Free To Obey

November 3, 2011 – 11:17 am

A while back I wrote a post examining why a society’s need to maintain public harmony in the face of increasing diversity necessarily comes at the expense of meaningful liberties. George Will takes up the same topic in his latest column, Conformity for diversity’s sake.

We read:

Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure “diversity of thought and opinion’ we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university’s policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.

Last year, after a Christian fraternity allegedly expelled a gay undergraduate because of his sexual practices, Vanderbilt redoubled its efforts to make the more than 300 student organizations comply with its “long-standing nondiscrimination policy.’ That policy, says a university official, does not allow the Christian Legal Society “to preclude someone from a leadership position based on religious belief.’ So an organization formed to express religious beliefs, including the belief that homosexual activity is biblically forbidden, is itself effectively forbidden.

…Here, however, is how progressivism limits freedom by abolishing the public-private distinction: First, a human right ”” to, say, engage in homosexual practices ”” is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.

…The question, at Vanderbilt and elsewhere, should not be whether a particular viewpoint is right but whether an expressive association has a right to espouse it. Unfortunately, in the name of tolerance, what is tolerable is being defined ever more narrowly.

Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive’ public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.

The point: as social diversity increases, commonality decreases. In a Venn diagram plotting beliefs, customs, traditions, and social mores amongst a society’s various groups, as diversity increases there will be a smaller and smaller area in which all the circles overlap. In terms of public policy, enforcing “non-discrimination” maintaining “harmony” means that everything outside of that dwindling region must be excluded from the public square — requiring ever-increasing restrictions on liberty. We are reminded daily by our ruling elites that “our diversity is our strength”, but the truth — a truth that was simple common sense in a saner era — is that it comes at a heavy cost. What is intolerable to an ideology that sees Diversity as the greatest possible good is the simple, natural fact that discrimination — meaning, at its most basic, “we are this and not that” — is intrinsic to, and essential for, the very existence of culture itself.

Read the whole column here.

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

Islamism, Or Just Islam?

November 2, 2011 – 12:56 pm

Over at NRO today, Andrew McCarthy and Robert Spencer debate the distinction between Islam and “Islamism”. Mr. Spencer argues that Islam is in its very essence “Islamist”: that its core doctrines, on any coherent and broadly acceptable interpretation, are normative and prescriptive not only spiritually and socially, but also legally and politically. Mr. McCarthy insists that although this is generally true, that there are many Muslims around the world who choose not to embrace political Islam means that the distinction remains an important one.

It’s a substantive exchange, and worth your time. While I agree in principle with Mr. McCarthy’s point — that there are certainly, particularly here in the West, many self-professed Muslims who are not politically “Islamist”, and therefore the term is a useful one — the fact remains that a supremacist interpretation of Islam flows coherently, naturally, and persuasively from Muslim scripture and tradition, has been the “mainstream” interpretation throughout history, and continues to be so now. Wherever Islam goes, there will be “Islamism”.

Read the McCarthy piece here, then Robert Spencer’s reply here.

Note: I realize, of course, that to some of you this exchange will just seem like two black-hearted xenophobes arguing about how many jihadis can dance on the head of a pin. Feel free not to comment.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion, Jihad | Comments (0)

It Depends

November 2, 2011 – 10:46 am

Here’s one for you, language weenies: can you think of an irregular English verb that becomes a regular verb when applied to a particular subject? (I’ll post the answer if nobody gets it in a day or so.)

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (6)

Bukimi no Tani Genshō

November 1, 2011 – 9:42 pm

The “uncanny valley” is getting creepier all the time. Have a little tour — here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and, perhaps creepiest of all, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

Check, Please

October 31, 2011 – 10:03 pm

The Social Security system is now cash-negative, as reported today in the Washington Post. The shortfall will henceforward steepen sharply, as hordes of my own demographic cohort enter the twilight decades of unproductive geezerdom.

Rick Perry was bastinadoed in the press for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”, but it’s hard to see in what meaningful sense he was wrong to say so. Walter Russell Meade elaborates.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (12)

Sad Sack

October 31, 2011 – 9:06 pm

I don’t know what to say about this, so I’ll just pass it along without comment.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (5)

Steve Jobs, Remembered

October 31, 2011 – 11:29 am

Here’s a eulogy to Steve Jobs, written by the sister he met for the first time as an adult. It was published in our “newspaper of record”, but for those of you who might not have access to their little walled garden, I’ve reproduced it in full below the fold.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (12)

Into The Sunset

October 30, 2011 – 9:50 pm

Here’s an item for those of you with an interest in martial arts: the last surviving master of the Sikh fighting system shastar vidya.

It’s sad to see these cultural relics dying out. Good to see, at least, that Llap-Goch is still alive and well.

