Ox Tale

February 8, 2009 – 8:31 pm

Today was the annual Yee’s Hung Ga Lunar New Year parade, in which our dragon and lion-dance teams make their way along a circuitous, miles-long path that covers just about every block of New York’s Chinatown. It’s a long day of physical effort and deafening cacophony, and by the end we are all completely worn out and more than a little shell-shocked (I know I certainly am). I would describe it all for you in more detail, but already did just that, three years ago, here — and even posted pictures, two years ago, here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (3)

Word Processors

February 7, 2009 – 11:47 pm

I’ve just read an interesting item over at Bill Vallicella’s website, The Maverick Philosopher. It was a guest post (actually a “promoted” comment) by philosopher Peter Lupu, who has joined us over here on occasion as well.

The post by Peter was about Objectivism; it was a fairly technical examination of the Objectivist position that everything that is, necessarily is. Peter’s post is excellent, and if you are interested in these things you should read it. But what I want to comment on here is not the content of the post, but something I noticed while reading it.

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

What You Mean “We”, Kemosabe?

February 6, 2009 – 11:13 pm

More than a few states, facing the prospect of an increasingly activist federal government under the new Democratic administration, have passed measures in their local legislatures to assert their sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.

Here are some bills from Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri (this one has to do with resistance to Federal aborotion laws), Oklahoma, California, and Georgia. More are on the way.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (3)

The Penny Drops

February 6, 2009 – 10:52 pm

In today’s Best of the Web newsletter, WSJ editorialist James Taranto pokes some fun at the New York Times:

The editorial board of the New York Times has stumbled onto a possibly revolutionary economic idea. The paper is sounding a note of caution about Gov. David Paterson’s proposal to impose a tax on theater tickets:

The proposal could increase ticket prices by about 8 percent, which could dim Broadway’s lights as tourists start thinking twice about that vacation in Manhattan. If tourism slumps in the city, the state’s budget problems would surely worsen along with it. Rocco Landesman, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, summarizes his latest pleas to lawmakers this way: “Please, don’t kill your golden goose.”

Normally, a tax hike is a classic win-win: The government raises taxes, people pay the higher taxes, and the government gets more revenue, which it uses to stimulate the economy, promote social justice, educate our children, free us from dependence on foreign oil, and provide health care for all.

So how come the theater ticket tax doesn’t work the same way? Is Broadway some kind of Bizarro World where the normal rules of economics are stood on their heads?

Or could it be that this maddeningly counterintuitive phenomenon the Times has identified, in which taxing economic activity actually discourages it, can be found in other areas as well?

We await further enlightenment from future editorials.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Sorry, Charlie

February 5, 2009 – 11:23 pm

February 12th being the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne has written a substantial essay on the status of science and religion in American culture 150 years after the publication of On The Origin Of Species, and on just how compatible the two really are. His answer: not so much.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology | Comments (5)

Pearls Before Swine

February 5, 2009 – 12:09 am

From Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal: Daniel Pearl’s father writes, seven years after his son’s brutal murder, on how far we haven’t come.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Aiming To Please

February 4, 2009 – 11:14 pm

Readers have often mentioned that they wished our comment box had a ‘preview’ feature, so I went poking around in the WordPress Plugins Directory and found one. It is a ‘live-preview’ plugin, which means the formatted text is displayed in a box below the comment, and is updated as the user types. There are others out there if this one doesn’t give satisfactory results, but some of them will require that I upgrade to the newest version of WordPress (which is something I’ve been meaning to do anyway, as I’m still running version 2.21, and the latest is 2.7).

I’ve also added a ‘subscribe-to-comments’ plugin, which lets users request email notifications of new comments on any thread they are participating in, and a plugin that makes it easier to embed images.

What I’d really like to be able to do would be to get rid of that little spam-blocking ‘captcha’ box that forces unregistered users to enter digits from a displayed image. It appears that I still need it, though: I turned it off for all of about thirty seconds while I was installing the new ones this evening, and even in that brief interval I received an enormous comment full of unsavory links.

Let me know if this preview plugin seems acceptable, or if you think I should keep looking.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (7)

Flying High

February 3, 2009 – 10:53 pm

Here’s another item sent our way by Jess Kaplan, who is himself a frequent traveler to Moscow: passengers about to embark on an Aeroflot flight mutinied when they saw that their pilot was obviously drunk. (Quite a contrast, of course, with our own Chesley Sullenberger, who soberly managed to put his plane in the drink.)

And while we are on the subject of aviation mishaps, we would be remiss if we did not pause to note with sadness that today is the 50th anniversary of the crash that killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper on February 3rd, 1959.

