The Army of Sisyphus

September 23, 2009 – 12:09 am

The situation in Afghanistan is very bad. If we leave, the consequences will be dire, not least for the many hopeful and trusting Afghans who have taken our side against the monstrous Taliban; those who have cooperated with us will surely be slaughtered. And if we give up the fight, it is not hard to imagine how things will go in Pakistan, nor to imagine the enormous danger that fundamentalist control of the region (and of Pakistan’s nuclear arms and seaports) would pose to the rest of the world.

If we stay, on the other hand, then we will have to fight harder; we are losing ground. We will need a deeper commitment of resources, both military and civilian. But even if we redouble our efforts, it seems very unlikely indeed that we will ever create a reliable, democratic, self-sufficient ally there. Our forces, advisors, and allies will be under constant, patient attack, forever. It will cost us a steady stream of lives and money, and will be a persistent drain on our military and economic strength.

There are no good options.

The noted war correspondent Michael Yon is ever so slightly less pessimistic than I am; he writes:

Today, the war is still worth fighting, yet the goal to reengineer one of the most backward, violent places on Earth, will require a century before a reasonable person can call Afghanistan “a developing nation.” The war will not take that long – but the effort will.

There are no short-term solutions to fix this place. We are planting acorns. Oak trees grow slowly.

He also says that “Pundits who are saying we should pull out of Afghanistan today, to my knowledge, are not here.” He’s right about that.

Mr. Yon has made available an enormously informative presentation outlining the current situation in Afghanistan, and making the case for reinforcements. It’s here.

Meanwhile, a declassified version of General Stanley McChrystal’s grim assessment and request for additional forces is available online as well. Here.

As General McChrystal says in the first sentence of his report, the stakes in Afghanistan are high. This is an understatement. If you have an opinion about this war, you should care enough to be well-informed. Read these documents.

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

The Forgotten H.G. Wells

September 21, 2009 – 11:19 pm

Today marks the 143rd anniversary of the birth of H.G. Wells, and Google has marked the occasion with one of those curious UFO banners they’ve been featuring lately.

Wells is best known today for his immortal contributions to science-fiction — such classics as The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man — but in his own time (1866-1946) he was perhaps better known as a political author and activist, one of the most outspoken members of the “Progressive” movement from which today’s liberalism descends. He had an extraordinary faith in the ability of visionary men and women, armed with the ascendant power of science, to sweep aside the old order of the world, and to put a new and better civilization in its place.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Books, Society and Culture, Politics, Science | Comments (5)

Irving Kristol, 1920-2009

September 20, 2009 – 11:08 pm

The enormously influential conservative thinker Irving Kristol (who defined a neoconservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality”) has died at the age of 88. His New York Times obituary is here, and an informative Wikipedia article, with many quotes, is here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

This Would Be Funny, If It Weren’t So Sad

September 20, 2009 – 10:30 pm

If you’ve been paying attention to the news this weekend, you’ve heard that President Obama — who, having apparently run out of things to take over at the federal level, now seeks to expand his suzerainty to state governments as well — has told New York’s dismally feckless governor David Paterson not to run for re-election, so as not to diminish the prospects of other Democratic hopefuls.

This seems a bit much, I have to say. Mind you, I expect there isn’t a registered voter in the Empire State who won’t dance a little jig on the day Mr. Paterson is turned out of office — but I thought we already had a system in place whereby we voters sort those matters out.

Meanwhile, the governor announced today that, presidential decreta notwithstanding, he is not about to abandon his touching little dream of actually being elected to the office he presently holds as a matter of bureaucratic contingency (readers will recall that Mr. Paterson, the former lieutenant-governor, was automatically promoted to fill the vacancy made available by the scandalous sexual escapades of his vastly abler predecessor, Elliot Spitzer).

Mr. Paterson then demonstrated his eagerness to make Mr. Obama’s gloomy prognosis a reality, by announcing his support for the Democratic mayoral candidate, William Thompson — who, I am sure, was every bit as delighted to receive the Paterson anointment as a drowning man is to be thrown an anchor.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

NFI

September 20, 2009 – 9:28 pm

In case you didn’t know, there’s another mystery-creature story making the rounds. This time it isn’t a pulsating blob in the sewer, but a large, glabrous shmoo-like critter (perhaps some sort of defective sloth?) allegedly stoned and beaten to death by some Panamanian teens. (The whole thing may be a hoax, of course.)