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (1)

A Man In Full

October 30, 2011 – 1:32 pm

Are you a bluestocking conservative appalled by the ill-bred riff-raff on the GOP ticket? Worried that those Tea Party rabble are steering dangerously close to the wind, with too much sail and too little keel? You’re not alone — the same concerns have darkened cocktail-hour chats from Amagansett to Edgartown, from Princeton to Pawling to Penobscot.

You’ll be glad to know, then, that a new champion has taken the field to bear the standard forward in 2012. The influential commentator Iowahawk has kindly offered his prominent website as the venue for our candidate’s formal announcement.

Read it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Wake Of The Flood

October 29, 2011 – 9:29 pm

Strong stuff yesterday from Andy McCarthy on our doings in Libya. Excerpt:

[A] throng of seething Islamists stripped, beat, paraded, and finally shot Qaddafi execution-style, all the while screaming the signature “Allahu Akbar!’ battle cry with a fervor that would have made Mohamed Atta blush. They then shoved the despot’s corpse into a refrigerator ”” to maintain it for further triumphant display before thousands of gawking spectators. Too bad there was no official from the Obama administration’s Islamic Thought Police on hand to remind the mob of the Koran’s oft-quoted (but oftener ignored) teaching that to slay a single person is to slay all of mankind.

The murder was facilitated by NATO forces operating under false pretenses: Claiming they were merely protecting civilians, they set about hunting down Qaddafi, only to help usher in a new era of Islamist governance. The bill for NATO’s services was willfully footed by the Obama administration ”” which had previously funded the Libyan regime on the oft-repeated grounds that Qaddafi was a valuable counterterrorism ally, but which then initiated a war against Qaddafi in the absence of any provocation or American national-security interests. NATO’s war of aggression is already inuring to the benefit of America’s Islamist enemies. What’s not to celebrate?

More here.

It would be interesting to get Mr. McCarthy in a room with James Taranto, who a couple of days ago wrote this:

Writing on Commentary’s website, Max Boot has a useful corrective to some of the distraught commentary you’ve probably been hearing of late about the rise of Shariah in North Africa in the wake of the Arab Spring:

“Saying a country’s legal system will be based on sharia law is about as descriptive as saying it will be based on the Ten Commandants [sic] or the teachings of Christ. Like Christianity, Judaism or any other religion, Islam is subject to countless interpretations. Sharia law has meant many different things in many different countries across the ages. Even Islamic fundamentalists are not all alike. Wahhabis rule in both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, yet liquor is readily available in the latter but not the former.
Islamist parties do not necessarily take their inspiration from the Taliban, Hamas, or the Iranian mullahs. In fact, the failure of all three of those Islamist regimes”“in Afghanistan, Gaza and Iran–to deliver economic or social progress has done much to discredit them in the Muslim world. That doesn’t mean most Muslims are ready to embrace a strictly secular regime; but then even in Europe, Christian Democratic parties are common, and in the United States many political candidates claim to take their marching orders from the Almighty.”

It’s also worth noting that a regime can be “strictly secular” and also horrifically oppressive, as Justice Antonin Scalia noted earlier this month in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

” “I ask [law students], “Why do you think America is such a free country? What is it in our Constitution that makes us what we are?” And I guarantee you that the response I will get–and you will get this from almost any American . . . the answer would be: freedom of speech; freedom of the press; no unreasonable searches and seizures; no quartering of troops in homes . . . those marvelous provisions of the Bill of Rights.
But then I tell them, “If you think a bill of rights is what sets us apart, you’re crazy.” Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights. Every president for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it. Literally, it was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!
Of course, it’s just words on paper, what our Framers would have called a “parchment guarantee.” “

We are far from confident that the democratic experiment in the Arab world is going to work out well. But if you start telling us that Libya is sure to be worse off than it was under Moammar Gadhafi, merely because he was “secular,” we will take you about as seriously as we took people who said the same about Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

While I certainly share Mr. Taranto’s lack of confidence that the democratic experiment in the Arab world is going to work out well, he misses the point here, I think. First, nobody is suggesting that secular regimes can’t be authoritarian. This is a non sequitur; of course they can. (I wonder also exactly what argument he seeks to advance by citing Justice Scalia’s remarks, which seem clearly to say that a nation’s freedom depends on the nature and temperament of its people — certainly true, but the precedent in the Maghreb, then, is not encouraging.) The point is that there is every reason to worry that a new Islamist regime in Libya will be a far worse problem for Western interests in the region (and, in particular, for Israel) than the continuation of a Qaddafi regime would have been. Mr. Qaddafi was despicable, and in his day fought actively against us, but in recent years he had been brought to heel, and had been given our assurances that as long as he behaved, he needn’t worry about U.S. interference.

