Doyle Dykes

April 16, 2011 – 8:51 pm

Who’s Doyle Dykes? Just one of the best finger-pickers alive. If you’ve never heard him play, you’re in for a treat.

Here’s his version of that country classic, Wabash Cannonball.

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

Celebrity Deathmatch

April 15, 2011 – 4:10 pm

This might be worth watching (I can’t say for sure, because I haven’t watched it myself yet): a debate between Sam Harris and William Lane Craig.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion | Comments (2)

Those Darn Elections!

April 14, 2011 – 11:22 am

The conservative blogosphere is abuzz over Nancy Pelosi’s revealing remark that “Elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”

A sample here, from Steven Hayward at Powerline.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Chicken or Egg?

April 14, 2011 – 10:11 am

In a timely follow-up to our previous post, here’s an article from Science Daily:

Cultural Differences Are Evident Deep in the Brain of Caucasian and Asian People

The lead paragraph:

People in different cultures make different assumptions about the people around them, according to an upcoming study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The researchers studied the brain waves of people with Caucasian and Asian backgrounds and found that cultural differences in how we think about other people are embedded deep in our minds. Cultural differences are evident very deep in the brain, challenging a commonsense notion that culture is skin deep.

The assumption made by the researchers here is that the biology of the human brain, and therefore important aspects of the way it functions, are altered and conditioned by culture — as summed up in the closing paragraph:

“We often feel that culture is like clothes; you strip them off, and we are all humans,” [researcher Shinobu] Kitayama says. “There’s some truth to that, but studies like this begin to demonstrate that culture can go much deeper. What appears to be a natural being, or a human mind, may be culturally shaped or formed.”

Note the presumptive directionality here: culture determines biology. But where do cultural differences come from in the first place? They aren’t drawn from a deck of cards, and they don’t fall from the sky.

Far more likely, in my opinion: the same selection pressures that account for the radiations of biologically varying human groups are at the root of variations in culture. But it’s a two-way street: the memetic environment of culture itself can have a profound effect on differential reproduction, which means that once the ball gets rolling, culture and biology start feeding back into each other (for example, it seems likely to me that the selection pressure on Ashkenazi Jews for various cognitive skills, due to cultural restrictions over many centuries, is what resulted in that population’s having the highest average IQ of any human group).

So: chicken or egg? It’s more like chicken egg foo yung.

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

The Moral IS the Story

April 12, 2011 – 9:28 pm

In the (rambling) discussion thread to Sunday’s post, commenter Dom gave us a quote from Niall Ferguson’s book Civilization: The West and the Rest:

He quotes a scholar from the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences “We were asked to look into what accounted for ”¦ the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past 20 years we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion. Christianity.’

Over at Mangan’s, our friend Dennis has taken up this passage in an interesting post of his own, The Curiosity Deficit of the East. I left the following comment:

When I read this I wondered if the Chinese scholar himself had said any more about why this should be so: about what, exactly it was about Christianity that they thought best explained. As it turns out, the next line of the quoted passage reads (my emphasis):

“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

It is very interesting that a representative of a state-sponsored academic institution of the Communist and officially atheistic People’s Republic of China would come to this conclusion, and even more interesting that he would be permitted to express it publicly.

I’d still like to know more. In what way, specifically — by what mechanism — did these scholars think that Christian morality accounted for the West’s flamboyant (and flamboyantly capitalistic!) success?

There are two parts to this. First, the “emergence of capitalism”. What about Christian morality uniquely fosters capitalism?

Then there’s the “transition to democratic politics”. Implicit in this is the remarkable assertion (for a Chinese scholar to make in public, at least) that democracy is a key factor in our global domination. And of course Christianity explicitly distinguishes between God and Caesar. But again: why do you suppose the Chinese Academy of the Social Science concluded that Christian morality is more conducive to democracy than to collective socialism?

Any thoughts?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Religion | Comments (10)

Links

April 12, 2011 – 9:27 pm

From today’s Physorg newsletter:

So much for drowning your sorrows
Alcohol helps the brain remember, says new study

They’re still kind of short and skinny
First galaxies were born much earlier than expected

This is news?
Europe may be slowly disappearing under Africa

Enough with the fracking leaks!
Fracking leaks may make gas ‘dirtier’ than coal

Like I told you, Duncan: inhale twice, exhale once
Scots carbon emissions could be halved in decades, study suggests

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (1)

Some Thoughts On Liberty

April 11, 2011 – 3:17 pm

I yammer on a lot about liberty in these pages, and sound the alarm when I think it is threatened. For all of that, though, I’m not an extreme libertarian; limitations on liberty are necessary for a well-functioning society. I just don’t like to see it limited beyond necessity, and I don’t like policies whose unintended consequences include creating conditions that necessitate further limitations.

So what constitutes a meaningful limitation of liberty?

Imagine the following curious scenario. You live in a world with a strict system of laws: everything that is not explicitly permitted is forbidden. (Don’t worry about how the laws are enforced; let’s say there is some automated monitoring system in place that operates with 100% effectiveness, and the punishment is swift and harsh.) Imagine further that you are the only inhabitant of this world.

Now let’s add a further curious stipulation: everything that you choose to do during the course of your life is on the list of permitted acts. (Since this is just a thought experiment, lets say that our law-enforcement bot is able to look back in time, and program a list of everything you will choose to do during your life into its list of what isn’t forbidden.)

A strange situation! It will seem to you as if there are no restrictions whatsoever on your liberty. But that’s hardly the case: the list of forbidden acts is in fact infinitely larger than the list of what’s allowed: it’s just that you’ll never notice. The list of what you can do is so tightly shrink-wrapped around what you will ever want to do that there’s no apparent problem.

Now let’s say we add a second individual, a perfect clone of you. Do the laws have to change? Well, yes, they do, a little: while almost all of the individual acts you’ll chose will be the same, in the interest of harmony and justice there will be some acts that will have to be forbidden, namely those acts that impinge unfairly on the other person. Spinning around firing a machine gun in all directions, or eating all of the other person’s food, for example, might need to go onto the “forbidden” list. But beyond accommodations of that sort, the laws won’t have to change that much, because, being perfect clones, you both will be inclined to toward pretty much exactly the same actions. So even though the list of forbidden acts is infinitely larger than the list of what’s permitted, you’ll both still have a sense of enjoying almost perfect liberty.

OK: so far we can describe the legal system of our little world according to the following meta-rules:

1) Acts that impinge on others in harmful or unwelcome ways are forbidden.