Being dead and white, it’s not likely to get much attention in the academic world, but you can see it for yourself here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

E Pluribus Pluribus

September 18, 2009 – 5:52 pm

Readers may have heard, by now, about former President Jimmy Carter’s wise and helpful comment that “an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American.”

In today’s Best of the Web newsletter (second item), James Taranto has found in the Newsweek archives a remark that Mr. Carter made during his 1976 campaign:

The furor began when Carter was asked in Indianapolis to explain his recent statement that there was “nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained” in neighborhoods. Carter replied that he wholeheartedly supports open-housing laws that make it a crime to refuse to sell or rent a house or apartment on the grounds of race, color or creed. But he opposes Government programs “to inject black families into a white neighborhood just to create some sort of integration.” Said he: “I have nothing against a community that is made up of people who are Polish, or who are Czechoslovakians, or who are French Canadians or who are blacks trying to maintain the ethnic purity of their neighborhoods. This is a natural inclination.”

Whoa, whoa, wait a minute: did he say “ethnic purity”? That there is a “natural inclination” for people to associate with others who are like themselves? But how can that be? What about the primary obligation and summum bonum of any morally respectable society, which is, I hear, to maximize diversity at any cost?

It’s all so very confusing. If Mr. Carter was right, it could mean that emphasizing cultural diversity over unity, and promoting immigration from all over, might actually be bad for a society — that it might even, in the worst imaginable case, lead to an awful sort of politics based on little more than a kind of tribal identity, where each racial, religious, and ethnic group is just out to get what it can for itself!

We’d better keep an eye out — I’d hate to see anything like that happening here in America.

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

Under New Management

September 18, 2009 – 11:35 am

The U.S. has decided to abrogate its agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic to deploy advanced missile-defense systems in those Eastern European nations. This sort of inconstancy is a well-known issue with democracies such as ours, where the internal balance of power shifts every few years, but the Poles and Czechs — who, having had recent firsthand experience of tyranny, have been among America’s most stalwart allies (and who signed on for this missile agreement at the peril of arousing the ire of their reawakened former master, right next door) — are understandably upset, and as far as they are concerned, we’ll be sleeping on the couch for some time to come.

The WSJ’s editorial staff sums up the political overview here. But there are many complex strategic factors in play that are not reflected in the WSJ’s editorial: for a more military-centric perspective, have a look here. New technology is transforming military strategy, and land-based missile defenses may largely be supplanted, in the near future, by rapidly maturing naval systems. In light of that, the president’s decision may well — despite the cost in goodwill amongst our Eastern European allies — prove to be the right one.

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

Mary Travers, 1936-2009

September 17, 2009 – 11:54 am

We note with sadness the death of singer Mary Travers, of complication from leukemia. She was 72.

I spent some time with Ms. Travers many years ago, in the course of mixing two albums for Peter, Paul, and Mary, and it was a pleasure getting to know her. She was cheery and affable, with a wonderful, lusty laugh and a delightfully pungent sense of humor, but was also passionately committed both to her craft and her vision of social justice. My sympathies to her family, to Peter and Noel, and to her many fans.

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

It’s A Trap!

September 17, 2009 – 11:44 am

Too much time on your hands? Try this little diversion.

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (8)

The Lady Mondegreen

September 16, 2009 – 11:59 pm

In a recent post we celebrated the healing power of music. But often, when a song touches our very plimsoul, the real baraka is in the lyrics. Here, with a hat tip to Ellisson by way of Kevin Kim, is a splendid example.

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

Railroad Days

September 16, 2009 – 12:19 am

An item in the news today about a D.C. Metro worker who was struck and killed by a train — the third fatality in that system in recent months — was a madeleine that brought back a flood of memories of my own fifteen months as a railroad worker, back around 1975. It’s a mighty dangerous job.

I worked in the signal department of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, reporting for duty at the Boyd tower in Raritan at eight each morning. My official title was “signalman’s helper”, which meant I drove trucks, schlepped equipment, dragged cables, and, mostly, dug ditches.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (7)

Tuts My Barreh

September 14, 2009 – 11:00 pm

Ah, the healing power of music. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Shameless Filler | Comments (6)

Parallel Postulates

September 14, 2009 – 10:32 pm

Lawrence Auster is a very smart fellow, and I admire his formidable presence on the ramparts of Western culture. But he has curious blind spots, for one so intelligent, and one of them has to do with Darwinism.