As for Mr. Boot, the same applies: that he can buy a drink in Bahrain is no cause for optimism about the emerging Islamist powers in the area. They have replaced durable autocracies with whom we had stable working relationships, are tied to al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, and will almost certainly become hothouses for all manner of anti-Western, anti-Israeli perfidy. Already Libyan weapons are flooding toward Israel through Egypt (where their safe passage is possible once again thanks to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, also with U.S. support). It isn’t necessary for Islamist regimes to “take their inspiration from the Taliban, Hamas, or the Iranian mullahs” to be antipathetic to our interests in the region and the world, though some of the new ones likely will. For them to take their inspiration from the core traditions and historical example of Islam itself, and from the prevailing sentiments of the regional ummah, will be amply sufficient.

People tell me I’m too pessimistic about all of this. I hope they’re right. We’ll soon see.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (12)

That’s Right, We Bad

October 29, 2011 – 12:03 pm

In Genesis 1:26, God promised Man “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

Here’s how it’s done.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (20)

“You’ve Changed…”

October 27, 2011 – 11:35 am

Here’s an awkward item courtesy of my son Nick, who’s now a senior staffer over at Wish I Didn’t Know.

Don’t know about you, but I really hate it when this happens.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (1)

Another Look At Income Inequality

October 27, 2011 – 11:28 am

Over at the AEI blog, a new piece by Jim Pethokoukis calls into question some received wisdom about income inequality. Disappointingly, it carries a provocative title — 7 Reasons Why Obama Is Wrong About Income Inequality — but then, as one reader points out in the the comment thread, completely neglects to cite the particular claims of Mr. Obama’s that it purports to refute.

Still well worth reading, though. Here. See also this.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (14)

Interesting Times

October 26, 2011 – 2:08 pm

If our previous item wasn’t gloomy enough for you, here’s a dark assessment of the gathering storm beyond our borders, from the Center For Security Policy. A longish excerpt:

Muammar Gadhafi’s death last week prompted the Obama administration to trumpet the President’s competence as Commander-in-Chief and the superiority of his “small footprint,” “lead-from-behind” approach to waging war over the more traditional – and costly and messy – one pursued by George W. Bush. The bloom came off that false rose on Sunday when Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the chairman of the National Transitional Council, repeatedly declared his government’s fealty to shariah, Islam’s brutally repressive, totalitarian political-military-legal doctrine.
Among other things, Abdul-Jalil said shariah would be the “basic source” of all legislation. Translation: Forget about representative democracy. Under shariah, Allah makes the laws, not man.

In short, the result of Mr. Obama’s $2 billion dollar expenditure to oust Gadhafi is a regime that will be led by jihadists, controls vast oil reserves and has inherited a very substantial arsenal (although some of it – including reportedly as many as 20,000 surface-to-air missiles – has “gone missing.”) This scarcely can be considered a victory for the United States and will probably prove a grave liability.

An Islamist party called Nahda seems likely to have captured the lion’s share of the votes cast in the first free election in Tunisia. While we are assured it is a “moderate” religious party, the same has long been said of Turkey’s governing AKP party. Unfortunately, we have lately seen the latter’s true colors as it has become ever-more-insistent at home on jettisoning the secular form of government handed down by Attaturk and acted ever-more-aggressively abroad. A similar transformation can be expected, later if not sooner, of any shariah-adherent political movement.

Meanwhile in Egypt, the agenda of the Islamists’ mother ship – the Muslim Brotherhood – is being adopted even before elections formally bring it to power. The interim military government has abetted efforts to punish and even kill the Coptic Christian minority. It has facilitated the arming of the Brotherhood’s franchise in Gaza, Hamas, and allowed the Sinai to become the launching pad for al Qaeda and others’ attacks on Israel.
Egypt’s transitional regime also helped broker the odious exchange of over 1,000 convicted terrorists held by Israel for a single soldier kidnapped and held hostage for five years by Hamas. Upon their release, even the convicts with Jewish blood on their hands received heroes’ welcomes even as they affirmed their desire to destroy Israel and called for the seizure of still more Israelis to spring their comrades still behind bars. This does not augur well for either the Jewish State or for our interests.

The increasingly mercurial Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has announced that – despite the long-running, immensely costly and ongoing U.S. effort to protect his kleptocratic government – in a war between Pakistan and the United States, Afghanistan would side with Pakistan. The magnitude of this insulting repudiation of America is all the greater since Pakistan is widely seen as doing everything it can to reestablish the Taliban in Kabul.

And in Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has touted his success in thwarting Washington’s belated (and half-hearted) efforts to keep a significant number of U.S. forces in his country after the end of this year. Already, his coalition partner and fellow Iranian cats-paw, Muqtada al-Sadr, is boasting that he will also drive out the American contractor personnel who are, for the moment, expected to provide a measure of security after the military withdraws. In that case, we may well see the mullahs’ agents take over a U.S. embassy for the second time since 1979 – this one the newest, largest and most expensive in the world.