2) All voluntary acts that happen to be chosen by any individual during his or her lifetime are explicitly permitted, except where proscribed by 1).

3) Every act that is not voluntarily chosen by someone is forbidden for all.

What we see then, is that 3) is starting to lose whatever relevance it ever had. Even though 3) puts on the list an infinitely large collection of forbidden acts, and therefore in principle constitutes a gigantic limitation of liberty, it is not a meaningful limitation, because we never notice it. What limits liberty in a way we will actually feel is 1).

So: what factors might increase the effect of 1)? Well, if we imagine our little world to be populated with clones of ourselves, odds are that since we’ll be doing almost exactly the same sorts of things, the effect will tend to be muted. But increasing the number of copies of ourselves will surely have an effect; there will be more of us going after finite resources, etc., and so some new laws will have to be added to the blacklist to keep things running smoothly (you can’t take more than a certain share of a resource, etc.).

Here’s another way to increase the limiting effect of 1): instead of populating our little world with clones of ourself, we use near-duplicates. Now, because the list of acts we’ll voluntarily choose is going to start to diverge, the ways your acts can “impinge on me in harmful or unwelcome ways” is going to increase. For example, in a world of clones we’ll all want to be awake at the same time, and sleep at the same time; but now you might like to sleep during the day and play the drums on your porch all night while I’m trying to get some rest. Meanwhile I might like to render animal bones into glue in my spare time, while you don’t like the smell. So we’ll need some new additions to the forbidden list. Because these are voluntary acts that would have been permitted in our original setup, I’m going to feel the difference. These are meaningful limitations of liberty. But most of the time we’ll still keep out of each other’s way, because as near-duplicates we are going to engage in pretty much the same behaviors. I like to have parties on Friday night, but so do you. I like to sit on the beach in the nude, but so do you. And so on. So all of this is permitted, and our liberty is only minimally affected.

It’s important to pause here to remember also that under 3), there are uncountable numbers of things that are NOT permitted, simply because they are not things that any of us would choose to do. But as we mentioned above: 3), though it makes by far the biggest contribution to the forbidden list and therefore is the biggest actual limitation of our liberty, makes no meaningful limitations, because it doesn’t prevent us from doing anything we’d ever want to do anyway. It is negligible. In our world of clones or near-clones, although our list of permitted actions is actually very tightly constrained by law under the effect of 3), we don’t notice, and so don’t care.

The point of all this? The only restrictions of liberty that affect us in any practical sense are restrictions of the liberty to do those things that we would ever want to do anyway. Because in the real world we don’t have the time-traveling omniscience of the law-bot in our toy world, we don’t know in advance the full list of what the members of our society might want to do, so we try to make more general rules that we think will suffice to grant us all the liberties we need. And course, our thought-experiment world includes that strange proviso 3), where everything that nobody would ever want to do is prohibited. But as we have seen, 3) has no meaningful effect; the real action comes from 1) and 2). Take away 3), and what you have left is a society that, because it seeks to prohibit only that “which impinges on others in harmful or unwelcome ways”, would probably flatter itself as being quite “free”.

Now let’s go a little further: instead of near-duplicates of ourself, we populate our kleine Welt with total strangers who are as unlike us as they could possibly be, in all the ways you can imagine: political views, social customs and rituals, diet, living arrangements, religion, and so on. This is going to dramatically increase the effect of 1); a great many things that were previously permitted will no longer be. We should note that it is also the case that more will be permitted under 2), because there will be a greater variety of voluntary choices being made — but those new additions to the permitted-actions list brought about by those who are maximally unlike us won’t have much of an effect on increasing our liberty in a meaningful way, because most of them will not be actions that we ever would have chosen in the first place, or will choose even if they become available to us.

From all this, then, we can conclude that in our little thought-experiment world, liberty — meaningful liberty, the kind that actually affects people’s lives — is maximal for a single individual, reduced a little for a small group of exactly similar individuals, reduced somewhat more for a small group of highly similar individuals, reduced further for larger groups of highly similar individuals, and reduced more and more as the heterogeneity — the diversity — of the population increases.

What about the real world?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (12)

Under New Management

April 10, 2011 – 10:51 pm

The taxonomy of contemporary conservatism isn’t simple; it’s more of a bush than a tree. Nevertheless, we can point to at least one major bifurcation — at the level of phyla, one could say — and that is the split between secular and Christian conservatism.

Christian conservatives, such as Pat Buchanan or Lawrence Auster, see Christianity as the bones and sinews of Euro-American civilization — the essential structural framework that has shaped and supported it throughout its history. To them the secularizing trend in the modern West, and with it the loss of the moral compass and social fascia that religion provides, is the key to understanding our culture’s decline.

On the other hand, Western Christianity has also arguably become, by its radical inclusiveness and universalism, an important force for the deracination and ethno-cultural deliquescence of Europe and The United States. (This is, of course, a hot topic on the religious Right.)

The West has not only been defined by Christianity, though; for most of Christian history it has also imagined itself to define it. This, however, has been changing, and Christendom’s center of gravity has been moving south: most significantly, to Africa and Latin America. As it has adapted to these places, it has changed a great deal, and has taken on many alien characteristics of local traditions: ancestor and idol worship, pantheism, and ethnic determinism of a sort that puts it, in many cases, in direct opposition to Western interests, and in particular those interests championed by Western conservatives. Christianity in its European form may soon be quite irrelevant.

At Alternative Right, Matthew Roberts discusses all of this in a substantial essay. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion | Comments (31)

Right Brain, Left Brain

April 8, 2011 – 11:56 am

Here’s the latest stab at a neurological explanation of political attitudes: a study that associates conservatism with larger amygdalas, and liberalism with larger anterior cingulate gyruses.

We read:

Based on what is known about the functions of those two brain regions, the structural differences are consistent with reports showing a greater ability of liberals to cope with conflicting information and a greater ability of conservatives to recognize a threat, the researchers say.

…There had also been many prior psychological reports showing that conservatives are more sensitive to threat or anxiety in the face of uncertainty, while liberals tend to be more open to new experiences.

Of course reports like this must generally be consumed cum grano salis, but perhaps there’s something to it: conservatives, wary to keep civilization safely on the rails, are more likely to notice when policymakers set a course that is likely to lead to a train-wreck — while liberals, their heads blithely filled with “conflicting information” and hungry for “new experiences”, like nothing better than to yank the throttle open and start shoveling coal.

