012 – 8:08 pm

Can we stop saying “flat-screen TV” yet? You can’t even buy the other kind anymore.

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (10)

Power

October 8, 2012 – 12:37 pm

As I was poking around on YouTube this morning I ran across a link to this little number by the great Chaka Khan, only available on a compilation album released in 1998.

Recorded and mixed by yours truly, at the now-defunct O’Henry Studios in Burbank, CA. (What a great studio that was.) Note the guitar solos in the intro and at 2:35  — both of them were knocked off in a single take by the extraordinarily gifted session player Michael Landau.

I’d forgotten about this one. Boy, can that woman sing. Should’ve been a hit.

P.S. While we’re at it, here’s another Chaka tune, from the same sessions.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (2)

This Just In

October 6, 2012 – 10:14 pm

We’ve been hearing for a couple of days now that Mitt Romney’s drubbing of President Obama in Wednesday’s debate may have been due to his having smuggled in a “cheat sheet”.

Now we have confirmation:  we’ve just learned that the folks at RedState.com have got their hands on a copy.

Here it is.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Entropy and Ethics

October 6, 2012 – 9:55 pm

Last year I wrote a little post about visiting Google’s lavish offices in Manhattan to see my friend Greg, who had recently joined their engineering staff. Here’s a longish excerpt:

It being a mild day, Greg and I dined al fresco on a high terrace with a sweeping view of Midtown. (I had a delightful osso buco, he some freshly made sushi.) We talked about what his new life was like. Yes, he said, the physical perks were nice, but what really made the place so extraordinary was “the culture’.

His use of that word crystallized for me the effect the place had had on me from the moment I walked in. To get there, I had taken the subway from Grand Central down to 14th Street and 8th Avenue (two subways, actually), and the experience was as it is always is: crowded, blaring, gritty, and above all maximally heterogeneous in every way imaginable. It’s “vibrant’, if you like, and after living here in Gotham for more than thirty years I’m certainly well accustomed to it ”” but the effect of such a volatile and discordant public environment is to produce in everyone a subliminal wary tension, so constant and so routine that after a while one hardly notices it until it’s gone.

Well, when you walk into Google, it’s gone. Coming into that place, through the high-tech security checkpoint, from the teeming city outside is like passing through an airlock; it’s like beaming back up to the Enterprise from the steamy planetary surface. You can’t help being aware that you are suddenly in what feels like a different country. It’s culture shock.

Just how, exactly, is it so different? Well, it’s not the the creature comforts: for all its toys and free lunches, the place has nothing on a good hotel. It’s the people. Unlike any government or academic institution, Google is a pure meritocracy. Its employees have jumped a series of very high bars to get in the door, and as a result this building houses one of the most elite concentrations of high IQ in the world. En masse, it’s palpable. You can’t help but notice.

Greg said that he sometimes feels, working at Google, that he’s living in a “bubble’ ”” and sitting on that terrace with all those bright people, looking out over New York City and enjoying my osso buco, I had to agree that he’s right. I realized that what Google has done is to create a one-way membrane, a kind of Maxwell’s Demon: as the world decays and degenerates outside, falling further into chaos, the entropy inside the Google membrane decreases, as self-organizing complexity emerges. That’s what Greg’s “bubble’ is, and that’s what makes the “culture’ possible: an extreme statistical outlier at the end of a long series of centrifuges.

Another friend (and another very smart guy) who now works at Google is my old boss from PubSub, Bob Wyman. I chatted briefly with him, too, while I was visiting. Bob has an interesting paradigm for thinking about the world. The way he sees it, good and evil are basically just a matter of thermodynamics. In a nutshell, good consists of reducing entropy, and evil consists of abetting it.

Google’s motto: Don’t be evil.

It’s an interesting and seductive idea, with a natural, almost instinctive appeal. My lovely wife Nina told me of a little doggerel that her father used to recite to her when she was a wee thing:

Keep order and space, and order in time;
Disorder is chaos, and chaos is crime!

That’s pretty good, I think. If you wanted a pithy way of expressing the idea that ethics is essentially a question of thermodynamics, you could hardly do better.

Well, today my friend Salim Ismail sent me an excerpt from a book called Xenology: An Introduction to the Scientific Study of Extraterrestrial Life, Intelligence, and Civilization, by Robert Frietas. It makes Bob Wyman’s argument: that the reduction of entropy is a suitable foundation for a universal (in every sense of the word) system of ethics.

As my dear departed mum used to say, I hae me doots. I’ll lay them out in a later post — I want to think about it a bit more before commenting — but for tonight I’ll just give you the link. Here it is.

