Yellow Journalism

February 20, 2012 – 6:25 pm

Last week ESPN used the long-familiar phrase ‘a chink in the armor’ in reference to the apparent invincibility of NBA sensation Jeremy Lin. Predictably, a ruction ensued, and as is usual in such cases, the network groveled, and two new heads-on-pikestaffs were mounted on the battlements outside the Ministry of Speech.

We now have a new word-for-a-word to keep in mind: a casual survey of recent usage indicates that ‘chink’ has now become, or is about to become, ‘the C-word’. As such, it joins what is still a very exclusive club: as far as I know, the only other members to date are ‘the F-word’ and ‘the N-word’.

Although I’m sure we’re all better off, and the world a far safer place, with ‘chink’ admitted to the Hall of Shame, my far-seeing eye detects trouble up ahead: how much longer can it be before a new word requires admission that begins with the same letter as one of the current members?

This whole euphemism-creep business is a pity all round, say I; I’m still mourning ‘niggardly’ and ‘black hole’, and now we have to kiss ‘chink’ goodbye, too. So much for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I guess.

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (27)

Word Lens

February 19, 2012 – 2:44 pm

Speaking of my daughter ChloÁ«, she dropped by today and showed me an amazing new application she has downloaded for her iPhone. I’m a lifelong techie, and it takes a lot to bowl me over, but I’m bowled over.

See it in action here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (6)

Skin Gun

February 18, 2012 – 11:33 pm

A remarkable innovation, by the look of it: article here, video here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Quality Time

February 18, 2012 – 2:55 pm

When my daughter ChloÁ« was very little — just a baby — I used to rock her in my arms to send her off to sleep. Soothing music always seemed to help her on her way.

One evening I put on an album by the seminal jazz ensemble Weather Report, and I could tell the music spoke to her. She listened to the first song with eyes open and a gathering stillness, and by the end of the second piece she had drifted away.

The next night I put on the same album, with the same result. I soon found that this music was the Sandman’s golden key, and I marveled at how it seemed to relax my little ChloÁ« — and how she always fell asleep during that second track. “Like clockwork!” I said to myself.

I wondered what the title of that song was, so I looked at the album jacket. It was called…

…Dream Clock.

The album is Night Passage.

I just listened to it again, after many years, and it brought tears to my eyes. You can hear it yourself here.

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

Crimespeak

February 17, 2012 – 12:34 am

For his heresies, Patrick Buchanan has now officially been sacked by MSNBC. (I’ll confess that I’m surprised he lasted so long.)

He comments here.

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

Civis Britannia Sum

February 17, 2012 – 12:27 am

Poking around online just now, I ran across the text of the speech given in the House of Commons by Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, regarding his condemnation in the “Don Pacifico affair”.

The Pacifico kerfuffle arose in 1847, when Mr. Pacifico, the Portuguese consul to Athens, had his house plundered by a mob. The corrupt government of Greece offered him no redress. Mr. Pacifico, having been born in Gibraltar, was thereby a British citizen — and so Lord Palmerston, then Foreign Secretary, dispatched a squadron of the Royal Navy to blockade the harbor of Athens until the Greeks capitulated.

At the time, Greece had only recently achieved independence from the Turks, and was under the joint protection of England, France, and Russia. There were already tensions between the three powers regarding the configuration of the nascent Greek monarchy, and the English blockade brought them perilously close to war. For this, Lord Palmerston’s policy was condemned by a vote in the House of Lords. In an appeal to the House of Commons to reverse the decision, Lord Palmerston gave a long and persuasive speech based on the same principle — civis Romanus sum — that had saved the apostle Paul from summary judgment at a provincial Palestinian tribunal.

It’s a good one, and I’d never read it before. You can do so here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Cuts Both Ways

February 15, 2012 – 5:32 pm

Ever since the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” began its ontogeny in whatever sunless Congressional womb such hell-spawn are gestated, conservatives have howled that it reposes too much power in the Federal government (to be specific, in the capricious Executive Branch) — and so presents a grave threat to cherished liberties. “Suck it up, you nasty old fossils,” the bill’s supporters told them; “health-care is now a universal human right. This is what the future of an enlightened America looks like (to anyone who isn’t a bitter, gun-clinging racist, that is).”