Story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General, Politics, Science | Comments (6)

If Oumama Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy

April 6, 2011 – 4:42 pm

Muammar Qaddafi has sent a letter to President Obama. Here it is:

Our son, Excellency,

President Obama

U.S.A

We have been hurt more morally that physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the U.S.A. We Endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaigne. You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action. I am sure that you are able to shoulder the responsibility for that. Enough evidence is available, Bearing in mind that you are the president of the strongest power in the world nowadays, and since Nato is waging an unjust war against a small people of a developing country. This country had already been subjected to embargo and sanctions, furthermore it also suffered a direct military armed aggression during Reagan’s time. This country is Libya. Hence, to serving world peace … Friendship between our peoples … and for the sake of economic, and security cooperation against terror, you are in a position to keep Nato off the Libyan affair for good.

As you know too well democracy and building of civil society cannot be achieved by means of missiles and aircraft, or by backing armed member of AlQuaeda in Benghazi.

You ”” yourself ”” said on many occasions, one of them in the UN General Assembly, I was witness to that personally, that America is not responsible for the security of other peoples. That America helps only. This is the right logic.

Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu oumama, your intervention is the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair. Libya should be left to Libyans within the African union frame. The problem now stands as follows:-

1. There is Nato intervention politically as well as military.

2. Terror conducted by AlQaueda gangs that have been armed in some cities, and by force refused to allow people to go back to their normal life, and carry on with exercising their social people’s power as usual.

Mu’aumer Qaddaffi

Leader of the Revolution

Tripoli 5.4.2011

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

All Quiet On the Northern Front

April 6, 2011 – 1:12 pm

If you’re looking for a tranquil place to live, the Institute For Economics and Peace has published a table of the most and least peaceful U.S. states.

The top 10 are: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Iowa, Washington.

The bottom 10 are: Maryland, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, and Louisiana.

Full list here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (27)

It’s On!

April 5, 2011 – 10:35 pm

If you haven’t seen it yet (and by now you probably have): a spirited — to say the least! — response to Congressional archdhimmi Lindsey Graham, from a Colorado pepperpot by the name of Ann Barnhardt.

Move over, Pat Condell! There’s a new kid in town.

Watch it now, before it’s taken down.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)

Wall Tweet

April 5, 2011 – 7:09 pm

Today’s Science Daily newsletter featured a story about a new website that mines Twitter postings to make stock-market predictions. Given that stock prices are themselves largely dependent on the sentiment of the crowd, there might be something to it.

Read the article here, or visit the site itself: TweetTrader.net.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Are We Not Men?

April 4, 2011 – 4:46 pm

Andrew McCarthy, who has been on a tear lately, posted a very strong article today about the sniveling response by General David Petraeus and NATO ambassador Sedwill to the massacre of UN staff by a raging mob in Afghanistan. Read it here. And then read it again. What a nation of spineless, cringing quake-buttocks we have become.

Lawrence Auster weighs in also, here.

Update: the Auster post has been taken down, as explained here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (18)

The Bubble

April 3, 2011 – 3:23 pm

The other day I paid a visit to Google’s vast New York office complex to have lunch with my friend Greg, a former co-worker who took a job there about a year ago.

As you’d imagine, it’s not your ordinary workplace. Everywhere you look, there are comforts, amusements, and diversions: toys, jungle rooms, sleeping pods, whiskey bars, fitness equipment, lavishly stocked little kitchens, a full-surround Google Earth viewing booth, fabulous sculptures made of Legos and K’Nex, “jam rooms” equipped with musical instruments, and so on. Workers come and go as they please, and are fed gratis at any of several outstanding cafeterias. Dress is completely informal, and everybody gets one day each week to work on whatever they like. There’s hardly any supervision or hierarchy — people just sort of understand what’s needed, and know their job is to make it happen in the cleverest way they can.

Everyone I met assumed I was there for an interview, and couldn’t help telling me what a fantastic place it was to work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Google’s motto: Don’t be evil.

I hear they’re hiring…

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

Mission: Incomprehensible

April 2, 2011 – 3:06 pm

Our surreal war in Libya has everybody talking. Here’s Mark Steyn:

According to the New York Times, “Members of the NATO alliance have sternly warned the rebels in Libya not to attack civilians as they push against the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.’ We dropped bombs on Qaddafi’s crowd for attacking civilians, and we’re prepared to do the same to you! “The coalition has told the rebels that the fog of war will not shield them from possible bombardment by NATO planes and missiles, just as the regime’s forces have been punished.’

So, having agreed to be the Libyan Liberation Movement Air Force, we’re also happy to serve as the Qaddafi Last-Stand Air Force. Say what you like about Barack Obama, but it’s rare to find a leader so impeccably multilateralist he’s willing to participate in both sides of a war. It doesn’t exactly do much for holding it under budget, but it does ensure that for once we’ve got a sporting chance of coming out on the winning side.

RTWT here.

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

A Heavy Summons

April 2, 2011 – 1:48 pm

Over at Mangan’s, Dennis questions commonly accepted ideas about sleep; it turns out that our sleaves may in fact last a little longer if we leave them a little ravel’d.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Dear Moammar…

April 2, 2011 – 1:09 pm

Over at NRO Andrew McCarthy comments on the amazing hypocrisy of the US government — particularly Sens. Lieberman, Kerry, and McCain — regarding Col. Qaddafi. I of course make no brief for Libya’s grotesque and brutal tyrant, but like him or not we had a deal, and our fickleness toward him — before their transmogrification into modern-day Catos, the three senators had canoodled with the Khadafys in Tripoli as recently as August 2009 in a meeting whose purpose was to reassure them of our continuing affection — is unlikely to encourage others with whom we seek to make such practical arrangements with in the future.

Read the article here.

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

Road To Damascus

April 1, 2011 – 2:43 pm

I’ve been re-reading the Koran the past few weeks. I’d previously read it only in bits and pieces, and I thought it was time I read it straight through, with truly focused attention and an open mind — and I have to say it has been, to put it mildly, an eye-opening experience.

I’ve been rather harsh on Islam in these pages over the years, but given the transforming effect this Book has had on me I may have to re-think a great deal of what I have said — not only about religion in general, but also Islam in particular, and about the defensibility of our decadent Western civilization.

I’m still trying to digest all of this — my head is spinning, and the ground is shifting under my feet. I’ll have more to say shortly, insh’Allah.