Alarmist? Over the top? Perhaps, but not by much, in my opinion. Read the whole thing here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (25)

It Was A Bright Cold Day In April…

October 26, 2011 – 12:07 pm

Streetlights are supposed to dispel gloom, but the new-and-improved ones described in this item are having the opposite effect on me, I’m afraid.

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

Current Event

October 26, 2011 – 10:26 am

A great wave of tsunami debris is heading east from Japan, it seems. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

That’s Rich

October 26, 2011 – 9:50 am

On Piers Morgan’s show last night, the pinguid propagandist Michael Moore insisted that that he is not a member of “the 1%”.

According to IRS data, in 2009 the top one percent of earners reported an adjusted gross income of $343,927 or more. Mr. Moore is worth an estimated $50 million.

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (2)

Declaration Of Dependence

October 26, 2011 – 9:27 am

Just in from ABC News: Obama warns us that if he loses in 2012 the US could be facing a “painful era of self-reliance”, and that we Americans would be “on our own”.

If that frightens more people than it elates, this nation is doomed.

*        *        *

Update: In this afternoon’s Best of the Web, james Taranto comments on the same item:

Oh no! Horror of horrors! Obama is the only thing standing between us and having to rely on ourselves! And do you know what they call people who rely on themselves?

Adults.

…Obama explicitly rejects the American ethos of self-reliance. He sees dependence on government not as an evil, if sometimes a necessary one, but as a goal to be pursued.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Och, Lassie – Dae Ye Nae Spick Sassenach?

October 26, 2011 – 8:53 am

Among the snazzier features of the new iPhone is a voice-activated assistant called Siri. My daughter has one of the new phones and gave me a demo the other day, and I was duly impressed (although this is obviously a technology that is still in its infancy).

Apparently, though, Siri is having trouble adjusting to life in my ancestral homeland. Story here.

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

Amazin’

October 25, 2011 – 11:28 pm

25 years ago today.

By Malcolm | Posted in Sport | Comments (0)

Genesis

October 25, 2011 – 8:19 pm

Researchers at UC Berkeley have persuaded the Universe to disclose another of its secrets: the origin of Jewish humor. Story here.

What’s that you say, boychik? You lack familiarity with the subject matter? Well relax, you’re mishpocheh, so for you, no charge. Look below the fold for a few free samples.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery, General | Comments (0)

Well, Blow Me Down

October 24, 2011 – 6:51 pm

Startlingly, it appears that the new government in Libya will be an Islamist arrangement, based on Sharia law.

Vlad Tepes has a video clip, with translated subtitles, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (2)

Bismillah!

October 24, 2011 – 1:20 pm

OK, folks, I have what you’ve all been waiting for: the new Bohemian Rhapsody video from William Shatner — featuring John Wetton, no less.

Enjoy.

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

Feat Of Clay

October 24, 2011 – 1:09 pm

Here’s an entertaining link: a collection of outstanding stop-motion animations.

By Malcolm | Posted in Art | Comments (1)

Cross-fire

October 24, 2011 – 12:58 pm

In Afghanistan, enemy fighters routinely shoot at our MEDEVAC helicopters — which, as a matter of Defense Department policy, fly unarmed, in conformance with Geneva Convention guidelines. The war correspondent Michael Yon has written an open letter to the President and the DOD arguing that this policy is absurd, and must be changed.

Read it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Military | Comments (0)

Can’t Buy Me Love

October 22, 2011 – 2:20 pm

It appears that the late Muammar Qaddafi was the richest person in the world, worth over $200 billion. Here.

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

Sam Harris On Consciousness, Cont’d

October 20, 2011 – 10:44 pm

Sam Harris has just published a follow-up post about the mystery of consciousness. He is frankly pessimistic that any conceivable advances in neuroscience — and he is a neuroscientist — can ever lead us to the bridge we seek between our ever-richer model of the physical world and an understanding of subjective awareness:

It is easy to see how the contents of consciousness might be understood at the level of the brain. Consider, for instance, our experience of seeing an object””its color, contours, apparent motion, location in space, etc. arise in consciousness as a seamless unity, even though this information is processed by many separate systems in the brain. Thus when a golfer prepares to hit a shot, he does not first see the ball’s roundness, then its whiteness, and only then its position on the tee. Rather, he enjoys a unified perception of a ball. Many neuroscientists believe that this phenomenon of “binding’ can be explained by disparate groups of neurons firing in synchrony. Whether or not this theory is true, it is perfectly intelligible””and it suggests, as many other findings in neuroscience do, that the character of our experience can often be explained in terms of its underlying neurophysiology. However, when we ask why it should be “like something’ to see in the first place, we are returned to the mystery of consciousness in full.