In response, it’s fair to ask: are you guys sure you’ve thought this through? You might want to keep in mind that once you’ve ceded any territory to Leviathan, it’s very difficult to take it back — and a left-leaning Executive, insh’Allah, will not always be at the helm. Deroy Murdock and Jonah Goldberg make this simple point, in a way that should give liberals pause, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

A Word, If I May

February 15, 2012 – 2:45 pm

Sorry to harp so much on politics and social issues lately, but these are parlous times, and a great deal is at stake. A reader reminded me the other day that many of the categories over on the sidebar — categories that used to be the busiest ones — are now nearly “widowed”.

The reader was right, and I’m sure there are others who don’t come around here so much anymore because of it. But over the seven years of this blog’s existence, during which I’ve written over 2,500 posts, the world has changed, and as I’ve gotten older I’ve changed with it. The United States, and the West generally, stand at the edge of an abyss — one we’ve largely dug for ourselves — and while I’m still as interested as I ever was in things like evolutionary theory, martial arts, religion, language, philosophy of mind, etc., nothing now seems to me so clamant, so urgent, as our civilization’s existential predicament, in all its fearsome aspects.

Perhaps I should separate all this political and social content, which has greatly increased traffic over the past couple of years, into a new blog, and put waka waka waka back the way it used to be. I’ll think about that. And if you’re a reader who liked it better here before, please forgive me, and thanks very much for continuing to visit.

Comments and suggestions are welcome, as always.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Exempli Gratia

February 15, 2012 – 1:45 pm

From Tocqueville’s Democracy In America, 1840:

After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

Here’s how it’s done.

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

An Onomastic Conundrum

February 14, 2012 – 11:46 pm

In medieval times, tradesmen took surnames that reflected their profession. If you were John, and you baked bread for a living, you’d be John Baker.

A great many of these names persist, e.g. Archer, Bailey, Baker, Barber, Bishop, Bowman, Brewer, Carpenter, Carter, Cartwright, Carver, Chandler, Chaplin, Chapman, Clark, Collier, Conner, Cook, Cooper, Cutler, Dean, Dyer, Farmer, Falconer (Faulkner), Farrier, Fisher, Fletcher, Forester, Fowler, Fuller, Gardner, Glover, Hooper, Hunter, Joiner, Mason, Mercer, Miller, Porter, Potter, Reeve, Sadler, Sawyer, Shepherd, Skinner, Slater, Smith, Tanner, Taylor, Thatcher, Turner, Tyler, Walker, Ward, Weaver, Wheeler, etc.

But I was wondering (and if I weren’t so lazy, I’d go and do some actual research): what about those common names that refer to colors? Names like Brown, Green, White, and Black? What do those represent?

Also, why aren’t other common words for colors used as names? Why are lots of people named Brown and Green, but nobody is named Red or Yellow or Blue?

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (9)

Necessary And Proper

February 13, 2012 – 11:12 pm

In a recent comment-thread I cited William Voegeli’s opinion that liberalism admits of “no limiting principle’ regarding what government can and should do. Indeed, one of our own more liberal commenters assured us not long ago that the bulging Constitutional aneurysm commonly known as the Commerce Clause is, in his opinion, “infinitely elastic”.

We will have another test of this shortly, it seems, and not a moment too soon: two important briefs (you can read them here and here) were filed today in the ongoing legal struggle against Obamacare.

More here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

From The Mailbag

February 13, 2012 – 10:35 pm

A reader just forwarded me one of those whimsical emails that people pass around the Internet. I usually don’t post such things, but it’s a slow night…

I’ve been saying for a while that the problem facing America today is no longer a problem of conservatives and liberals learning to get along — we’ve gone beyond that. No, the problem is that although the ideological division between the two factions has widened beyond any hope of reconciliation, we still can’t get away from each other.

I have just received an email that outlines a practical solution.

DIVORCE AGREEMENT

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Dear American liberals, leftists, democrats, social progressives, socialists, regressive, Marxists, and Obama supporters, et. al.:

We have stuck together since the late 1950s for the sake of the kids, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has clearly run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right for us all, so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

1. Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by land mass, each taking a similar portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy. Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides had such distinct and disparate tastes.

2. We don’t like redistributive taxes, so you can keep them.

3. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU.

4. Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA, and the military.

5. We’ll take the nasty, smelly oil industry and you can go with wind, solar, and bio-diesel.

6. You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore, and Rosie O’Donnell. You are, however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

7. We’ll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart, and Wall Street.

8. You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless homeboys, hippies, druggies, and illegal aliens.

9. We’ll keep the hot Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks.

10. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood .

11. You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.

12. You can have the peace-niks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

13. We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.

14. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism, political correctness, and Shirley McLain. You can also have the U.N., but we will no longer be paying the bill.