By Malcolm | Posted in Religion | Comments (17)

Sign Of The Times

March 31, 2011 – 7:28 pm

On Wednesday’s Today show, Matt Lauer interviewed Michele Bachmann. He is clearly of the opinion that our joining Libya’s civil war on behalf of the rebels was the right thing to do; she disagrees. In the course of their brief conversation came the following exchange:

BACHMANN: …We don’t know how much al Qaeda is involved in the opposition forces. Why would we want to strengthen al Qaeda’s hand in North Africa? That certainly wouldn’t be in the interests of the United States.

LAUER: Well, well let me, let me flip that coin on, on its, on its other side. If there are flickers, as you say, of al Qaeda among the rebels, would it not be a sign to them or showing them that the United States has compassion and we are willing to use our military might to help all people?

BACHMANN: Compassion for al Qaeda?

This perfectly illustrates the absurd, oikophobic naiveté so prevalent on the Left (and to be fair, on the neoconservative Right as well) regarding the West’s relation with expansionist Islam. What Lauer is thinking here is clear enough: by bombing Qaddafi’s forces and arming the rebels, we can show the Ummah that we are suddenly reborn as a decent, caring people. Our jihadist foes, who would have been our friends all along if we had only been more compassionate, will take it as a “sign” that we have finally turned over a new leaf. Their hearts will thaw, and hand in hand we will usher in a new era of pluralistic tolerance and harmony.

The simpering effeminacy, cultural solipsism, reflexive self-loathing, religious ignorance, and psychological obtuseness of this are just breathtaking. Here we are, locked in the latest stage of a bloody, 1,400-year-old existential struggle with hardened jihadis who will not rest until we either kneel before their God or are annihilated — and Matt Lauer, convinced that way deep down we’re all the same, just wants them to like us.

If we lose in the end, this is going to be why.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (5)

Spin

March 30, 2011 – 10:30 pm

In a recent study of psychological “priming”, boffins at two universities have turned up an unsurprising result: anxiety about death can incline people more favorably toward belief in supernatural agency and purpose, in particular “intelligent design”.

(The study might have been somewhat slanted, however; one of the metrics used for confidence in naturalism was “liking Dawkins”.)

Two things stand out: first, that people’s views on intelligent design vs. Darwinian evolution were unformed enough, prior to their participating in the study, as to be influenced in any significant measure by reading the brief synopses given to them of the two positions; second, the conclusion by one of the researchers that the study shows that people “may need to be explicitly taught” that a naturalistic worldview can provide a solid philosophical foundation for purpose and meaning.

Story here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Reason and Philosophy, Science, Religion | Comments (3)

Join Or Die

March 29, 2011 – 11:02 pm

Readers, if this doesn’t get a rise out of you, I don’t know what will:

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

Make It Stop

March 29, 2011 – 10:05 pm

President Obama’s in town, and in a spirit of hospitality I won’t have anything to say about last night’s speech. (Anyway, everybody’s already said it, for example here and here.)

Instead, then: a grab from the Shameless Filler bag. Tonight it’s one of the damnedest eyetwisters I’ve ever seen.

The squares in the image below are arranged in four concentric circles. (If you don’t believe me, trace them with your mouse!)

Read More »

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

Bah!

March 28, 2011 – 10:33 pm

This past Saturday was the occasion, once again, of “Earth Hour“, an annual smug-fest in which progressive ideologues the world over come together to thumb their noses en masse at the advanced civilization that feeds and shelters them, that allows them to take for granted a level of wealth and comfort unexampled in all of human history, and that gives them powers and privileges almost unimaginable a mere century ago: to travel anywhere on earth within hours by flying through the air; to send messages around the globe in the blink of an eye; to have in one’s hands, at a whim, any book ever written; to extend our senses to the depths of the ocean, to the surfaces of other planets, and to the most distant galaxies; to feed great masses of the hungry who in an earlier epoch would have starved; to extend our own happy years by repairing or replacing our eyes, our ears, our arteries, our skin, and our bones — or even by transplanting a living heart from one body to another.

Well, by now you’ve probably guessed that I didn’t join in the fun. The astonishing technological civilization that the genius and toil of Western Man has brought into existence is an achievement we should not only be proud of, but should also be very, very grateful for — and to have it sneered at by a lot of sanctimonious, self-righteous prigs with soft hands and full bellies irritates me more than I can tell you.

It turns out I am not alone. I yield the floor to Ross McKitrick, who on Friday summed things up nicely in this piquant essay.

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

B.C.

March 27, 2011 – 8:43 pm

My old friend Peter Kranzler, known to readers as the One-Eyed Man, tipped me off to an article in the WSJ about Bob Clearmountain, who is in my opinion the most gifted mixer ever to raise a fader.

I was lucky enough to be Clearmountain’s regular assistant for a couple of years, back when I was coming up through the ranks at Power Station — and out all of that great studio’s legendary corral of engineers, he was easily the one from whom I learned the most (with the possible exception of the owner, the former Motown engineer Tony Bongiovi).

Each day I’d come in and set up for the day’s mix. By the time I started working with him regularly, Bob had already established himself as a mixdown specialist, and so the projects had often been recorded elsewhere by some other engineer and just sent to us for mixing. Once I had the multitrack tape spooled up (yes, records were still recorded on two-inch tape back then), the tracks labeled on the console, and the effects plugged in, I’d always run up the faders and have a listen. As often as not the recordings sounded just awful, and I would always be curious to see how Bob could possibly make anything decent out of them once we got to work.

He never failed, though, and I soon came to realize the man was some kind of sorcerer. Over time I came to understand much of how he did what he did — Bob’s a happy, good-natured guy, and was never reluctant to explain his methods to his assistants, as some engineers were — but there are some things you just can’t teach, and he has them in almost supernatural abundance.

You can read the article here. And to get an idea of the scope of Clearmountain’s body of work, check out his discography, here.

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

Enough Already

March 25, 2011 – 10:06 pm

OK, time to take a break from Mideast news. Here’s a beautiful fractal animation.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Flash: Mideast Still Going To Hell, Western Leaders Confused

March 24, 2011 – 4:37 pm

It looks like there’s going to be a little sectarian “disaggregation” happening in the Gulf States following that little Saudi/Iran Sunni/Shia proxy dust-up in Bahrain. Story here.

In Yemen, it seems Saleh is on the way out.

Meanwhile, it now appears that NATO either will or will not be taking over the Libya operation, and will or will not focus on regime change. Stay tuned.

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

Here We Go Again

March 24, 2011 – 12:16 pm

Here’s a long and sobering article by Adam Garfinkle about our incoherent campaign in Libya. Well worth your time.