It’s all still safer than driving, though, I suppose.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Hive Minds

February 2, 2009 – 10:46 pm

We’ve all heard of spelling bees. Now it turns out they can count, too.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General, Mind and Brain, Darwin and Biology, Science | Comments (3)

What Is ‘Chi’?

February 2, 2009 – 12:37 am

From our friend Jess Kaplan come links to two YouTube clips, both of which show two chi-gung practitioners — one a Tibetan giving a martial-arts demonstration, and the other a Javanese healer. What we see in each is quite extraordinary, and will certainly tax the credulity of skeptical Westerners.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (19)

Just Imagine

January 30, 2009 – 11:37 pm

In this clip from 1981, the future swims into view.

By Malcolm | Posted in Technology | Comments (2)

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

January 29, 2009 – 6:22 pm

Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has been removed from office. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Next!

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (4)

Endangered Speeches

January 29, 2009 – 11:11 am

It’s time to leave immigration aside, and get back to our usual business; the past few days have given us enough to mull over for quite a while.

Here, then is a project behind which waka waka waka can throw its enthusiastic and unambiguous support: Save The Words.

By Malcolm | Posted in Language | Comments (2)

Post-Mortem

January 29, 2009 – 1:01 am

The little dust-up following Monday’s post was not, I’m afraid, this site’s finest hour, and I certainly take responsibility for doing a poor job as moderator. I had written the post during the day and evening Sunday, and put it up on Monday around lunchtime. There were a few responses early on, but I was ill-prepared for the onslaught on Tuesday, when over 80 comments — many of them long and bristling with links — poured in. I was at work, and was not in a position to keep up.

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

Gung Hey Fat Choy

January 27, 2009 – 11:43 pm

So distracted have I been by a little melee (now ended) in another corner of these premises that I have neglected, I am sorry to say, to wish all of you a happy Lunar New Year.

It is the Year of the Ox; may the markets be bullish.

Yee’s Hung Ga will be taking to the streets in Chinatown, performing our usual lion dance and kung-fu demonstrations, on the last day of the celebration, February the 8th. Do come down if you are in town.

By Malcolm | Posted in Martial Arts | Comments (5)

An Immodest Proposal

January 26, 2009 – 3:47 pm

A few days ago Dennis Mangan posted at his website, Mangan’s Miscellany, some remarks of mine about a notion he had been discussing: the restriction of immigration on the basis of race. This gave rise to a long comment-thread. The comments were of varying quality, but nearly universal in their agreement that anyone who might suggest, as I did, that race is hardly a desirable or respectable criterion by which to filter out prospective immigrants must be a naive and deluded Pollyanna in the grip of an infectious liberal madness. I was told that to hold such an opinion meant that I was in the “kindergarten stage” of understanding the problem, that I lack “fundamental insight”, that I was an “escapist sloganeer” who, having mouthed “nice-sounding phrases”, imagined that I had “handled the issue”. I learned that I “just want the ideal liberal world”, and that I should “dream on”. I stood in the dock as an exemplar of “liberal, blank-slade [sic] thinking” (Really? moi?? see here, here, here, and most recently, here).

Moving on to actual clinical diagnosis, I learned that I “clearly suffer” from an “infantile disorder” that the blogger Mencius Moldbug (who is, just as an aside, certainly an interesting fellow, and worth reading) has called “human neurological uniformity”, which is:

…characterized by the belief that “modern human subpopulations are neurologically uniform… genetic differences between races… are of no behavioral significance… [and] genetic differences between individuals are of no behavioral significance.” People who do not suffer from this disorder consider that what people look like is, in fact, associated with how they behave.

Although it builds character, no doubt, to offer a thoughtful remark in a public forum and find oneself pelted with rotten vegetables, it is not, as it turns out, an unalloyed pleasure. Perhaps I am too thin-skinned.

Anyway, all of this happened while I was working sixteen-hour days, and had no time even to outline a response, let alone write and post one. Now that I have a few quiet moments, I’d like to make some clarifying remarks. (This is rather a long post, by the way; for that I apologize in advance.)

Read More »

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (92)

Much Better Now

January 24, 2009 – 9:38 pm

It is Saturday evening now, and at last I have the time to begin to respond to all this brouhaha about immigration and race. Tomorrow looks like a very quiet day, and I should have ample time to compose a proper reply.

The problem tonight is that my Internet access has been on the fritz all day; it is working at dial-up speeds right now, but will probably conk out again any minute. If the trouble persists I will post from the office on Monday.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (2)

Service Notice

January 23, 2009 – 9:50 pm

So exhausted. Even complete sentences, subject-verb agreement is quite beyond me. Sleep first. Back tomorrow.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Backup!