For these reasons, it is difficult to imagine what experimental findings could render the emergence of consciousness comprehensible. This is not to say, however, that our understanding of ourselves won’t change in surprising ways through our study of the brain. There seems to be no limit to how a maturing neuroscience might reshape our beliefs about the nature of conscious experience. Are we fully conscious during sleep and merely failing to form memories? Can human minds be duplicated or merged? Is it possible to love your neighbor as yourself? A precise, functional neuroanatomy of our mental states would help to answer such questions””and the answers might well surprise us. And yet, whatever insights arise from correlating mental and physical events, it seems unlikely that one side of the world will be fully reduced to the other.

While we know many things about ourselves in anatomical, physiological, and evolutionary terms, we do not know why it is “like something’ to be what we are. The fact that the universe is illuminated where you stand””that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character””is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in this universe. How is it that unconscious events can give rise to consciousness? Not only do we have no idea, but it seems impossible to imagine what sort of idea could fit in the space provided. Therefore, although science may ultimately show us how to truly maximize human well-being, it may still fail to dispel the fundamental mystery of our mental life. That doesn’t leave much scope for conventional religious doctrines, but it does offer a deep foundation (and motivation) for introspection. Many truths about ourselves will be discovered in consciousness directly, or not discovered at all.

For all this gloom, though, about the possibility of our ever understanding the nature of consciousness, Dr. Harris does not seem to doubt that consciousness is indeed, somehow, the product of the living, physical brain. (It certainly isn’t as if he thinks human consciousness is a splinter of the mind of God, or something.)

If this is true, then — that in some way our conscious minds really do arise from, and depend for their existence upon, the workings of our material brains — then I have to ask once again, as I always do when this subject comes up: why should our inability, as yet, even to imagine what a true theory of consciousness might look like be taken as evidence that such a theory will never be forthcoming? If what appears to be happening really is what is actually happening — that a process in the physical world gives rise to a phenomenon we can all observe — why should we be convinced that we shall never be able to explain it? Nobody had the slightest inkling how to answer the riddles that tormented the physicists of the late 19th century until the radical — and, what is more to the point, breathtakingly, unimaginably counterintuitive — insights of Einstein and his contemporaries shattered and reconstructed the intellectual landscape. It was Einstein who, when all around him were baffled and losing hope, did exactly what Dr. Harris is calling for here: he imagined “what sort of idea could fit in the space provided”.

I understand the argument that in principle we could describe the working of the brain down to a fare-thee-well and still only have physical, not subjective, facts in hand. But so far, we are nowhere near even to understanding the correlates of consciousness in exhaustive microscopic, neurological, chemical, quantum-mechanical, or computational detail. From an engineering, heuristic perspective, that’s the least we need: to be able to identify with predictive certainty exactly what physical states, processes, and above all, changes correlate precisely with particular effects in consciousness. Is that enough? No, and that’s the point that all skeptics raise: you can have all that, and you still haven’t said what consciousness is, or why those correlations are what they are. But it will only be when you have reduced the facts, the correlations, down to that level of detail — when you can say this bit of matter entering exactly this state, or this pattern of activity across the whole brain, is both necessary and sufficient to cause this effect in consciousness — that you will have focused the problem to the point where some indefatigable genius, some Einstein of the mind, may be able to insert his crowbar.

Can I know this will ever happen? No, of course not. Perhaps I’m too optimistic. Our capacity to understand the world may limited in ways we can never even conceive of, and the answer to this riddle may simply be beyond our powers of imagination. But by the same token, nobody can possibly know that it won’t.

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain | Comments (2)

Sic Semper Tyrannis

October 20, 2011 – 1:02 pm

Muammar Qaddafi is dead. As we await the flowering of secular Jeffersonian democracy in Libya, let us pause to offer our condolences to senators Lieberman, Graham, and McCain.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (20)

World Wide Web

October 20, 2011 – 10:18 am

Interesting item from New Scientist: the global corporate network that dominates the world’s economy.

Here.

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

Take That, Temple-Pants!

October 19, 2011 – 6:43 pm

The Texan pastor Robert Jeffress caused quite a ruction last week with his endorsement of Rick Perry for the GOP nod. Mr. Jeffress said that he thought all good Christians should prefer a Christian as their president, and that in his opinion this disqualified Mitt Romney — because the “cult” of Mormonism is something other than real Christianity.

These entertaining remarks seemed to bother just about everybody, as far as I can tell (except other evangelical Christians, of course.) Not me, though: I like a man who comes right out and says what he thinks, and I thought Pastor Jeffress was making perfectly good sense. Why wouldn’t a Christian like him want a Christian president? Why wouldn’t an evangelical Baptist think Mormonism is a bizarre perversion of Christianity? (It certainly seems that way to me, and I’m just a Hell-bound, godless heathen.)