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

Public School

March 23, 2011 – 9:45 pm

This is brilliant, just wonderful. I don’t know how I hadn’t heard about it until just now.

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

Steady As She Goes

March 22, 2011 – 10:24 pm

OK, readers: let’s all stop bickering for just a moment to wish the great William Shatner a very happy 80th (yes, 80th!!) birthday.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

History By Committee

March 22, 2011 – 9:44 pm

David Brooks, with whom I agree sporadically, published a pretty good item about multilateralism in today’s Times.

Throughout history strong nations, ruled by confident men, reckoned their interests, and having weighed them, acted. No longer. As a modern Western democracy, America — despite having achieved in recent decades a supremacy of power without historical precedent — now operates under an enervating double whammy: first the belief, now axiomatic amongst Western nations, that unilateral action is morally culpable, and second the intrinsic incoherence of democracies themselves, in our case combined with and amplified by the deliquescent effects of internal cultural disunity and low social cohesion.

In his article, Mr. Brooks looks at the first of these factors: aversion to unilateral action. He begins by acknowledging that nowadays “we are all co-religionists in the church of multilateralism”, then goes on to nail a few theses on the door:

First, multilateral efforts are marked by opaque decision-making and strategic vagueness. It is hard to get leaders from different nations with different values to agree on a common course of action. When diplomats do achieve this, it is usually because they have arrived at artful fudges that allow leaders from different countries to read the same words in a U.N. resolution and understand them in different ways. The negotiation process to arrive at these fudges involves a long chain of secret discussions and it necessarily involves eliding issues that might blow everything up.

Quite so; this is surely why we have no clearly stated objective in Libya.

Brooks continues:

Second, leaders in multilateral efforts often obsess about the diplomatic process and ignore the realities on the ground. The reports describing how the Libyan intervention came about are filled with palace intrigue. They describe the different factions within the Obama administration, the jostling by France and Britain, the efforts to win over the Arab League. It’s not clear who was thinking about the realities in Libya.

Who are the rebels we are supporting? How weak is the Qaddafi government? How will Libyans react to a Western bombing campaign? Why should we think a no-fly zone will protect civilians when they never have in the past?

In this, as in so many previous multilateral efforts, the process blots out the substance. Diplomats become more interested in serving the global architecture than in engaging the actual facts on the ground.

Third, multilateral efforts are retarded and often immobilized by dispersed authority and a complicated decision-making process. They are slow to get off the ground because they have to get their most reluctant members on board. Once under way, they are slow to adapt to changing circumstances.

Sure enough, the world fiddled for weeks while Qaddafi mounted his successful counterinsurgency campaign. The coalition attacks are only days old, but already fissures are appearing. The Arab League is criticizing the early results. The French are not coordinating well with their allies. NATO leaders are even now embroiled in a debate about the operational command structure.

Good points all; these are also many of the same problems that naturally affect the internal affairs of democracies.

Now we come to Brooks’s most important insight:

Fourth, multilateral forces often lose the war of morale and motivation. Most wars are fought by nations ”” by people aroused not only by common interests but by common passions, moralities and group loyalties. Multilateral campaigns rarely, on the other hand, arouse people. They are organized by elites, and propelled by calculation, not patriotism. No one wants to die for the Arab League, the United Nations or some temporary coalition of the willing.

This simple idea — that nations are more than mere propositional abstractions, that their bones and sinews are built on the shared passions and loyalties of a common people — has been more or less taboo in recent years, though of course it was transparently obvious to all, not so long ago. Now it seems to be in the air again.

Should America “go it alone” in the world, without regard to the wishes of its friends and allies or any sense of noblesse oblige? Of course not. But it is good to be clear about things.

There’s more. Read the rest here.

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

Got It

March 21, 2011 – 10:37 pm

The Times explains why it supports military intervention in Libya:

Libya is a specific case: Muammar el-Qaddafi is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism.

Right, that’s clear enough: he’s a one-off, sui generis, something the like of which we’ve never seen before.

…unless I’m forgetting something…

No, nothing comes to mind. Anyway, no worries — I’m sure we’ll be out of there lickety-split, and all the other Arab states will be very grateful to us for helping.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (17)

Was The Truce-a Just A Ruse-a?

March 19, 2011 – 12:09 pm

Well, that cease-fire in Libya might not have involved all that much actual ceasing of fire after all. According to STRATFOR it’s looking more like a race to control Benghazi before the curtain falls. Here.

Update: more strategic analysis from George Friedman at STRATFOR, here. Qaddafi would have been wiser to make the cease-fire real, it seems.

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

Moussa Koussa Calls A Truce(-a)

March 18, 2011 – 8:34 am

In the wake of the UN no-fly resolution, Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa has called an immediate cease-fire. This is by far the wisest move for Qaddafi, because with the government’s reconquest of all but Benghazi and eastern Cyrenaica complete, there will now be a consolidation period during which, with far greater resources, Qaddafi’s strength relative to the poorly organized rebels with surely grow — as will the security and robustness of the supply lines he had obviously outrun. It’s a safe bet that the “international community” will not have the stomach to put troops in to roll back Qaddafi’s gains.

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

Big Schtick

March 17, 2011 – 11:30 am

Should we intervene in Libya? This is the subject of a fierce debate at National Review. The editors say yes; Andrew McCarthy and Victor Davis Hanson say no. (As do I.)

Meanwhile, the havering continues at Foggy Bottom. Regarding the escalating Iran vs. Sunni Arab proxy war in Bahrain, Hillary Clinton said yesterday in Egypt that:

“Our message is consistent and strong: There is no way to resolve the concerns of the Bahraini people through the use of excessive force or security crackdowns. There have to be political negotiations that lead to a political resolution.”

There “have” to be? And what, exactly, will we do if there aren’t? We’ve been awfully quick, lately, to say what is “unacceptable”, what “must” happen, and so on, but it is becoming increasingly obvious to all — particularly after our waffling on Mubarak’s departure — that our words these days mean almost nothing. “Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” wrote Teddy Roosevelt; instead we prefer to speak loudly and often, and it is increasingly clear to all that we can barely lift the stick.

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

Convergence And Divergence

March 17, 2011 – 9:57 am

I’ve mentioned the outstanding strategic security summary NightWatch before (see here for a bio of its author, John McCreary): it is the best of its kind, I think, and certainly the most condensed.