15. We’ll keep the SUV’s, pickup trucks, and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

16. You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors..

17. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is an earned luxury and not a right.

18. We’ll keep “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “The National Anthem.”

19. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute “Imagine”, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing”, “Kum Ba Ya,” or “We Are the World”.

20. We’ll practice trickledown economics and you can continue to give trickle up poverty your best shot.

21. Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our constitution and our flag.

22. Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like-minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll let you answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,
John J. Wall
Law Student and an American

P.S.: Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, and Jane Fonda with you.

P.S.S..: And you won’t have to “Press 1 for English” when you call our country.

**If you can’t stand behind our Military, Please feel free to stand in front of them! **

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (8)

Contra Kristof

February 13, 2012 – 12:12 am

Nicholas Kristof weighed in today on the Catholic-contraception kerfuffle, in a Times op-ed piece.

Even Mr. Kristof acknowledges that this issue is hardly cut-and-dried. He writes:

Look, there’s a genuine conflict here. Many religious believers were sincerely offended that Catholic institutions would have to provide coverage for health interventions that the church hierarchy opposed. That counts in my book: it’s best to avoid forcing people to do things that breach their ethical standards.

Quite so. And he gets the terminology right: what is at issue here is the Federal government “forcing people to do things”. That is not the same thing as prohibiting criminal acts, or prohibiting anything at all. There is a difference between prohibition and compulsion, and compelling people to perform acts that are in direct contravention to their religious beliefs has generally been recognized, throughout history, to be among the extremest forms of subjugation, right up there with rape, mutilation, and infanticide. If you wanted to degrade and humiliate a Jew or a Muslim, for example, you might force him to eat pig-flesh. And if you wanted to publicly and politically degrade and humiliate the Catholic Church, to make it bend the knee and kiss the ring, you would force it to issue contraceptives.

That many Catholics live in apostasy when it comes to this tenet of the Church’s teaching, as Mr. Krsitof and others have made sure to point out, is completely irrelevant here. The laity are not the ones who were brought under this compulsion at the whim of the Executive Branch; the Church itself was. Catholic doctrine is not configured by referendum.

Mr. Kristof, having acknowledged all this, soon loses sight of this important distinction between prohibition and compulsion, nevertheless:

The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can. But we ban polygamy, for example, even for the pious. Your freedom to believe does not always give you a freedom to act.

But of course the Church doesn’t seek to “act” here, not at all. It merely wishes not to be compelled to violate its own sacred teachings.

Mr Kristof clearly agrees with the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, that poor women having lots of babies is a bad idea all round (she expressed this eugenic, Progressive goal in her autobiography as a need to “stop the multiplication of the unfit”). Mr. Kristof argues that the “The cost of birth control is one reason poor women are more than three times as likely to end up pregnant unintentionally as middle-class women”, and that many are “relying only on condoms”.

Leaving aside what other reasons there might be, we should note here that condoms, if used properly, are extremely effective at preventing pregnancy, and that many married couples rely on them exclusively, in order to avoid the by-effects of oral contraceptives. From a public-health perspective, the condom is also the best method, short of abstinence, for preventing the spread of venereal disease. They are also cheap: a year’s supply, for a woman who has sex every single day, can be had for something like ten dollars a month. (Or, if she prefers, for nothing at all, in most cities.) Cost as an obstacle to contraception is simply not the issue that folks like Mr. Kristof would have us believe, as Andrew McCarthy argues here.

But let’s assume, arguendo, that the society at large does indeed have such a compelling interest in seeing that poor women are given contraceptives that it is determined to make it so. Even so it is hard to see why this couldn’t have been done without humiliating the Church in this way. Why not just cut out the middleman, and give the stuff away directly? Given what a political minefield this has become, wouldn’t that have been simpler, and more feasible politically?

I want to reiterate that I am no Catholic; I am not even a theist of any sort. I also think the Catholic Church’s position on contraception, like so many other positions it has stubbornly defended over the centuries, is ridiculous. But what I see here is a salient battle in the endless culture war waged by the Left against traditional society, and I see also an ever-expanding State garrisoning yet another patch of conquered territory, and bringing its inhabitants to heel. So I hie me to the ramparts.

Finally, I want to call out Mr. Kristof on a misleading statement that I will charitably assume is merely an oversight: he cites the source of some of his statistics, the Guttmacher Institute, as a “nonpartisan research organization on issues of sexual health”. The Guttmacher Institute is, however, hardly likely to be an impartial player in this debate, as we can see from its website:

Alan F. Guttmacher was president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and a leader in the International Planned Parenthood Federation in the 1960s and early 1970s, he saw the need for the institution that now bears his name, and he nurtured its development.