Anyway, the Washington Post has lent Mr. Jeffress its pulpit, and he has responded with what I think is an excellent riposte. You can read it here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Religion | Comments (9)

“Minstrelsy”

October 19, 2011 – 6:00 pm

Despite his strong position in the polls, Herman Cain may suddenly have a real problem on his hands. According to this item in the New York Times, his behavior has clearly strayed beyond what is approved and permitted for a member of his race. (Even beyond running as a Republican, I mean, which is of course bad enough.)

Just so you can avoid any unpleasantness, here’s a simple rule of thumb: if you find yourself disinclined to vote for four more years of Barack Obama, you’re probably a racist. And if you find yourself liking Herman Cain, ditto.

Remember: all crimes begin with a thought!

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

In The Ocean Of The Blind…

October 19, 2011 – 1:04 pm

…this guy‘s the king.

By Malcolm | Posted in Rubbish | Comments (1)

Yeah, That Qualifies

October 18, 2011 – 8:44 pm

My friend and neighbor Danny Fisher started a website a few months ago called Wish I Didn’t Know. Here’s an item that really measures up.

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

Bibi Goes Soft

October 18, 2011 – 4:57 pm

The captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit was released today, after five years of imprisonment by Hamas. His ransom? It included the release of 1,027 prisoners, many of them terrorists.

Will some of the released prisoners commit further acts of terror, meaning that Shalit was ransomed with the blood of Jews yet to be murdered? Almost certainly so. Will the Israeli government’s willingness to pay this thousandfold ransom embolden Hamas to commit further abductions? Again, almost certainly so.

Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick makes these points, and more — including another term of Shalit’s ransom you may not have been aware of.

Here.

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

WTF? NFI

October 17, 2011 – 11:19 pm

Consciousness not mysterious enough for you? Well, NASA’s got 600 other puzzles for you to chew on.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (0)

Sam Harris: Consciousness Is Puzzling

October 16, 2011 – 10:33 pm

In his latest blog post, Sam Harris comments on the mystery of consciousness, and vaguely stakes out a position. One thing he does make quite clear is that he cannot accept what his friend Daniel Dennett seems to be saying, which is that consciousness is just some sort of illusion. In this he’s in good company, because neither can John Searle, David Chalmers, Bill Vallicella, or just about anybody else, including me. The very assertion seems to contradict itself, and even after having read a great deal of Dennett over the years I can’t get my head round what he’s trying to put across in this regard. I fully understand, and agree with, what Dennett says about our being fooled into thinking our conscious experience is far more continuous and plenary than it really is, but there remains the undeniable fact that we have conscious, subjective experiences, and I quite agree with Sam Harris that “Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.” I think Harris oversimplifies when he says “either the lights are on or they are not” — I would say that the truth involves something like a dimmer switch — but yes, at bottom there is a binary fact of the matter: an organism has some sort of subjective experience or it doesn’t.

The rest of the post is just a throwing-up of hands. After pausing to remark on the current disfavor of “mind-first’ ontologies fashionable in the mid-20th century in favor of reductionist materialism (with his apparent approval), he goes on to say that the currently prevailing view — that consciousness emerges from the activities of certainly types of matter, suitably configured — is “incomprehensible”:

To say that consciousness emerged at some point in the evolution of life doesn’t give us an inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes, even in principle.
I believe that this notion of emergence is incomprehensible””rather like a naive conception of the big bang….

[T]he idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive””which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course””“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.’ We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles’ and “2 plus 2 equals 7.’ But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so.

Well, I don’t know what it means to Harris to “properly” conceive an idea, but it seems to me that the idea that consciousness emerges somehow from the activity of our brains (a distinction needs to be made here between what our biological brains do and mere “information processing”, I think) is surely conceivable, and not incoherently or incomprehensibly so, despite our ignorance as to how the trick is done. It may be that the answer will elude us forever; to fully understand it may even require intelligence, or ways of modeling the world, quite beyond what our modified ape brains are capable of. But the hypothesis itself is comprehensible enough, and given all the evidence that consciousness is supervenient upon the physical brain — and the fact that the only loci of consciousness that we know to exist are our own supremely complex brains, which came into existence through a gradual process of evolution from inanimate matter — I don’t think it’s about to go away anytime soon.

But I will admit: it’s a poser.

You can read Harris’s post here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain | Comments (12)

No Mortal Place At All

October 15, 2011 – 11:30 pm

Here’s a real treat: the great Gary Brooker at the peak of his powers, in this live performance of A Salty Dog from 1977.

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

I Am Here, And You Are My Sofa

October 14, 2011 – 10:56 pm

It’s been a long busy day, with no time for writing. I did run across this little item, though, just now: a new approach to sorting out the various authors of the Bible.

As I write, my friend G. Orcalimbo Jones at WOMR is playing Side 2 of Zappa’s One Size Fits All. What an incredible record.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (1)

The Sound Of Mucus

October 13, 2011 – 10:05 pm

I was looking at this website’s administrative “dashboard” yesterday, and noticed that I’ve accumulated 438 entries in the “Drafts” folder. I suppose it’s not uncommon for daily bloggers to build up a back-log in there; we’re always on the lookout for something to write about, and tend to become packrats. Whenever I get the germ of an idea for a post, or notice something interesting online, if I’m near a computer I’ll pop open WordPress and stash it away in a draft.