Last night’s entry included an analysis of the situation in the Middle East that was so informative I thought I’d reproduce it here. (Make sure you read the “Notes for new analysts” at the end.)

Bahrain: Soldiers and riot police used tear gas and armored vehicles Wednesday, 16 March, to drive out hundreds of anti-government protesters occupying a landmark square in Manama. The assault was executed at daybreak. Press reports carried witness accounts that two protestors were killed during the attack in the square. Officials at Ibn Nafees Hospital reportedly said a third protestor later died from gunshot wounds in his back.

The General Command of the Bahrain Defense Force issued a statement about the attack. “The Bahraini national guard and Public Security Force initiated an operation to clear ‘outlaws’ from several public areas in Manama. The operation targeted protesters in the Bahrain Financial Harbour, the Salmaniya Medical Complex and surrounding areas, and the Gulf Cooperation Council Roundabout. The roundabout previously has been referred to as Pearl Square, or Martyr’s Square by the protestors.”

Comment: This action represents a significant escalation of force, enabled by the arrival of Arab reinforcements from the Peninsula Shield Force. The emergency declaration banning protests automatically makes the protestors “outlaws”. It deliberately increases the consequences of protests in order to separate the timid from the hard core. Most of the time it makes matters worse. What happens after Friday’s prayers will provide insight about whether the escalation of force is likely to stabilize the situation.

Multiple government officials resigned in protest because of the security operation.

Saudi Arabia: Update. A few hundred Saudi Shiite protesters took to the streets of Qatif, Eastern Province, on 15 March in solidarity with Bahraini Shia, Ahram Online reported. These gathers are banned, but they persist.

Yemen: Update. At least 120 people were wounded when Yemeni police and pro-government supporters attempted to break up an anti-government rally in the western city of al-Hudaida, according to a local doctor treating the protestors. The doctor said the protestors were attacked with tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammunition and daggers.

Comment: Yemen is increasingly using force against the protestors, but the forces indicate the situation is still manageable without applying extraordinary resources.

Libya: Rebels. Three rebel jets bombed Libyan leader Gadhafi’s forces located east of Ajdabiya, Al Jazeera reported .

Comment: This is the second reported attack by combat aircraft supporting the rebels. No sources have reported their origin, their operating base or who is piloting them, but they offer a better prospect of delaying the attackers than the exuberant but disorganized rebel youth. The location of the attack, east of Ajdabiya, is the best evidence to date that Qadhafi’s forces have moved beyond that town, which is on the road to Benghazi. According to eyewitnesses, clashes occurred at Ajdabiya and Misrata, Al Arabiya reported.

Qadhafi’s Forces. Qadhafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, told the media that military operations are finished and everything will be over in 48 hours (18 March). He said loyal forces are close to Benghazi. When asked about world powers’ discussion of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, he said whatever decision is taken, it will be too late. Libyan state television reported the Tarhuna and Warfalla, two major tribes in Benghazi, have confirmed their support for Libyan leader Qadhafi.

A message on Libyan state TV said that residents of Benghazi should leave rebel-held locations and weapon storage areas, saying that the army was coming to support the citizens and “cleanse your city from armed gangs.”. Libyan state TV also reported that Qadhafi supporters had rallied in Benghazi, but foreign news outlets could not confirm that report. The Libyan army set a deadline of 2200 GMT on 16 March for Benghazi inhabitants to leave rebel locations and weapon storage areas, Reuters reported, citing Libyan state TV.

Comment: Saif al-Islam has emerged as the chief propagandist for Qadhafi and is one of the hard-line children. He exaggerates almost childishly, as part of his amateurish propaganda campaign. While his statements have often proven to be inaccurate, the government’s tight control of information leaves limited alternative sources of information.

Abdul Basit, a rebel spokesman in Misrata, denied reports made by Libyan state television that two major tribes in Benghazi, the Warfala and Tarhuna, now back Qadhafi. Basit said that state television is lying and that it wants to create divisions among tribes. Note: Basit is much more reliable than Saif al-Islam.

Algeria: Police in Algiers used tear gas March 16 in an attempt to disperse a crowd of young men who were throwing petrol bombs and stones. The protesters said they had no political demands but wanted the authorities to give them better housing. The protest began when about 60 young men blocked a road and demanded a meeting with senior officials about their living conditions. Their numbers swelled to about 150. About 300 police responded with tear gas, but failed to disperse the rioting crowd.

Comment: The Algerians get it. They used two policemen for every protestor. That is the Chinese model.

Notes for new analysts: understanding violence in instability problems (Long essay alert)

Internal instability problems are not chaotic, despite the way many people describe them. They move through definable phases that have benchmarks indicating progress in the processes. Violence is a particularly important indicator because it occurs twice, but its significance depends on when it occurs.

Background

Political authority flows back and forth between the government and the opposition, depending on their respective strengths. Usually the government will under-react to the first outbreak of protests. That will start the three phase under-reaction, over-reaction, concession cycle, which characterized government actions in all the Arab states under stress. In Tunisia and Egypt, the Army sided with the protestors for parochial reasons and brought an early end to those crises. Instability persists because no fundamental changes that address the causes of instability have occurred. The unrest is resetting and recycling.

The three-phase cycle enables analysts to track government management of the instability, but its context is the shift in authority between the government and the opposition, represented by the youthful protestors in the Arab world. As the government’s authority weakens, the opposition’s strengthens. They converge. Right before the division of authority equalizes, either or both sides will resort to violence.

The government will use the army to prevent sharing power with the opposition, which an equal division of authority makes inevitable. The opposition resorts to violence because it judges the government might topple from a violent surge. It is compelled to test the government because that is how the opposition gains authority.

The use of extraordinary armed force always signals that convergence has reached the point that the government fears it will have to share power”¦ and make changes if it fails to fight. This is convergence violence.

Convergence Violence

If there has been no government sharing of authority with the opposition – no power sharing — before the use of extraordinary force, then the violence is always convergence violence and the government is in grave danger.

This is where Bahrain and Yemen are. Oman has not yet reached that point. In Bahrain, at the end of one three-phase cycle, the Crown Prince offered significant concessions for greater political participation by the Shiite opposition, but which preserved the monarchy By 8 March, when the opposition started to demand systemic change in the form of a republic, that demand set the condition for a violent crackdown or capitulation by the monarchy. The chronology indicates the monarchy’s unsuccessful use of violence in the earlier “over-reaction phase” caused the Shiites to escalate their demands.