Have a look at this exchange with a reader, one who patiently tries to explain, as I have often done myself (see, for example, here, here, and here), why biologists use the language of intentionality when discussing evolution. We speak, without any qualms, about the “purpose” of the various “designs” of evolved organisms: a wing is “for” flying, a fang is “for” injecting venom, etc. The point is that designed things have purposes — a proposition with which even Mr. Auster would agree — but what he and others refuse to accept is that the rationale behind the existence of a wing or a fang need not be anyone’s consciously conceived or represented rationale: that there is in Nature a process from which design can emerge without the need for any teleological agency at all. Yes, there is a rationale for the existence of a wing, but it is not the bird’s, or even evolution’s, rationale; it is what Daniel Dennett has called a free-floating rationale. But it seems that Mr. Auster and like-minded like others simply cannot conceive of design — real, functional, finely tuned design — arising in the absence of a conscious and purposeful Designer. I am reluctant to psychologize, but perhaps their intuitions are simpy too irrevocably conditioned by their embedding in the world of human agency.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Reason and Philosophy, Science, Religion, Dualism vs. Materialism, Darwin and Biology | Comments (4)

How High Is It, Jimmy?

September 13, 2009 – 9:39 pm

Tuesday is Primary Day here in Gotham, and as a subscriber to our fair city’s newspaper of record, I have before me the New York Times 2009 Primary Election Voter Guide. It’s very helpful.

Among the positions up for grabs is that of Mayor, which has been filled for the past two terms by New York City’s wealthiest resident, Michael Bloomberg. Having shamelessly modified the city’s term-limit laws so as to allow himself a third tour of duty, he is going to be pretty hard to knock off his perch, but there are some highly qualified challengers who might give him a serious run for his money.

Chief amongst them, I think, is one Jimmy McMillan. Here he is:

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By Malcolm | Posted in General, Politics | Comments (2)

The Loyal Opposition

September 11, 2009 – 10:43 pm

Ever since he first bestrode the national stage back in 2004, people have been swooning over Barack Obama (quite literally so, in fact, during last year’s campaign). Yes, yes, he’s handsome, articulate, intelligent, and all that — I get it — but there is also something else, a certain je ne sais quoi, about the man that makes him as heady as catnip to an awful lot of otherwise sober folks.

One wants to be wary in the presence of such a Lothario, however pure his heart and noble his aim, and our friend The Stiletto — who is, for whatever mysterious reason, unensorcelled by his charms — casts a watchful eye on the phenomenon here.

Meanwhile, as long as I’m piling on, here’s a review of Mr. Obama’s healthcare speech, from someone with his eye on “that man behind the curtain“.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Bent Donut Hole

September 11, 2009 – 10:11 pm

Poking around over at Normblog today, I found a link to something that I think is just brilliant: it’s a map of London’s Tube system, with all the station names replaced by anagrams. Have a look here (you can compare it with the real thing, here).

By Malcolm | Posted in Tomfoolery | Comments (1)

You Go, Girl

September 10, 2009 – 11:41 pm

I do like that Camille Paglia. Though a liberal Democrat, she always thinks for herself — and what a lively and penetrating mind she has. In a recent column for Salon.com, she offers some common sense about this excruciating national set-to over health-care. She begins:

As an Obama supporter and contributor, I am outraged at the slowness with which the standing army of Democratic consultants and commentators publicly expressed discontent with the administration’s strategic missteps this year. I suspect there had been private grumbling all along, but the media warhorses failed to speak out when they should have — from week one after the inauguration, when Obama went flat as a rug in letting Congress pass that obscenely bloated stimulus package. Had more Democrats protested, the administration would have felt less arrogantly emboldened to jam through a cap-and-trade bill whose costs have made it virtually impossible for an alarmed public to accept the gargantuan expenses of national healthcare reform. (Who is naive enough to believe that Obama’s plan would be deficit-neutral? Or that major cuts could be achieved without drastic rationing?)