438 entries is a lot, though, and I think it’s time to do a little tidying up — so you might see some rather out-of-date items popping up here for a while as I go through them all, post what’s worth posting, and throw out the rest (with the exception, of course, of those posts for which the world simply is not yet ready).

Here, then, is an item from 2009 that somehow never made it to the big time: the Lung Flute.

By Malcolm | Posted in Curiosities | Comments (7)

Bert Jansch, 1943 – 2011

October 13, 2011 – 9:23 pm

We note, belatedly, the death of the great Scottish fingerstyle guitarist Bert Jansch, who exerted a formative influence on a great many better-known musicians. One in particular was Jimmy Page; I think you’ll hear the connection in this video clip. Another was Paul Simon; readers of a certain age may recognize this Jansch song from long ago.

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

Kurzweil’s Six Epochs

October 12, 2011 – 5:47 pm

Here’s a short video from Ray Kurzweil, in which he outlines his view of our progress thorough six “epochs” of the evolution of intelligence. I’m inclined to think he’s overlooking or ignoring some serious possible impediments to this progression, going forward (not to mention some unwelcome possible outcomes), but this is of course just a very brief clip.

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

Olio

October 11, 2011 – 12:59 pm

I’m working a long day today, so for now, just a few links:

A fold in the brain seems to have something to do with distinguishing reality from imagination.

A collection of “coffins” — math problems with relatively simple solutions that are hellishly difficult to find — used by Soviet schools to keep out Jews.

22 miles straight up in 90 seconds.

An interesting item about Zucotti Park.

A detailed examination of blackboards in porn.

Oh, and a plug for yours truly at 8:00.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (3)

That’s A Fine Motorbike

October 10, 2011 – 10:36 pm

Just ran across this clip, and enjoyed it too much not to post it here: Richard Thompson playing his classic 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.

What a voice. What a song. Enjoy.


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

At The Brink

October 10, 2011 – 4:04 pm

It seems unthinkable, but a familiar species that once could be found almost everywhere in the U.S. now stands on the verge of extinction.

Story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Fast And Curious

October 10, 2011 – 10:09 am

Charles Krauthammer, of all people, shares a joke inspired by recent doings at CERN:

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,’ says the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (3)

Ten

October 9, 2011 – 10:08 pm

The Northeast has been enjoying a fantastic spell of weather lately. Here in the Outer Cape, today was simply perfect: low humidity, cloudless azure skies, warm sweet sunshine, and temperatures in the upper seventies, with a fragrant, balmy breeze as gentle as a baby’s breath. At Newcomb Hollow Beach, it felt more like August — the parking lot three-quarters full, families basking in the sun, children splashing in the water.

Just before sunset I took a mile-long swim in Great Pond — almost certainly my last of the year, and by far the latest in the season I’ve ever done so. After a full September of cool and lengthening nights, the water was cold — but given the gift of a golden, late-summer day in the second week of October, how could I resist?

Soon the nights will turn cold for real, and the chill November storms will strip the leaves from the trees and batter the backshore beaches. But today was a day outside of time, a dreamlike, elongated present in which the world seemed to stand still. And as presents go, we couldn’t have asked for a nicer one.

By Malcolm | Posted in Marginalia, Cape Cod | Comments (0)

Hitch Lives

October 9, 2011 – 9:07 pm

Update here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

French Twist

October 7, 2011 – 10:59 pm

In our previous post about OWS, we linked to an item that’s been making the rounds today: this Huffington Post grumble from lesbian “electronic punk” musician JD Samson, who has become dissatisfied with how things are working out for her, affluence-wise. NRO’s Daniel Foster has add some pointed commentary over at the Corner. An excerpt:

The great, and probably terminal, flaw of the Left’s various grievance-group “isms’ is that they implicitly rely on a world in which trade-offs have been abolished. It isn’t just that Samson should be free to move to New York and consecrate herself to her “art.’ It’s that she should be free to do that while enjoying all the benefits of her choice and suffering none of the consequences. What she wants is not the freedom to choose but the freedom from having to choose.

What sort of worldview makes this fantasy conceivable? Well, if I had to pick just one French term of art popularized by a 19th-century German philologist to describe the Occupy Wall Street set and its attendants, it would be Nietzsche’s Ressentiment. Why does good old English “resentment’ not suffice? Why is the extra ”˜s’ and fancy French pronunciation required? Well, resentment is about begrudging the success of your betters as a way to avoid reflection on your own failures. The Nietzsche scholar Robert Solomon described resentment as an “impotence self-righteousness’ directed at your superiors, and contrasted it with anger (directed at your equals) and contempt (directed at your inferiors). But ressentiment is what happens when you take that impotent self-righteousness and define a whole morality of good and evil in terms of it, build a whole belief system out of it, build an ideology, a political movement ”” an occupation.