I considered disallowing comments on this piece, because we’ve already had ample discussion on this head. But I don’t like to do that, so I’ll leave the comment-box open.

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

The Forgotten Man

February 12, 2012 – 1:57 pm

Having just had yet another another arid and pointless dust-up about the Constitution, it seems apt to link to this interesting little art project, which comes to us courtesy of David Duff.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Art | Comments (1)

Ramen Invictus

February 11, 2012 – 6:25 pm

Here’s something for you all to digest.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Rubber Match

February 11, 2012 – 2:11 pm

The Obama administration made an embarrassing political blunder recently when it mandated, with swaggering disregard of First Amendment niceties and pugnacious indifference to the moral teachings of the Roman Church, that Catholic organizations would be required to provide contraceptives to their employees. When Catholic institutions objected, they were told they had a year to get used to it.

This not only aroused predictably heated emotions on the Right, but was too much even for many members of the liberal media kingsguard (even the true-blue E.J. Dionne, for example, joined the chorus of indignation).

Now the administration has done some hasty backpedaling, in appearance at least, by granting an “accommodation” that says that Catholic organizations won’t have to pay for these services after all. Instead, the Imperium has graciously ordained that such services will simply be provided “for free” by insurers (“insurance”, readers may have noticed, being a word that is quickly being drained of all its original meaning).

The fundamental laws of nature, however, remain in effect even despite edicts from The One, including the one that says there’s no free lunch. Contraceptive services do not fall like manna from the sky, and if they are going to be provided, then they must be paid for.

The WSJ expands on this, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Religion | Comments (21)

Kim On Vallicella On Dennett

February 10, 2012 – 11:26 pm

Our friend Kevin Kim has written a meaty response to Bill Vallicella’s latest remarks on Dennettian theoskepsis. (The study of religion is Kevin’s academic specialty; and in passing I’ll recommend his book Water From a Skull for those with an interest in the field of comparative religion.)

A quibble: in this post Kevin discusses Bill’s dualistic, antimaterialist position on the nature of consciousness, and in doing so skims a little too close, I think, to conflating intelligence and consciousness. We read:

I also disagree completely with Vallicella’s characterization of neuroscience. For him, neuroscience will never “teach us anything about consciousness.” The reality, though, is that neuroscientific theories are paving the way for us to make machines– robots– whose behaviors are becoming increasingly complex. If one definition of “intelligence” is “problem-solving ability,” then by that standard we have been building increasingly intelligent machines for years. Soon, intelligence will come to mean more than the ability to win at chess or participate in a Jeopardy! competition: it will mean the advent of machines that react without confusion in fluid social or physical situations. While true machine consciousness is probably a long way off, I don’t see its realization as an impossible goal. Intelligence isn’t consciousness, but it’s a vital component of consciousness. [Is it? -MP] One day, a machine is going to stare at us with the same speculative curiosity we train on it.

My point is that the increasing complexity of machine behaviors is the result of scientific theories that are grounded in a naturalistic (or, more precisely, physicalist) philosophy of mind. If mind is indeed utterly dependent on matter, as I believe it is, then we will one day be able to arrange matter in such a way as to form minds. This won’t convince the diehard substance dualists,* of course; they’ll go on believing that mind is somehow independent of matter without ever being able to explain how a particular mind is connected to a particular body. Unfortunately, their philosophy of mind can promise no progress: you can’t strive to create artificial intelligence if you believe it’s inherently unachievable.

I don’t have a lot to disagree with here, but I will say that I think it is critically important to pry apart three (at least) concepts that are often muddled together when people talk about these things: consciousness, intelligence, and intentionality. Bill Vallicella, in particular, seems committed to the idea that consciousness is necessary for intentionality; I’ve tried for many years now to get him to discuss this in light of such obviously intentional (and presumably non-conscious) things as the food-dance of bees, etc., but he won’t engage.

Likewise, I consider it perfectly possible for intelligence, even very high intelligence, to operate completely unconsciously (my experience with the Gurdjieff work drove this home very uncomfortably, if I had any doubt). I agree with Kevin that “If mind is indeed utterly dependent on matter, as I believe it is, then we will one day be able to arrange matter in such a way as to form minds”; we do that already, after all (and with unskilled labor!), by making babies. But it may well be that there is something in particular about biological brains that is uniquely capable of generating consciousness: for all we know, you can’t make a conscious machine out of silicon any more than you can make a ham sandwich out of glass.