In a convergence fight, government force must be overwhelming and must succeed or the government will change for a time, possibly permanently. As early as 21 February, Bahrain’s King apparently doubted he had the forces for the task, and asked the Arab monarchs for the Peninsula Shield Forces.

Most governments have no allies willing to add more guns to their side of the fight to prevent further convergence. Bahrain does. It is not clear whether Saudi or UAE forces participated in today’s crackdown in Manama. They at least freed up Bahraini forces to enable the government to try to break the protest movement.

The Bahrain monarchy with the backing of the Peninsula Shield Force contributors has raised the stakes substantially, and maybe existentially. If this escalation fails, which it could, the Bahrain government must change. If the monarchy survives a failure, it probably would be as a figurehead or ceremonial head of state.

The Peninsula Shield Forces also carry another dimension of risk because of the linkage to other governments — Saudi Arabia and UAE plus any other Gulf Cooperation Council contributors. The Peninsula Shield Force makes Bahrain a regional problem. It the Forces fail now, authority will decline in other Arab capitals. The downside of integration is that, if it fails, it threatens to bring down the whole architecture. That consequence suggests the Forces in Bahrain will fight to the last Shiite to prevent the collapse of the monarchy.

If the Forces succeed in routing or deterring protestors or in inducing them to accept the offers of the Crown Prince, then the authority of the monarchy will have been restored. The side with the most or the best guns wins, provided the forces remain loyal and respond to orders. The introduction of outside forces – the Saudi and UAE personnel -also has reduced the likelihood of mass desertions by the Bahraini forces. This is what China did in the Tiananmen massacre at an identical stage of its successful convergence struggle.

Yemen also is in a convergence fight, but it has not yet escalated as Bahrain’s has. President Saleh, however, is using violence in a way that is similar to Bahrain. The trend is towards escalating uses of force, but Saleh will be guided by what happens in Bahrain.

Divergence Violence

Leaders in Bahrain and Yemen might have been heartened by Qadhafi’s successful counterattacks in Libya. If so, that would be a misread of the Libyan fighting. Qadhafi lost his convergence fight, but is winning a divergence or breakout fight. Two weeks ago, when the rebels took towns just west of Tripoli, they achieved de facto power sharing. Qadhafi had Tripoli and parts of Tripolitania. The Benghazi Council had control of Cyrenaica and was moving into Tripolitania.

Power Sharing and Divergence Violence

The division of authority manifest by a geographical split is a rare form of power sharing, usually associated with secession – fragmentation of the state. But the Benghazi-based rebels went for Tripoli.

Libya has showcased several key points about instability problems. Most important is that the opposition will not win if it does not take the capital, Tripoli in Libya’s case. Instability is centripetal because authority and political power reside in the center, which explains the rebels’ march into Tripolitania and that the only serious confrontations in Bahrain occur in Manama.

Second, power sharing is relatively quiet. For a short time before the Qadhafi counterattack, there was very limited violence. Qadhafi famously offered talks, almost certainly a ruse to build his forces, but the kind of overture that takes place in power sharing.

Third, it is always temporary, though the length of time varies widely. It is temporary because the parties seek to prepare for a breakout. The breakout need not be violent and might take a long time to develop. Hezbollah demonstrated this in its parliamentary procedural ouster of the Hariri government in Lebanon. It took from 2006 to 2011 for Hezbollah to make its parliamentary breakout that toppled the Hariri coalition.

Even in Lebanon, there was fear of violent street protests. If violence associated with a breakout occurs, it is divergence violence.

Qadhafi began a successful breakout last week. His success may be measured by the distance from Tripoli that Qadhafi’s forces are fighting. Divergence violence always happens after there has been de facto or de jure power sharing.

Qadhafi’s successful breakout also reinforces the most salient and predictive point of instability. The side with the most and best guns wins. If Benghazi falls in 48 hours, the rebellion is crushed and Qadhafi’s authority will be fully stronger than ever”¦for a time.

To recap, convergence violence, as in Bahrain, means the government is in so much stress that it is resorting to extraordinary means to prevent power sharing. Divergence violence means a party is trying to break out of power sharing to seize control of the government.

Finally, successful convergence or divergence fights are never final solutions, but they can add decades to the longevity of a regime as in Libya and Algeria. Instability always resets and recycles, even if it takes 30 years, until the underlying problems are solved or changed.

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

Words Fail Me

March 16, 2011 – 10:27 pm

It’s hard to know what to say on a day like today; the world just seems to be falling apart everywhere you look. Japan is barely breathing after a Trifecta of staggering catastrophes. The Mideast is in flames. Western civilization is slowly throttling itself. The once-great American nation, its citizens having learned that they can vote themselves money and import unlimited cheap labor, has borrowed and denatured itself into certain doom, and is now little more than a motley, multicultural mélange of squabbling factions rushing to snatch what remaining loot they can before the whole thing comes crashing down on their heads. The fish have all been hauled up from the oceans and eaten, and birds are falling from the sky. The stock market is plummeting earthward, and it looks like there won’t even be any football this year. Newt Gingrich is lining up against Sarah Palin for the privilege of losing to Barack Obama in 2012. Owsley is dead.

Whew! Let us lift our eyes skyward.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Come, Thou Mortal Wretch

March 15, 2011 – 4:40 pm

Well, we’ve spent far too much time lately dwelling on trivialities. Time for some serious news:

Snake Dies of Silicone Poisoning After Biting Model’s Fake Breast

With video! Here.

(Have to file this one under “Shameless Filler”, I think…)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Tauism

March 14, 2011 – 9:33 pm

Today, 3/14, is Pi Day. What we really ought to celebrate, however, is Tau Day. The delightfully engaging vlogress and “recreational mathemusician” Vi Hart explains why, here. And for all the details, have a look here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (0)

Addendum

March 14, 2011 – 1:10 pm

A reader has emailed me to take me to task for the title of my previous post. The note began:

To me, G_d is synonymous with the Explanation for Everything; for you, He is an angry, immature old man.

I responded:

Just to set the record straight, to me God is not “an angry, immature old man”, or anything else; my view of God is that the word “God” is simply a placeholder for a variety of fictional entities.

For most religious believers, though, God is directly, actively involved in what happens down here: for a natural disaster to occur, it must be caused, or at least permitted, by God. On the other hand, your own view — of God as an actually existing, ineffable abstraction, but not the sort of agent that plays a deliberate causal role in things like earthquakes that crush and drown thousands of innocent people — while far more defensible intellectually, is shared by only a microscopic minority of theists. Obviously my title does not refer to the God you appear to believe in, so you shouldn’t be offended. (That you are just shows what a confused and confusing term “God” is.)