Who, indeed? We read on:

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By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (6)

The Great Divide

September 9, 2009 – 11:54 pm

I imagine most of you watched tonight’s health-care speech. My first day back at work was a long one, and so I missed almost all of it; I’ll have to find a transcript. From the post-mortems I did see on the news channels it seems the central issues linger, including perhaps the most central of all: how on earth is all this to be paid for? The notion, for example, that in order to cover new costs we will squeeze $9 trillion out of Medicare by trimming fat without reducing services is obviously a vaporous fantasy, but seems to be part of the plan.

As has been the case throughout, both sides seem far more interested in ideological purity than practical problem-solving, and have busied themselves setting up straw-man caricatures of each other’s positions. Sarah Palin, for example, did nobody any favors by coining the ghoulish term “death panels”; the Democrats, in return, deny reality by pretending that in amongst a vastly expanded national health-care bureaucracy there will be no government panels making life-and-death decisions about allocation of resources. I am not about to rehearse here the many valid concerns that conservatives have about this initiative, but there are indeed a great many of them, and they are not all, despite Democratic protestations to the contrary, rooted in corporate greed and calumnious falsehoods. And there are a great many things that I think indeed ought to be done that could be agreed upon by almost everyone; I certainly wouldn’t suggest that things are just fine as they are, and I don’t think anyone is.

What has struck me most of all, recently, in American politics, is not only how very polarized we are — how deeply the Right and the Left in this country differ in their view of what this country ought to be — but, in particular, how very evenly divided we are. Congressional power seesaws back and forth, but in poll after poll, on issue after issue, we seem split almost exactly in half.

Why, I wonder, should that be?

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture, Politics | Comments (6)

100%, in the long run

September 8, 2009 – 10:41 pm

Well, we’re back. Being too weary from the packing, driving, and unpacking to do much here tonight (though if I had more energy I’d write something about the silly kerfuffle over Mr. Obama’s speech to the schoolchildren), here’s a tidbit from reader JK: a website that calculates your chances of dying sometime soon.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Time In

September 7, 2009 – 10:22 pm

All things must pass, and lazy summer vacations are no exception. A last perfect sunset over Duck Harbor having brought the curtain down on this year’s Wellfleet idyll, it’s back to Gotham, and back to work, for the lovely Nina and me. We’ll be getting back to normal operations here as well in the next few days.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Probing the Dar-al-Harb

September 3, 2009 – 8:57 pm

We haven’t linked to anything over at Gates of Vienna in a while, but here is an excellent overview by Baron Bodissey of the many fronts upon which the ancient struggle between Islam and the West is now unfolding. The is a great deal more to this conflict than flamboyant acts of terror and costly military responses.

Oh, and speaking of probing, here’s a charming item, from our friend the Gypsy Scholar.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (2)

Wake-Up Call

September 1, 2009 – 3:32 pm

The New York Times columnist and W.F. Buckley protégé David Brooks has been, amongst influential conservative voices, on e of the most admiring of, and sympathetic to, President Obama. In his most recent column, however, his tone is somewhat less approving, and for exactly the right reasons. We read:

This is a country that has always been suspicious of centralized government. This is a country that has just lived through an economic trauma caused by excessive spending and debt. Most Americans still admire Obama and want him to succeed. But if he doesn’t proceed in a manner consistent with the spirit of the nation and the times, voters will find a way to stop him.

Read the whole thing here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

Not Forgotten

September 1, 2009 – 11:49 am

Here in Cape Cod, as everyone looks back on the life of Ted Kennedy, the tone, has been, to put it mildly, approving. It’s bad form to speak ill of the recently dead, so one has hardly heard a peep about the darker aspects of Mr. Kennedy’s life, or the skeletons in his closet (not to mention his car). But, with a hat tip to our friend Mike Zaharee, here’s a peep, from the irascible Mark Steyn.

I imagine there is a family in Swiftwater, PA, whose pain is eased to hear at least one voice, in this ambient hagiographic din, that speaks for their little girl.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (4)

The Big Chill

August 30, 2009 – 10:33 pm

I must say there has hardly been a time in the last ten years or more that I have disconnected myself more thoroughly from the welter and bustle of the world. I have hardly glanced at a newspaper for weeks now, and aside from switching the radio on every so often to check the weather, I have been almost entirely oblivious to events outside our secluded corner of Cape Cod. (This being Cape Cod, however, I did hear about the death of Massachusetts’s senior senator a few days back.) I’ve been spending almost all my time getting re-acquainted with family and friends, have switched on the computer only infrequently (aside from a few days of work I had to do last week), and such time as I have had to myself I’ve mostly spent spending reading and playing music, with almost no inclination to write.