Spot on. Read the rest here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (31)

OWS Roundup

October 7, 2011 – 3:10 pm

The weather being particularly fine here in New York this week, with Gotham’s hibernal sleet and snow still well over the horizon, the occupation of Wall Street is humming along nicely, and has the attention of everyone in the chattering classes. (Including, obviously, my own.)

As longtime readers will know, the lovely Nina and I live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where the babies still wear red diapers, and where Hugo Chavez, were he ever to seek local office, would be regarded as worrisomely centrist. Naturally, sympathies for the crowd in Zucotti Park run strong in these parts, as I found in a conversation with an old friend just yesterday.

I generally avoid discussing politics around here, preferring to concentrate on more productive topics like the weather, but somehow the Wall Street scene came up anyway. I don’t know what gave away my sentiments — perhaps a momentary tightening of the masseter — but my interlocutor quickly pointed out that the OWS crowd was nothing like those Tea Party folks, who after all were all just a bunch of — and this is a direct quote — “hate-filled racists”. I suggested that they were neither, and pointed out also that the leading Tea Party candidate at the moment is Herman Cain, a black man, but I don’t think I got through, quite.

Just for a little perspective, then, on racial and ethnic neutrality, here’s one of the OWS participants articulating what, from what I’ve seen so far, appears to be rather a widely held view around Zucotti Park:


Antecedent causes aside, it’s hard to see just what sort of final solution this fellow is hoping for. Failing some way of rendering the United States entirely Judenfrei, perhaps OWS can at least petition the UN for statehood.

Meanwhile: white people — and especially you white bucks — are being made to learn your place and keep to it, according to the procedural rules of OWS’s revolutionary council. In this item we read:

Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly operates under a revolutionary “progressive stack.’ A normal “stack’ means those who wish to speak get in line. A progressive stack encourages women and traditionally marginalized groups speak before men, especially white men. This is something that has been in place since the beginning, it is necessary, and it is important.

Ah, democracy in action. (Zimbabwe style.) The wisdom of this, of course, is obvious: when robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s hard to see much point in asking Peter what he thinks about it all. (There may well come a point, though, when a sufficiently irritated Peter begins to push back, or at least decides his interests would be better served by putting as much distance between himself and Paul as possible.)

My friend being a thoroughgoingly bien-pensant Sloper, he made sure also to refer to the Tea Party as “extremist” — another important contradistinction as regards the sweet reason of the OWS squatters. Over at NRO, columnist Jonah Goldberg examines this view, beginning by noting that the stated goal of the leader of the movement is “to overthrow the government”. You can read Mr. Goldberg’s item here.

*        *        *

Also at NRO: a closer look at just who really makes up “the 99%”.

*        *        *

In a piece about Eric Hoffer a while back, I quoted this remark:

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.

Exempli gratia, here.

*        *        *

Finally, a persuasive piece over at Verum Serum argues that we really ought to be taking this uprising seriously. One thing in particular struck me, especially in light of a fascinating article I had just read on Tuesday in the science section of the Times. The article was about those curious amoeba-like critters known as “slime molds”.

What’s amazing about slime molds is that they blur, even more than the hymenoptera do, the distinction between individual and group. While ant and bee colonies work together as a team with astonishing group intelligence, the microscopic slime molds go one further. When times are good, they live separate lives, but when things go bad, they band together to form, not a team, but a single, mobile organism. It’s really something. (I first heard about all this when I was a young’un, and I’ve always wondered why they aren’t more famous.)

In Tuesday’s slime-mold article, we read:

Today, biologists no longer think of Dictyostelium as an embryo: It is more like a society of amoebas that come together for a common cause, for which some will sacrifice themselves.

The organisms respond to starvation by rushing together by the thousands into a single blob. The blob stretches out into a slug-shaped mass about one millimeter long (one twenty-fifth of an inch), which then crawls like a worm toward light.

The Verum Serum item made the following point:

Conservatives are individualists by nature so we deal with fear a bit differently. We buy guns. We buy gold. There are even some people out there stockpiling food just in case things get ugly. I’m not at that point myself but the point is, people on the right have plenty of fears about the future. We deal, mostly, by planning to handle it ourselves if necessary.

…

What do collectivists do when they’re scared? They gather. They gather together and express themselves with endless rallies and speeches and sit-ins and giant paper mache puppets (the appeal of which I’ve never understood) and of course occupations. That’s what they’re doing now.

Make of this what you will.

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

Hard To Believe

October 5, 2011 – 10:58 pm

Richard Feynman on beauty, and doubt.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)