January 22, 2009 – 10:31 pm

OK, waka wakans, I can use a hand here. I am once again working till at least midnight, and have no time for a post. But I would like it if you would visit this thread at Dennis Mangan’s, where I am alone under heavy fire, and have no time to respond. Go forth, and comment away; the topic is complex and important. But I warn you: think before you post. Be rigorous, be coherent, be consistent. Show ’em what we’ve got.

By Malcolm | Posted in Society and Culture | Comments (33)

Here Comes The Sun

January 21, 2009 – 10:40 pm

I’m working late tonight (still at the office at 10:30), and have no time for writing. But as always I hate to send you away empty-handed, so I have a little tidbit that ought to give you one more thing to worry about. Have a look here.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Skunk At The Garden Party

January 20, 2009 – 11:02 pm

After I posted this morning’s item, I watched the inauguration, along with the rest of the world. It is unquestionably a promising and historic moment, and I am not immune to President Obama’s charismatic appeal myself — but I have to say, at the risk of being a cranky old grouch, that I found the love-fest in the National Mall rather disturbing. I’m leery of large crowds, particularly when they are sharing a powerful emotion.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (22)

And Now For Something Completely Different

January 20, 2009 – 11:25 am

Looking back over my 52 years, I must say I cannot recall anything like the giddy euphoria attending today’s inauguration. Perhaps the mood was something like this in January of 1961, but if so I was too young to remember, and anyway I doubt it. Certainly I don’t remember pilgrims descending on Washington in their millions to touch the hem of Jimmy Carter’s garment, or even Ronald Reagan’s.

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

Trouble In Paradise?

January 19, 2009 – 10:29 pm

Software engineers often imagine that Google must be just the best place to work. A couple of years ago I visited a friend who works in their New York office (which then was in Times Square), and I have to say it looked pretty good: a beautiful, modern office with all sorts of worker-friendly touches: huge monitors on everyone’s desk, lavishly appointed lounges, a free cafeteria, and so on. The company is obviously a mighty engine of creativity, and developers are even given one day a week just to tinker with ideas of their own. It is also notoriously hard to get hired there; the candidate must run a long and arduous gauntlet of interviews and examinations. As you might expect, it isn’t easy to land The Best Job In The World.

But according to some former employees, Google isn’t quite the Shangri-La it’s cracked up to be. Have a look here.

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

Avast, Ye Scurvy Dogs

January 18, 2009 – 11:13 pm

The US has deliberately done nothing much to deal with the problem of piracy in the waters off the Horn of Africa; the idea was that this would instill a sense of urgency in other nations that had more at stake. One problem has been that nobody knew what to be done with pirates if caught; there is no local government capable of the job. All this may be changing. The Navy has announced the creation of a new body, CTF-151 (CTF stands for Combined Task Force), that will be a coalition fleet of vessels from several “interested” nations. Furthermore it appears that the State Department has reached an agreement with a nearby nation to serve as the venue in which captured pirates will be tried (there is no way to be sure, but it appears it might be Kenya). It looks like this may all get going soon after the inauguration on Tuesday.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, you should read this briefing on the subject by Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Central Command, U.S. 5TH Fleet, Vice Adm. William Gortney, given on January 15th. And as always with matters naval, go to Information Dissemination for analysis.

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

Two Views Of A Secret

January 18, 2009 – 8:09 pm

In last night’s post we linked to a reminiscence about the late Patrick McGoohan. That essay, in turn, linked to another blog with a post about Mr. McGoohan, this time by a film writer by the name of Glenn Kenney. Mr. Kenny’s post is a good one, and if you were a McGoohan fan you should read it. But what raised my eyebrow was a comment left by one of Mr. Kenny’s readers.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Mr. Warmth

January 17, 2009 – 10:36 pm

We remarked with sadness the other day upon the death of actor Patrick McGoohan, star of the 1960s TV series Danger Man, Secret Agent, and The Prisoner. Our old friend David Pauley wrote in today with a link to this thoughtful essay about McGoohan’s icy appeal.

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

The Big Picture

January 16, 2009 – 11:31 pm

There is a fascinating item making the rounds today. It seems that mysterious noise in an exquisitely sensitive gravity-wave detector may in fact be an indication that our instruments are now sensitive enough to detect the granularity of spacetime itself — and the argument is a very interesting one.