Nine days to go, and we’ll be back in Gotham, the nerve-center of the modern world, and things will get back to normal here. Until then, feel free to visit our archives, or to try the “View a Random Post” link on the homepage. And don’t miss the many interesting goings-on over at Mangan’s, where our friend Dennis is, among other things, grappling manfully with Lawrence Auster on several fronts.

My best to all.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

So Happy Together

August 26, 2009 – 2:53 pm

While everyone else is moping about the death of Ted Kennedy (well, maybe not everybody; Mary Jo Kopechne, for one, could not be reached for comment), here at waka waka waka we are enjoying some good news, courtesy of our friend and esteemed colleague The Stiletto.

We all know, of course, that binge drinking is a delightful and restorative way to knit care’s raveled sleave — but if you’re like me, your enjoyment has been dampened in recent years by dispiriting suggestions from the medical community that alcohol consumption at this existentially therapeutic level may in fact damage the brain.

Now comes a welcome report from the University of California, San Diego, that offers the perfect solution — one that, I suspect, more than a few of you may have already stumbled upon. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (5)

Town Hall Blues

August 25, 2009 – 11:57 am

Required reading: an outstanding essay on the Obama presidency by Fouad Adjami in today’s WSJ. I’m working today, so can’t comment at length myself just now, but readers are invited to weigh in below.

The gist: Mr. Obama, carried into power on a tide of anxiety and guilt, misjudges the fundamental nature of American politics by expecting that the people, having anointed him as their leader, will now refrain from criticism or dissent as he implements his radically progressive and redistributionist agenda.

The article is here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (14)

The Narrow Way

August 23, 2009 – 10:24 pm

Regular visitors to these pages will know that, in sharp contrast to the shallowness and frivolity of most weblogs, we concern ourselves here only with serious matters of the utmost philosophical import and urgency. In particular, we know that many of you turn, sometimes in bleak existential despair, to waka waka waka as place where you can join, with like-minded others, in a pertinacious and undeviating effort to get at life’s real meaning and purpose, and to unravel the world’s knottiest enigmas.

Well, friends, I am afraid you are never going to make much progress until you have spent a late-summer Sunday afternoon listening to the Incredible Casuals rattle the rafters at the Wellfleet Beachcomber.

Here’s your humble correspondent following this arduous road to Truth, this estival hajj, earlier today:

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By Malcolm | Posted in Music and Recording | Comments (3)

Quicker Than The Eye

August 23, 2009 – 2:14 pm

From my daughter ChloÁ« comes a link to a dazzling video showing the state of the art in robotic manipulation of small objects. Here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (3)

Nothing To See Here

August 23, 2009 – 1:55 pm

Though I am languishing on vacation and producing next to nothing (aside from an efflorescence of unshaven whiskers that a friend referred to yesterday as “beach fuzz”), our friend H. Jeffery Hodges, the Gypsy Scholar, has been doing exactly the opposite, offering some excellent posts on a variety of consequential topics. Here, here, here, and here.

As an otiose co-worker from my railroad days used to say (leaning on his shovel as I toiled with a pickaxe), it’s a pleasure to watch a good man work.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (5)

Back To School

August 20, 2009 – 2:13 pm

In response to a recent post about the persistent backwardness of the Arab world, commenters and correspondents have suggested that the problem is not Islam itself, but the “culture of honor” that prevails amongst Arabs (and which has been shown also to be at work in the American South, with arguably similar retrograde effects). Non-Arab Muslims are thought to be more “forward-looking”; the Muslim nations of Southeast Asia are often cited as a counterexample to those who say that Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization.

Here’s an example of how forward-looking things are over there: a Muslim woman in hijab, about to be caned by Malaysia’s Shari’a courts for drinking beer in a bar two years ago.

Some in Malaysia are concerned about the impression this makes:

“We want to present a face to the world that we are not a fundamentalist country,” Ashli Chin, said a resident in Kuala Lumpur. “This makes us a laughingstock.”

This admirable sentiment overlooks that fact that fundamentalism always wells up from Islam’s core; it is built right in. A secular, Western-style Islamic nation is at the very least a contradiction in terms, and is arguably a heresy in itself. And in this case it is little more than an illusion: Malaysia’s civil court cannot overturn Shari’a rulings.