But as I said, just a quibble. Go read Kevin’s piece here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Reason and Philosophy, Religion | Comments (3)

Priorities

February 9, 2012 – 2:48 pm

This item has left me speechless, so I’ll just pass it along without comment.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

When Shepherds Pipe on Oaten Straws

February 9, 2012 – 11:57 am

The fragrant efflorescence of the Arab Spring is, as the old song goes, “busting out all over”. A particularly lovely blossom is the one we so carefully nurtured in Libya, where, as the Times reports today, the nation is descending into sanguinary chaos.

Our love’s labour there is done, it seems; we are busy gardeners, after all, and have other beds to till!

How noble we, to share our blessings so!

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (7)

Diversion

February 8, 2012 – 5:28 pm

To distract us from worldly worries and woes: two brainteasers from Jeopardy! star Ken Jennings.

Two puzzles: NOT SO HARD and YES VERY HARD.

NOT SO HARD. Can you think of a food that becomes a synonym for “later’ when it’s spelled backwards?

YES VERY HARD. I just wrote down a lower-case, seven-letter word”“something you might consult with a lawyer about. I realized that if I added to the middle letter just the smallest of strokes, I would make a new word”“something you might consult with a doctor about. What are the words?

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (22)

Cooling On Warming

February 8, 2012 – 11:47 am

Here’s the latest crack in the AGW stonewall (courtesy of VFR).

By Malcolm | Posted in Global Warming | Comments (14)

Over There

February 7, 2012 – 7:30 pm

For those of you with an interest in strategic security and geopolitics, here are two items just in that I think are worth your time: first, a surprising comment from NightWatch on the situation in Syria; second, an analysis by George Friedman of the stalemate in Afghanistan.

See also this overview of the “Arab spring” from STRATFOR.

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

Rara Avis

February 7, 2012 – 7:22 pm

A reader sends us an impressive clip of Russia’s SU-30 multi-role fighter in flight. This is what matches up against our Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning “Joint Strike Fighter”.

As formidable as this thing is, the tip of the spear as far as Russian air power is concerned is the fifth-generation Sukhoi PAK-FA (T-50). The matchup here is with our F-22 Raptor, which we are no longer investing in.

By Malcolm | Posted in Military | Comments (0)

Bay State Blues

February 6, 2012 – 11:35 pm

Drove up to Massachusetts this evening; stopped in Orleans to pick up supplies. The place seemed to be in a somber mood, for some reason. From the snatches of conversation I overheard, it seems some local chap by the name of Welker must have died, or is going to die, or something. Couldn’t quite make sense of it.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

Facemasks

February 5, 2012 – 1:46 pm

We’re all familiar with the importance, in Oriental cultures, of “saving face”. Now a Japanese outfit offers consumers a new way to do so.

Note: the linked page is in Japanese; you may want to have Google translate it for you.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (0)

Fireflies

February 5, 2012 – 1:35 pm

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (0)

Long Ago And Far Away

February 5, 2012 – 1:26 pm

It’s easy to lose perspective with one’s nose pressed up against the local affairs of this evanescent speck of dust we call home.

So: zooming out just a little from U.S. politics, here’s a nice example of gravitational lensing: a “magnified” galaxy that we see as it was two-thirds of the age of the Universe ago.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (0)

Wash-ashores

February 4, 2012 – 4:57 pm

For the past month or so, common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) have been stranding themselves in record numbers on Wellfleet’s bay and harbor beaches. Here and here are some video clips from CNN.

Wellfleet has always been a hotspot for this sort of thing; the clean cold waters of the harbor are full of good things to eat, and the tidal amplitude can exceed twelve feet. But what’s been happening lately is puzzlingly anomalous, and nobody has an answer.

I’ll be spending the next week or so out there, and will see what I can learn from the professionals on the scene.

By Malcolm | Posted in Cape Cod | Comments (3)

Skunk At The Garden Party

February 3, 2012 – 11:18 pm

There was a positive jobs report today, and the markets, starved for encouragement, rallied. Obviously any upbeat economic news is to be welcomed, but it’s election season too, and so for the loyal opposition these little silver linings come complete with little clouds. (Those who found the Bush years unbearable often found themselves rooting for things to go badly in Iraq, for example.)

But there’s no question that good economic news is what the nation needs, so it would be churlish of me to rain on the parade.