The last time physicists announced that an inexplicable noise in a sensitive detector was evidence that something funny was going on was when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were trying to build a quiet microwave antenna, back in 1964; it turned out they had stumbled on the remnant black-body radiation of the Big Bang. So probably we ought to pay attention.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (9)

Drake’s Passage

January 15, 2009 – 11:00 pm

We must note with sadness the death of Patrick McGoohan, who was, I always thought, just about the coolest guy I ever saw on TV.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (7)

He’s Baaaaaaack…

January 15, 2009 – 2:24 pm

Thanks to the kind and generous efforts of my friend Bob Wyman over at Google, Jeffrey Hodges’ blog, The Gypsy Scholar, is on the air once again. Go pay a visit.

Many thanks, Bob.

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (9)

Peace In Our Time

January 15, 2009 – 2:17 pm

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Ethiopians, who have been fighting Islamists in Somalia, have given up.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs, Jihad | Comments (13)

No Exit

January 14, 2009 – 11:21 pm

What next for Israel? Thomas Friedman, writing in today’s Times, suggests that Hamas will be chastened by the fury of Israel’s assault, as, he says, Hezbollah was after the battle of 2006.

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

Might As Well Be Drinking

January 13, 2009 – 10:53 pm

We’ve been hearing for years how dangerous it is to talk on cell phones while driving, and many states have made doing so illegal. While I can easily see how distracting it can be to fumble with the device itself behind the wheel, I’ve always thought that merely talking on a cell phone, particularly a hands-free version, should be no more distracting than having a conversation with a passenger. Apparently I was wrong, according to this article in today’s New York Times.

By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain, Society and Culture, Science | Comments (1)

Sui Generis

January 13, 2009 – 12:26 am

You may have heard of a man by the name of Christopher Langan. I first learned of him a few years back, when he was profiled on some television show or other. He has, apparently, one of the highest IQs ever measured; it is said to be somewhere in the vicinity of 200. He has had, however, rather a different life than one might have expected: after a boyhood in Montana in which he suffered with a brutally abusive stepfather and a rural educational system that had no idea what to do with him, he drifted through various jobs and ended up as a bouncer in a Long Island bar.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Mind and Brain | Comments (46)

Latin King

January 12, 2009 – 12:21 pm

Here’s another item from the Wall Street Journal’s Op-Ed page: a look at the rapidly consolidating dictatorship of the grotesque Venezuelan despot Hugo ChÁ¡vez.

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

No-Win Situation

January 11, 2009 – 6:08 pm

A week ago the author and military historian Max Boot published in the Wall Street Journal an insightful, if morose, essay on the difficulty Israel faces in the situation in Gaza. I neglected to link to it at the time, but it has lost none of its currency and relevance. I reproduce it below in its entirety.

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

Counsel For The Defense?

January 10, 2009 – 12:37 pm

The appointment of Dawn Johnsen as head of the incoming Obama administration’s Office of Legal Counsel got my attention when it was announced yesterday; Ms. Johnsen is well-known as a critic of the Bush administration’s efforts to strengthen the power of the Executive Branch.

An op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal argues that with the nation at war she is not, perhaps, the wisest choice. Many will disagree.

The tension here is between the nation’s ability to wage war effectively — which calls for a good measure of secrecy about one’s strategy and tactics, and the ability to respond flexibly to rapidly changing situations unhampered by debate and second-guessing — and the transparency and checks on executive power that are necessary for a free and democratic nation. Those concerned about the latter will argue that dictators often begin their consolidation of power by invoking national defense, while those focused on the former will argue that to insist on legislative, or even judicial, scrutiny and approval of every executive decision during a time of external conflict undermines the nation’s ability to defend itself, and to defeat its enemies.

Read the article here.

By Malcolm | Posted in Politics | Comments (1)

Another Way To Look At Things

January 9, 2009 – 11:52 pm

We’ll get back to weightier matters before long, but the demands of the workplace press heavily just now, and there will be scant time over the next few days for serious posts.

Tonight, though, I have an interesting little item for you natural-history buffs.

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

Where’s Jeffery?

January 8, 2009 – 2:03 pm

Our little community here at waka waka waka is deeply concerned about the sudden disappearance of our friend Horace Jeffery Hodges’ outstanding website, The Gypsy Scholar. According to Blogspot his site “has been removed”, but anyone who knows Jeffery know that he would never close down his blog — at which he has written daily posts for years now — without announcing his intention to his readers.

Jeffery writes from Seoul, South Korea, where he is a professor of English. He writes often about the local culture, and although he is always the very model of tact and civility, it may be that some of his opinions have irked the university he works for, or even the government (Koreans are apparently rather prickly about such things).