It’s all just a tempest in a teapot anyway, we are told:

Mohamad Isa Abd Ralip, president of the Syariah [Shariah] Lawyers’ Association of Malaysia, said too much is being made of Kartika’s punishment.

“It is not about causing pain. It is about educating others and to teach the person a lesson,” he said.

The recipient is fully clothed and the flogger cannot raise his arm high, Mohamad Isa said. The blows are delivered using a thin stick, so that they don’t break the skin.

See? No big deal. It’s all about education. And maybe it’s working — enough of these, and perhaps we here in the West might even start to learn something.

[Update: caning postponed until after Ramadan. See here.]

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (10)

Marion Barry Is Alive And Well

August 18, 2009 – 12:19 am

Here’s a heartwarming item: it appears that 95% of the dollar bills circulating in Washington, D.C. carry traces of cocaine.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (0)

Beyond QM?

August 17, 2009 – 11:56 pm

Now and then a blip appears on the screen that just might be something awfully big headed our way; on reading about this just now, I’m wondering if the name “Tim Palmer” mightn’t be a lot more familiar ere long.

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

Duty Calls

August 16, 2009 – 11:07 pm

We’ve relocated to the narrow land of the Outer Cape for the next three weeks or so, and unfortunately we have such a full schedule that these pages may be updated only sporadically. There is simply too much else that needs doing: oysters must be gathered, beaches lazed upon, drinks prepared, friends entertained, photons absorbed, books read, ponds swum, lobsters steamed, beauty appreciated, steaks grilled, stars gazed at, grey cells rested, waves ridden, trails walked, guitars strummed, sleep caught up on, and so forth — there’s simply no end to it all. It’s a grim task, but we do think we can manage it all somehow if we apply ourselves diligently, and stay focused.

We’ll post what we can as the opportunity presents itself, but things may not be back to normal around here until sometime after Labor Day.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (9)

Know What I Mean?

August 15, 2009 – 12:12 am

A few weeks back there was an interesting article by Natalie Angier in the science section of the Times, about a familiar word whose meaning, as it turns out, is not at all clear.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Language, Inner Work | Comments (4)

Les Paul, 1915-2009

August 13, 2009 – 11:58 pm

We mark with sadness the death of the venerated guitarist and technical innovator Les Paul, who has shuffled off the mortal coil (was that dual or single?) at the age of 94. I owe more to him than most, as he was the inventor of multitrack recording, an arcane craft by which I earned a crust for many years.

You can read his New York Times obituary here. And if you didn’t “pick up” the little joke above, do forgive me. (Likewise if you did.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Let’s Be Frank

August 13, 2009 – 12:02 am

Our friend H. Jeffery Hodges, who writes thoughtfully about the problem that Islam poses to the rest of the world, has been doing so again lately. In posts here, here, and here, he discusses the book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, by the Weekly Standard’s Christopher Caldwell.

Read More »

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

God Must Love The Poor

August 11, 2009 – 3:36 pm

There’s a dark but timely discussion underway at Mangan’s, kindled by this Washington Post item.

Here.

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

The Scale We’re All Drawn To

August 10, 2009 – 7:27 pm

Back in 1994 or thereabouts, it was my pleasure to spend a few weeks recording and mixing the Bobby McFerrin album Bang! Zoom!. The album, a collaboration with the band the Yellowjackets, has remained one of my favorites — not only because of the high quality of the music, and the fun I had recording it, but also because it gave me a chance to get to know the extraordinarily gifted Mr. McFerrin, who is one of the most likable and intelligent people I have ever met in thirty years of record-making.

Bobby recently participated in a panel about music and neuroscience at the latest World Science Festival here in New York, and gave a unique and memorable demonstration of the affinity of the human brain for the pentatonic scale. Have a look here (fourth clip from the top, just below the dancing bird).

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

Intendant

August 9, 2009 – 3:43 pm

Here’s a strange relic, from a century ago, that was mentioned in the Times recently: The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code.

Back when communication-by-wire was new and edgy technology, its users devised, as a way to keep messages small, a mapping of thousands of words — some of them ordinary English words, others made-to-order — onto various useful phrases. These were collected into a standard reference that telegraphers could use to pack and unpack transmitted content.