Fortunately, I don’t have to, because the sedulous statistics-gatherer @Iowahawkblog spent the day doing just that. Here are a few of the observations he made as Friday rolled along:

— UNEMPLOYMENT DOWN!!!! because 1.2 million people mysteriously dropped out of the labor force last month.

— If the labor force participation rate was at Jan 2009 level, unemployment would be 11%.

— %of population over the age of 16 with jobs: Jan 2011, 58.4%; January 2012, 58.5%.

— There are 1.5 million fewer people working today than in Jan 2009. There are 13 million more people on food stamps.

— America added 2.3 million more jobs in the last 12 months. It added 3.56 million more adults.

— Today there are 3.06 Americans employed for every American on food stamps. This is the lowest it has ever been. Ever.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (33)

Post-Racial America

February 2, 2012 – 4:03 pm

Just saw this, from our “uniter”-in-chief:

Today, we’re announcing the 2012 launch of African Americans for Obama.

There’s no better time than African American History Month to consider the tremendous progress we’ve made through the sacrifice of so many””or a better time to commit to meeting the very real challenges we face right now.

Visit africanamericans.barackobama.com for more information about all the ways you can get involved””from attending HBCU organizing workshops to becoming a Congregation Captain””and say you’re ready to keep making history. Thanks, and see you out there.

Does this mean the Republican front-runner can now announce the launch of Caucasian Americans for Romney? If not, why?

Update, February 3rd: a great many people pass by here every day. Nobody has an opinion about this? Is this topic really that radioactive?

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (2)

It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Ging

February 1, 2012 – 11:01 pm

I just ran across an old article by my sigung for many years, Master Yee Chi Wai (aka Frank Yee). It’s a discussion of the many varieties of ging, or internal power, that are cultivated by the advanced Hung Ga practitioner.

The Hung system, in which the student must endure years of grueling stance and grip training along with high-impact conditioning of the forearms, is generally considered one of the most “external” systems of southern kung fu, and as such it gives the acolyte effective fighting tools earlier on than some of the more “internal systems” (such as ba gua, which by the way is pretty nifty stuff, as you can see here). But as the student advances, and understanding deepens, the system’s internal aspects come to the fore — one’s movements become smaller and more economical, and there is less and less reliance on athletic prowess, imperviousness to pain, and brute strength. In particular, three things happen: 1) the body learns to relax and deliver power only at the moment it is needed; 2) the practitioner learns to bring that power smoothly from the foundation — the legs, hips and waist — to the striking hand, in a rising, gathering wave; and 3) one learns to release all of that focused, concentrated power into the target through the striking hand, rather than letting any of it get “stuck” along the way.

This transition from external to internal as the years go by is a good thing, because, having worked at this stuff since I was 19, I am now a weather-beaten 55-year-old with creaking knees, and am simply no longer capable of the lower-body extravagances the style demands of a younger man: octopus-like leg sweeps, leaping to one’s feet from a floor-level crouch while spinning a seven-foot halberd, and so on.

But the ging! As any lifer like me will tell you, that just grows and grows. And a little goes a long way.

The article is here. It’s rather technical, and certainly won’t win any awards for prose style, but I thought if any of you out there are involved in the martial arts you might enjoy it.

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (8)

Battle Royal

January 31, 2012 – 9:50 pm

Here’s an all-Macbeth smackdown: Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Patrick Stewart, and the late Nicol Williamson go head to head to head in the steel cage.

Who claims victory?

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)

Blasphemy Mucho

January 31, 2012 – 3:08 pm

Dennis Mangan brings us news from the prestigious London School of Economics — where the Student Union has declared “Islamophobia” to be “racism”, and has appointed itself to identify, root out, and prosecute blasphemy against Islam.

This craven gesture is not only an affront to freedom of speech, and to freedom of thought itself, but it is also shamefully muddle-headed: Islam is of course not a “race”, but is rather an infectious package of ideas and ideology capable of taking any human brain, of any race whatsoever, as a host and vector.

While we busy ourselves confiscating toothpaste and strip-searching incontinent great-grandmothers, the real jihad — the non-violent conquest of the West — proceeds apace. And we’re glad to lend a hand.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (1)

Spring Is In The Air!

January 30, 2012 – 9:15 pm

How wonderful it is to see democracy flowering at last in the Maghreb! It would be too much, though, to expect everything to be put right all at once, after so many years of ruthless oppression.

Even though Egypt’s newly elected political leaders have now consolidated their parliamentary power in the wake of last year’s exhilarating “Facebook revolution”, their chief ideologist Yusuf al-Qaradawi (last mentioned in these pages here and here) realizes nevertheless that the long-overdue reforms his homeland yearns for will take time to implement, and must be phased in gradually.