Jeffery, if you are reading this, we all hope that this is just a temporary technical problem, soon to be repaired, and that you and Sun-ae and the kids are all fine.

By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (10)

Sorry, I Can’t Hear You

January 8, 2009 – 11:31 am

From reader JK, who never wearies of sending our way nourishing morsels he has plucked from the Web, comes this intriguing item: a new cosmic mystery.

By Malcolm | Posted in Science | Comments (1)

Our Bodies, Our Selves

January 7, 2009 – 10:55 pm

In addition to the Question Of The Year we mentioned in a recent post, the latest from Edge.org also incudes an interesting essay by the prominent neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran on the physiological underpinnings of the self.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (8)

Interreligious Dialogue

January 7, 2009 – 4:55 pm

Here’s an encouraging and heartwarming item from across the pond, courtesy of Gates Of Vienna.

By Malcolm | Posted in Jihad | Comments (1)

Western Civilization: It’s A Keeper

January 7, 2009 – 12:00 am

New York City is a crowded, chaotic place. The public transit is bad and getting worse, and the weather is, generally, awful. Housing is cramped and expensive. The Mets and Jets collapse, like clockwork, year after year. But there are times when I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

This evening the lovely Nina and I joined the Tuesday-night crowd at Avery Fisher Hall, where the Philharmonic, under the guidance of maestro Lorin Maazel, treated us to a splendid and eclectic program.

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

That Time Again

January 5, 2009 – 11:26 pm

Every year the website Edge.org poses a provocative question to some of the world’s brightest bulbs. The 2009 question is out.

Drumroll, please:

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

Is God Necessary?

January 4, 2009 – 11:20 pm

I have said often in these pages that it seems likely that the human propensity for religion is a cognitive adaptation that has flourished because it tends to improve the cohesion of social groups, thereby increasing the fitness of those groups in competition against others. As David Sloan Wilson argues in his book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, this idea of “group-level selection”, though out of favor among Darwinian theorists for many years, is now becoming repectable again, and is an appropriate place in which to look for adaptive explanations of various sorts of social behavior.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Darwin and Biology, Society and Culture, Inner Work, Science, Religion | Comments (17)

Service Notice

January 3, 2009 – 1:02 pm

We are traveling today, so will likely be off the air until tomorrow. Please browse our archives, try the “Random Post” link at right, or join the ongoing conversation about the situation in Gaza. (Or all three.)

By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (1)

Moral Clarity

January 2, 2009 – 6:05 pm

Charles Krauthammer, in today’s column, responds to those who see Israel as being at fault for bullying the Palestinians once again. His essay begins:

Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.

Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis — 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years — deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.

This has two purposes. First, counting on the moral scrupulousness of Israel, Hamas figures civilian proximity might help protect at least part of its arsenal. Second, knowing that Israelis have new precision weapons that may allow them to attack nonetheless, Hamas hopes that inevitable collateral damage — or, if it is really fortunate, an errant Israeli bomb — will kill large numbers of its own people for which, of course, the world will blame Israel.

For Hamas, the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians. The religion of Jew-murder and self-martyrdom is ubiquitous.

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By Malcolm | Posted in Foreign Affairs | Comments (46)

What A Difference A Day Makes

January 2, 2009 – 12:39 am

The storm ended late last night, and as the clouds broke up the temperature fell sharply, down into the low teens. Today was sunny, but it was very windy, with a high of only about twenty degrees. This afternoon at about two-thirty or three I went back out to take some more pictures.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (4)

December 31st, 2008

December 31, 2008 – 7:24 pm

We are up in Wellfleet for the holiday, and were treated to a winter nor’easter that took the form of an impressive blizzard. It began at about ten this morning, and before long the roads were covered, the wind was blowing hard, and the visibility was down almost to zero. I got into my reliable all-wheel-drive vehicle at about one o’clock, and went out for a spin, camera in hand. Here’s a side of this popular seaside getaway that the throngs who crowd the place in August will never see.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (19)

To Make A Long Story Short…

December 30, 2008 – 10:43 pm

Over the transom today comes another item from our friend Jess Kaplan, mentioning yet another eccentric Russian academic. This time around it is a mathematician by the name of Anatoly Fomenko.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General | Comments (9)

A Less Perfect Union

December 29, 2008 – 1:58 pm

Our friend Jess Kaplan has sent us a link to an article in the Wall Street Journal informing us that according to a prominent Russian political analyst, the U.S. is about to fall apart.

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By Malcolm | Posted in General, Society and Culture | Comments (8)