Here are a few examples:

Barry: Send immediate notice should a battle occur
Bedelry: I (we) can do but little, if anything, before
Decemvir: Has been dead a long time
Desertless: Denial is useless
Imposable: Ore in winze improving in quality
Outbray: There can be no other
Roselite: Resistance is useless

Odd, interesting reading, from a bygone age of the world. I imagine that back in 1891, when this reference was published, there were even telegraph gurus who had the whole thing memorized, like some sort of secular Hafiz.

You can look at the whole thing here; the title page alone is worth the trip.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Amazing Grace

August 7, 2009 – 11:48 pm

A very short distance from my house, just inside Prospect Park up at the end of the block, is the 9th Street Bandshell. Every summer it is home to the Celebrate Brooklyn concert series, and it seems that each year the lineup gets better and better.

Tonight the lovely Nina and I strolled up there to see Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, a bluesy rock band from Vermont with roots in the late Sixties, and they were absolutely stupendous.

Frank Zappa famously said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, so I won’t say much here; anyway, I’m still recovering.

But: damn, can that woman sing. Holy crap.

On the table next to me is a book I just got hold of today: Does Life Have A Meaning? It’s by the late philosopher Milton Munitz, whose son Charles, also a philosopher, I got to know just recently. The subject is one that occupies a great deal of my waking attention. Tonight’s performance reminded me that if life does have a meaning, it probably has something to do with music.

If Grace Potter and her band are playing anywhere within mailing distance of where you live, go see them.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Frontier Justice

August 6, 2009 – 11:40 pm

According to reports, a U.S. airstrike may actually have killed the Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, the de facto ruler of South Waziristan. Confirmation is still pending, but if true this is news that will be received with grim satisfaction in many quarters.

Baitullah was one of the most brutal and dangerous men in the region, and that’s saying something. A ruthless jihadist, he claimed responsibility for the attack on the Lahore police station in March, and may also have been behind Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Read the CNN account here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (7)

What Could It Be?

August 5, 2009 – 11:37 pm

In today’s New York Times, Tom Friedman comments on the U.N. Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report, which first came out in 2002, and which has just been updated.

Apparently the news is not good; it seems that, for some reason, the Arab world is rather a depressed and backward place.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (6)

Ladies’ Man

August 4, 2009 – 9:38 pm

Bill Clinton, who has always had a gift for picking up women, has done it again, even if this time he had to travel a bit farther afield.

I’m certainly glad that the two hostages, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been released, and I suppose it would be churlish of me not to give Mr. Clinton a nod for getting it done — but this has been a most unfortunate episode, and it is something of an embarrassment to see our former president making fawning obeisances, on behalf of the United States of America, to North Korea’s grotesque dictator, who is arguably the world’s most despicable tyrant.

According to reports, Mr. Clinton offered an abject apology for the two women’s “hostile acts”, and conveyed more of the same from Mr. Obama, who seems never to have found a misfortune in this world for which the U.S. is not culpable. Mr. Clinton then gave Mr. Kim his deferential assurance that we Americans yearn as one to join him post-haste at the negotiating table, in order that the lying little jackal may ensnare us, without delay, in further deceptions.

Kind of makes you proud.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (9)

…So Little Time

August 3, 2009 – 9:59 pm

YouTube has just launched what looks like an wonderful resource for the insatiable autodidact: an educational site where users can find free online videos from colleges and universities. Read all about it.

Meanwhile, for you videophiles whose preferences lean more toward matters military (or if you just like to watch stuff blow up), reader JK has sent along a link to a website that you’re sure to enjoy. Here.

I fall into both categories, I’m afraid; I have a feeling I won’t be getting much done for the rest of the evening.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Smack! Whinny!

August 3, 2009 – 2:55 pm

Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but British physician and writer A.M. Daniels, AKA “Theodore Dalrymple”, has also weighed in on whether there is a “right” to health-care, and on whether healthcare is best provided by the government.

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics, Society and Culture | Comments (5)

No-Man Band

August 3, 2009 – 12:48 pm

There’s an item at CNN today about a mechanical music-maker called Cybraphon. It’s the product of a few months of work by a Scottish artist’s collective, and I think it’s rather a nifty bit of work.

Automated music-making is obviously nothing new — music boxes, band organs, and hurdy-gurdys have been around for ages, and of course much, if not most, of everything you hear these days is a collection of samples and synthesized sounds actuated, one way or another, by a computer — but this contraption has, to my ear, something particularly appealing and organic-sounding about it.