I’ve been re-reading the Bible and the Koran over the past few weeks. That’s the sort of “God” I’m referring to here; and it’s the one that most people believe in, and that they think of when they use the word “God”. It amazes me that people are capable of the cognitive dissonance required to witness natural disasters like this, or the awful earthquake in Haiti that killed and maimed multitudes of the innocent faithful, square it somehow with the idea of an involved, active, personal God who is nevertheless infinitely loving and merciful, and then keep coming back for more. It just boggles my mind [in the same way that it boggled Voltaire’s mind after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755], and I can’t help remarking on it from time to time.

I will say this — given my growing conviction that secularism is, from a group-level perspective, most likely maladaptive, I’ll admit that I am, for tactical reasons, somewhat conflicted lately about making these points, and so I have been largely mute on the subject of theism v. atheism for a while now. Every now and then, though, something comes along that prompts me to let out a little squeak of protest.

Weighing all of this, then, I do admit that the title was stingingly, and rather gratuitously, harsh, and given the rawness of the wound, it might have been better not to have chosen it.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

God’s Love, Delivered

March 13, 2011 – 10:24 pm

I’ve wanted to post something about the horror in Japan, but everything I’ve begun to write has seemed so trivial, so trite, next to the awful reality. Nothing I can say, or even imagine, from the safety and comfort of my home here in New York can gain any traction on what that reality must have been like for those who experienced it: to feel the solid rock beneath your feet shudder in sudden pain and buckle and snap and heave and roll — and then, still reeling, to look up as the infinite ocean itself rises high above you and pours itself down upon the land, sweeping away everything — everything.

The hideous indifference of Nature! Again it yawns and extends a finger, shearing us away en masse, and I think: “we are nothing”.

Then I look at the brave Japanese: doing what they can, and what they must.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (6)

Divin’ For Perals

March 13, 2011 – 9:41 pm

With a tip of the hat to David Duff — nay, for this one a low, sweeping bow, with a scrape and a fawning obeisance — I introduce you to Private Frazer, whose acquaintance I had not made myself until just the other day.

Here. High point: the auld empty barn.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Schwingtime For Hitler

March 11, 2011 – 6:12 pm

Just discovered in the National Archives: a forgotten collection of photos of Eva Braun.

Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Why Can’t You Just Leave Us Alone?

March 10, 2011 – 5:35 pm

This is good: Rand Paul confronts Kathleen Hogan, the Deputy Assistant Energy Secretary for Efficiency, on light bulbs, toilets, and bureaucratic busybodies.

Please note, by the way, as an example of how terrifyingly deep the nanny-state mindset goes, that when it comes to the crappy toilets the government has forced us all to use, the best defense Ms. Hogan can offer for the decision to impose them on us is that it was “bipartisan”.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (33)

Curious, And Curiouser

March 9, 2011 – 10:38 pm

Well, here’s an odd little story: it seems that in the little town of Ilulissat, Greenland (69° 13′ N) the Sun, which rises exactly once a year, did so two days early this time around. This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen; if there’s one thing you are supposed to be able to count on, after all, it’s the rising and the setting of the Sun.

The boffins are all over it, of course: early attempts at an explanation have included the lowering of the horizon due to melting ice, and refractive anomalies in certain layers of the atmosphere. (That the stately dance of Earth and Sun might actually have permitted a faux pas of this magnitude, especially without causing similar rhythmic hiccups in other parts of the world, is not among the hypotheses they have brought forward, and understandably so.)

If, however, you are interested in a slightly zestier interpretation of this event (and others of recent note), you might enjoy this worrisome little video, sent our way by — who else? — the indefatigable JK. You’ll want to have a roll of tinfoil handy.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (3)

Confusion And Profit

March 8, 2011 – 2:45 pm

As you may have heard, things are changing rapidly in the Middle East. Libya is in flames, Egypt staggers uneasily under military rule, and throughout the region political structures of enduring stability now creak and totter as the ground trembles beneath them. Meanwhile, the U.S. position is shifting too: we are soon to withdraw from Iraq (having come up short of our goals there), our relations with Pakistan are near the breaking point, and our presence in the Persian Gulf is complicated by events unfolding, particularly, in Bahrain.

What Mideastern nation, if any, seems entirely immune to this epidemic of political unrest? What nation gains the most from America’s withdrawal from Iraq? What nation will find it easiest to intimidate its neighbors by the strength of its military? What nation’s interests are best advanced by the conflagration of political and ethnic instability in the region? What nation is best positioned to inflame it further?

The answers are Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran, and Iran — as STRATFOR’s George Friedman explains in this penetrating analysis.

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

Well, Strike Me Pink

March 7, 2011 – 7:41 pm

I’m working late tonight, with no time for writing. So I’ll just pass along this shocking item:

Racial Identity Tied to Happiness, Study Finds

Here.

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

I Have To Ask

March 6, 2011 – 11:33 pm

On the commercial street near my house, there’s a comic-book store, and as I walked by it today they had a big picture of Superman on display. It looked something like this:

It seemed to me that the Man of Steel was looking even more buff than ever, certainly way more so than when I was a kid. Look at those lats!

At first I thought: Way to go, big guy! But then I started wondering: when Superman wants to bulk up a bit, how the hell does he do it?

For that matter, why does he even need to be in shape at all?

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (13)

No Fluke

March 4, 2011 – 5:55 pm

In the hugely popular sci-fi video game Halo, humans do battle with something called the Flood — a disgusting parasitic fungus that takes over the bodies of its victims, converting them into mutilated zombie soldiers.

When that happens to one of our boys, the result looks like this:

According to Wikipedia’s account of the Halo story-line, the Flood were so successful, and so terrifying, that the “ancient Forerunners were forced to kill themselves and all other sentient life nearly 100,000 years before the beginning of Halo in an effort to starve the Flood to death.”

(Kind of like what conservatives are going to have to do to get the deficit under control, I’m afraid. But I digress…)

Well, dear Reader, if you happen to be a South American ant, you’d best be wary, because it seems you might soon find yourself in a similar fix. Have a look here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology | Comments (1)

Give Me Your Tired, Your Mpffff…

March 4, 2011 – 1:59 pm

As long as we’re on the subject, here’s a little mission statement that’s been making the rounds today.

By Malcolm | Posted in Inner Work | Comments (6)