Patience! It may be several years, for example, before there can be any chopping off of hands.

Learn more here.

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

The Great Divide

January 30, 2012 – 11:51 am

At the Washington Post’s website there’s an item titled “Obama: The most polarizing president. Ever.” The article looks over the gap between Presidential job-approval and job-disapproval ratings (by respondent’s party affiliation) over the years, and concludes that Mr. Obama has divided the nation more than any third-year President ever has. (In a recent poll, 80% of Democrats said they approved of his performance, while only 12% of Republicans did.)

But as divisive as Mr. Obama’s presidency has been, it would be wrong (at least in part) to blame the man: the issue is systemic. We read:

What do those numbers tell us? Put simply: that the country is hardening along more and more strict partisan lines.

While it’s easy to look at the numbers cited above and conclude that Obama has failed at his mission of bringing the country together, a deeper dig into the numbers in the Gallup poll suggests that the idea of erasing the partisan gap is simply impossible, as political polarization is rising rapidly.

Out of the ten most partisan years in terms of presidential job approval in Gallup data, seven ”” yes, seven ”” have come since 2004. Bush had a run between 2004 and 2007 in which the partisan disparity of his job approval was at 70 points or higher.

There is a broadening ideological schism in American sentiment on major issues of fundamental importance: the ever-increasing scale of federal spending and scope of intrusive federal regulation; nation-building abroad; the indifference of the Federal government to most illegal immigration, and outright antipathy to states who try to act when Washington abdicates; institutionalized racial and ethnic preferences that consistently disfavor white, Anglo-European people and culture; refugee-resettlement scams; foreign aid to nations that hate us; radical multiculturalism and non-discrimination; and so on.

The rift between these two constituencies is only getting wider and deeper and angrier, and that trend isn’t going to change. So as I’ve been saying for some time now: the practical issue is not that liberals and conservatives disagree about these things — it’s that they can’t get away from each other. This seems to me little different from the religious and ethnic tensions that have torn countries apart, often violently, throughout history. Such things rarely turn out well, and I don’t expect this will, either.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (13)

Mitt Schlag

January 29, 2012 – 11:16 pm

Hey, maybe we’re going to win this thing after all!

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

John Bushnell

January 29, 2012 – 12:06 am

The music biz isn’t always fair. A lot of mediocre talent makes it big, and there have always been world-class players who never get the wider recognition they deserve, and spend their working lives playing for a devoted local following far from the big-city spotlight. One such is my old friend John Bushnell, whom I’ve known since we attended the fifth grade together, back in my hometown of Princeton, N.J.

When I left New Jersey and headed for Gotham back in the mid-1970’s, I managed to land a job in a top recording studio, and since then I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with many of the world’s best guitarists. But I’ll put John up against any of them.

You tell me. Here’s how John plays the blues. And here’s his version of the immortal Voodoo Chile.

By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (4)

Benthic Bafflement in the Baltic

January 28, 2012 – 1:40 pm

Here’s a curious item: a strange, roughly circular object, about the size of a 747, found last July at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. It even comes with what some are calling “drag marks”, hundreds of feet long.

It looks like this:

What is it? A UFO? Kvenland?

I’m dead boring when it comes to this sort of stuff — so I’m guessing that it’ll turn out to be a geological feature of some sort: a protuberant basalt column or such like, and those “drag marks” just a “shadow” caused by seafloor currents.

But hey, you never know. Maybe Kvenland.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (6)

Nuggets

January 27, 2012 – 11:21 pm

Here, courtesy of Bill Vallicella, is an appalling story: a young woman who has eaten nothing but chicken nuggets all her life, and was finally taken to the hospital after collapsing. I suppose this is no different from somebody drinking herself to death, but one does wonder what her parents must have been thinking. (Our own son was a very choosy eater, so I understand how difficult it can be — but the lovely Nina and I did at least manage to get a modest variety of groceries into him, and now he’s 6’4″.)

What is also appalling is that this lurid item is what I’m passing along today from Bill’s exceptional website; in particular he has just written a set of three pieces on the “illusion” of free will (here, here, and here) that are far more worthy of comment.

But so swamped have I been with work the past couple of days that I’ll have to pass, for now (other than to say that Bill rightly zeroes in on the distinction between, on the one hand, deliberation and choice — which we certainly are capable of, and are central features of our humanity — and, on the other, non-deterministic, “free” deliberation, which I believe is asking too much).