You can read the story here (and watch the linked video here) — and to learn more, visit the Cybraphon website, here.

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

“A Miniature Orchestra In Itself”

August 2, 2009 – 4:47 pm

With a hat tip to bassist Alex Wan, here’s something enjoyable and instructive: Queen’s Bohemian Rahpsody, arranged for the classical guitar by one Edgar Cruz. Most impressive.

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

Political Science

July 31, 2009 – 6:20 pm

Dennis Mangan calls our attention to an article in Newsweek, by Sharon Begley, that takes aim at the burgeoning science of evolutionary psychology. Begley effectively pronounces the field dead, which will certainly be news to its practitioners.

Anthropologist Dan Sperber writes that the evo-psych community knew this broadside was coming, and that its publication in as prominent an organ as Newsweek would be troublesome. In his post he links to a helpful primer on evolutionary psychology, by Leda Cosmides & John Tooby, and also to a rebuttal, published in the Psychology Today blog by behavioral scientist Gad Saad, of Begley’s criticisms of the field.

Saad’s piece, called The Never-Ending Misconceptions About Evolutionary Psychology, is well worth a look.

A sample:

…EP does not imply that we are endowed with a perfectly rigid and inflexible human nature. Rather, we do possess an evolutionary-based human nature that subsequently interacts with environmental cues. That said this does not imply that human nature is infinitely malleable. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture in the annals of recorded history where parents were overwhelmingly more concerned about their son’s chastity as compared to their daughter’s. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where on average men have had a sustained preference for mating with post-menopausal women. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where individuals who possess asymmetric facial features are judged to be more attractive and desirable than their symmetric counterparts. I challenge Ms. Begley to find a culture where on average women have had a sustained preference for lazy, submissive, apathetic men as prospective mates. As a side note, contrary to Ms. Begley’s claim, as a woman’s socioeconomic status increases, her preference for a high status man becomes even more pronounced.

…and:

Ms. Begley mentions the proverbial “get-out-of-jail-for-free card” as one of the most pernicious elements of evolutionary psychology. For example, that evolutionary psychologists explain that on average men display a greater desire for sexual variety than do women is taken to mean that we are trying to “justify and condone” men’s infidelities. To repeat a point that I made elsewhere, this is as intelligent a comment as to argue that by seeking to understand the causes of cancer, oncologists are seeking to “justify and condone” the existence of cancerous cells. Evolutionary psychologists are no different from any other type of scientist. They seek to pursue interesting scientific questions unencumbered by any grand conspiratorial agenda.

I have yet to turn up a response by the field’s best-known proponent, Steven Pinker, but I imagine one is forthcoming, or already in print. (See also this post by Steve Sailer.) We’ll return to this topic later.

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

A Salty Dogfight

July 30, 2009 – 3:38 pm

According to an item over at CNN, former Procol Harum keyboardist Matthew Fisher has won a lawsuit seeking a portion of the royalties for the band’s classic tune “A Whiter Shade of Pale”. This certainly seems fair, though I wasn’t present as the song was being written: Fisher’s plangent organ-playing is the soul of the tune, and the intro in which the organ states the theme is one of the most recognizable eight bars in the history of rock music.

Apparently Mr. Fisher had to sue bandleader and vocalist Gary Brooker for his piece of the pie, which seems a pity. Mr. Brooker, M.B.E., is one of England’s most prominent philanthropists, but it seems that when it comes to more personal matters he is somewhat less charitable.

Story here.

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

Time Is Money

July 30, 2009 – 2:39 pm

David Pogue, the personal-technology columnist for the New York Times is hopping mad. Why? It’s those annoying little messages you have to listen to before you can leave voice-mail for a cell-phone user. You know:

“At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up, or press 1 for more options. To leave a callback number, press 5. (Beep)”

Turns out these things are only there for one reason (after all, we all know what to do, right?): they keep you on the air for a few seconds longer. By doing so, they generate revenue, and plenty of it. Mr. Pogue calculates:

If Verizon’s 70 million customers leave or check messages twice a weekday, Verizon rakes in about $620 million a year. That’s your money. And your time: three hours of your time a year, just sitting there listening to the same message over and over again every year.

These guys sure have a lot of moxie. David Pogue thinks we don’t have to put up with it. Learn more here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)