One more thing: if evil really does consist, at bottom, of increasing the world’s entropy, then Mayor Bloomberg may want to set his sights on some of the city’s most egregiously entropic culinary offerings. More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Science | Comments (0)

Potpourri

October 5, 2012 – 9:53 pm

I’m feeling a little under the weather tonight, so all I have to offer is a handful of interesting links.

Here’s an item about construction of three-dimensional objects by swarms of autonomous drones acting without central guidance.

Here’s one about evolutionary music-composition algorithms.

This item covers a topic that gets far too little attention from the mainstream media, these days at least: vomiting caterpillars.

Brace for impact.

Here’s a video illustrating the “rolling-shutter effect“. (More images here.)

And here are some thoughts about a clock that could outlast the Universe.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (15)

The Teacher’s Was Probably Brown

October 4, 2012 – 9:57 pm

Philly Student’s Romney T-shirt Likened To KKK Sheet

 

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

Au Revoir

October 4, 2012 – 10:40 am

Mind-boggling, suicidal socialist insanity in France. Here.

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

That Was Fun

October 3, 2012 – 10:04 pm

Well, well. If you’ve ever wanted empirical confirmation of the “Taranto Principle”, you got it tonight. When your every public appearance for the past four years has been a tongue-bath from fawning media groupies, this is what happens.

Next up, the vice-presidential debate. Iowahawk: “Compared to that, this one was a nail-biter. Wear a raincoat.”

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

It’s On!

October 3, 2012 – 6:32 pm

OK, folks, ready for the big debate?

The good people at RebelPundit.com have given us tonight’s drinking game. Here it is:

 

Bottoms up!

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

That Bump In The Road

October 2, 2012 – 1:01 pm

In the days following the lethal attack on our diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, the Obama administration doggedly clung to its story that the assault, in which a United States Ambassador was killed on U.S. soil, was an unforeseeable and spontaneous eruption of anger, caused by an unflattering video about Mohammed. This story was false, and the State Department knew it was false, yet stuck with it for days, including sending  U.N. ambassador Susan Rice to the Sunday talk shows,  five days after the attack, to reiterate what was by then a transparently deceptive account.  (Many are calling for Ms. Rice’s resignation over this, which I think is wrong; for all we know she was just repeating what she had been told. The State Department and the White House bear the responsibility here.)

Many of us wondered: why would this administration lie so blatantly about this, and continue to do so even as the truth began to be exposed? Obviously Mr. Obama’s  inept Mideast policy is now a political liability, and we shouldn’t be surprised to see as much “spin” as the administration thinks it can get away with  —   but it’s hard to imagine that they really thought they could get away with this.

The purpose of a lie is to hide the truth. What truth was it that the Administration considered so damaging that it was willing to risk lying so publicly for days, even as it became plain to all that its account of events was false?

The House Oversight Committee would like to know, and has sent a letter to the Secretary of State demanding some answers. I’ve excerpted (and highlighted) a key passage below:

Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, as Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest. In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.

Obviously, with the election looming, there are a lot of ulterior motives in play. Democrats will pooh-pooh the whole thing as a political stunt (indeed, long-time readers will not be surprised should that happen in our own comment-thread). Nevertheless, there appears to be serious malfeasance here, at the highest levels of government, and you can be sure this story isn’t going to go away.

You can read the letter here.

 

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (3)

An Abbreviated List

October 1, 2012 – 9:09 pm

Sorry all  —  still too overwhelmed with domestic logistics (and ongoing emergencies at work) to spend any personal time at the computer. The blog is gathering dust, and emails are piling up in the inbox.

Things should be getting back to normal in another day or two, insh’Allah.

Meanwhile, just to get you in the mood for Wednesday’s debate, here are 689 reasons to defeat Barack Obama.

 

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Off The Grid

September 27, 2012 – 6:17 pm

To all who’ve emailed with links, comments, etc. recently: thanks as always. We’re moving house today and tomorrow, however, and will not be able to get to any of it for at least a couple of days.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

The Future Must Not Belong To Those Who Slander The Prophet

September 26, 2012 – 9:44 am

Here’s an item from Iowahawk, posted way back in 2006, that’s as relevant today as the day it was written.

Update: As is this.

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery, Sport, Jihad | Comments (1)

Vandalism Still Illegal

September 25, 2012 – 8:34 pm

We’ve been hearing a lot about free speech lately (though not nearly enough). Here’s the NYPD coming to its defense. (And responding to an assault.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Jihad | Comments (34)