Do go read them yourself, though. And if you like, we have a linked series of posts of our own on the subject, beginning here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Frightful

January 27, 2012 – 12:08 am

I’ve been working all day, with no time to write. I won’t send you off empty-handed, though: here’s a singular series of illustrations made by the artist John Vassos for his 1931 collection Phobias.

By Malcolm | Posted in Art | Comments (1)

The Bubble Test

January 25, 2012 – 8:12 pm

Are you tucked away in an elite intellectual and cultural cocoon, isolated from America’s ‘vibrant’ popular mainstream?

One can only hope. Find out here.

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

Gas Guzzler

January 25, 2012 – 10:24 am

With a hat-tip to the indefatigable JK, here’s something new about to make its debut: the Tata MiniCat. Not what you want for traversing the Interstate system, but perfect for getting around locally — and cheaply.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

Fish Story

January 24, 2012 – 11:34 pm

We were on the road all day, so all I have tonight is this odd item from long ago, in which goldfish bowls were banned in Monza, Italy. Apparently, according to the town council’s Giampietro Mosca, a fish kept in a curved glass bowl “has a distorted view of reality … and suffers because of this.”

Nonsense. The same could be said about most of my liberal friends, and they seem perfectly happy.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (18)

Here Comes The Sun

January 24, 2012 – 1:02 am

It seems old Sol has just launched a gigantic flare our way — the biggest in seven years — and we will notice its effects on Tuesday.

While you’re waiting, here’s a fantastic gallery of solar images. My favorites: numbers 15 and 16.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (1)

Software Professionals: A Field Guide To Indentification

January 23, 2012 – 10:56 pm

Here’s how you can tell working coders from computer-science Ph.Ds:

Make them mad. We all know when you’re angry you should count to 10; this should be sufficient for distinguishing the two species.

The Coder:

“zero…one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine.”

The Ph.D:

“one…two.”

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (4)

Buffalo

January 23, 2012 – 7:16 pm

Bored? Then spend a few minutes contemplating this grammatically correct and semantically coherent sentence:

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

Read all about it here, and here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (4)

This Ain’t No Party

January 23, 2012 – 6:39 pm

Here’s a funny line:

“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.”

Funny? Well, not so much, maybe. According to a tart item at the Corner yesterday by Mark Steyn, Mr. Romney actually said this in a stump speech to explain his rationale for running. I’m still trying to figure out whether the quote is genuine or not, but the fact that it even seems plausible to the many people who, according to my brief web search, appear to have taken it as genuine indicates that we have a problem here.

And of course we do have a problem here; the lack of a candidate who is both a solid conservative and capable of winning in November has me, and obviously the rest of conservative America, worried. There will be nobody riding up on a white stallion to carry the battle to Mr. Obama; it’s going to have to be Mitt or Newt (or certain defeat with Rick Santorum).

In South Carolina Romney only got a centrist, upscale fraction of the voters, while Gingrich grabbed everyone to the right. I’ll assume that in the general election this same conservative base, having no other choice, will rally behind whoever is running against Barack Obama, and so will vote for Romney if he becomes the nominee. The battle, then, is for those in the middle, and I think Romney has a better shot at those in the general election than Newt does — so I think the Buckley Rule (nominate the most conservative candidate who can win) favors Romney here. But does he have a better chance at winning the center than Barack Obama? Only if he ups his game considerably. Gingrich’s pugnacious resurgence, which will seriously test Romney’s mettle should give him incentive to do so.

I hope he can manage it. One thing all of us agree on: this election really, really matters.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (8)

Coming Soon!

January 22, 2012 – 11:39 pm

More on the blessings of socialized medicine, from the Daily Mail.

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

Discuss

January 22, 2012 – 11:26 pm

What say you, readers? Is this child abuse?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (4)

Fun With Fluids

January 22, 2012 – 11:08 pm

When you mix cornstarch with water, you get a gloopy liquid with a strange property: its viscosity increases the faster you try to move through it or deform it. Back when my kids were in grade school, they informed me that the stuff now has an official name: “oobleck”.

It turns out that oobleck behaves very entertainingly indeed when pumped with low-frequency acoustic energy. Have a look here.

That’s oobleck at 30 Hz. at the other end of the acoustical spectrum is ultrasound, which is used in cool-mist humidifiers. Here’s a clip of that in action.

Finally, we have “ferrofluid”: an emulsion of surfactant-isolated ferromagnetic nanoparticles suspended in a carrier such as kerosene. Ferrofluid does some very entertaining things in a magnetic flux gradient, as you can see here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)