March 25, 2008 – 10:47 am
In what may mark, depending upon your perspective, either the zenith or nadir of Western civilization, the makers of South Park have now put every episode on line for your viewing pleasure. Or the irrevocable corruption of your eternal soul. Whatever.
March 25, 2008 – 10:36 am
March 24, 2008 – 11:28 pm
In a recent post, Kevin Kim offers a rebuttal to Sam Harris’s argument that religious moderates are in fact an impediment to progress toward a more rational world.
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Now that you’ve joined me on a vigorous early-spring hike to Cape Cod Bay, it’s time to reward ourselves with a scrumptious local delicacy: some of our famous Wellfleet Oysters. Here’s how it’s done.
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March 23, 2008 – 12:57 am
Friday, March 21st, was the first full day of Spring, and here in the outer reaches of Cape Cod, it was more lion than lamb. The temperature hovered in the thirties, and all day a steady wind roared out of the West. But the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, and after weeks cooped up in the city, I had to get out for a stroll. As it happens, I had a camera along, so readers may join me, if they like, on a three-mile mosey along the northern and western rim of Wellfleet Harbor.
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March 21, 2008 – 10:44 pm
I normally spend at least ten hours a day at the computer; I’m taking a little break today. Back shortly.
I’ll be on the road this evening, so won’t have any time for writing. Meanwhile, though, reader Andrew Staroscik has brought to our attention an interesting discussion about consciousness over at Sandwalk. We’ll take a closer look here when we are back in harness.
March 19, 2008 – 11:21 pm
From our friend Jess Kaplan comes a link to a critique, by the British philosopher John Gray, of the “New Atheism”. It is an engaging piece, but it makes a lot of familiar and rather weak arguments, and some that are quite strange indeed. I suggest that you go and read it — it is worth the effort — and then read this rebuttal by A.C. Grayling.
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March 18, 2008 – 11:35 pm
In a recent post, The Maverick Philosopher imagined a possible world in which he might have blogged about Schopenhauer under the banner The Scowl of Minerva (a play on the owl as the symbol of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and philosophy). Things like this always set my own mental wheels in motion, and I soon had hatched a brood of kindred websites, each devoted to a different aspect of philosophical inquiry:
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March 17, 2008 – 10:01 pm
There are a great many roadside oddities in America, often associated with equally odd people. One such dyad I’ve only just learned of is the Coral Castle, in Homestead, Florida.
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Dennis Mangan presents one of the most brilliant little video clips I’ve ever seen. Go and see for yourself.
(P.S. Confused? Cheat-sheet here.)
March 17, 2008 – 10:07 am
My lovely wife Nina has alerted me to a TED-conference video I might otherwise have missed: a talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor on the astonishing effects of a debilitating stroke: her own. This is an extraordinary presentation, with profound implications.
Have a look here. I have a few things to say about it all, but would rather wait until you’ve seen it.
March 16, 2008 – 11:41 pm
Having come finally to the final hour of a far-from-restful weekend (I call them “TGIM” weekends), I’m far too pooped to post. So I offer instead an interesting look at what I am sure will be a transformative technology, still in earliest infancy. Here.
March 15, 2008 – 12:09 pm
Our commenter Peter K., a.k.a The One-Eyed Man (he actually has binocular vision), asks the following question about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the comment thread to a recent post:
If you are a Palestinian, what do you do?
The “peace process,’ such as it is, has gotten them nowhere. In any event, there is a weak Israeli government which is unlikely to alienate the conservatives and make bold moves or conciliations. Violence is the only leverage they have, but this is something we all disapprove of.
What would you do if you were in Palestinian shoes?
It’s obviously a good question. While you can probably imagine what I might say here, I am in a recording studio all day today, and working tomorrow as well, so won’t be able to come back to this for a little while — but I encourage readers, including Peter himself, to comment.
March 14, 2008 – 10:51 pm
From a friend of a friend in the mysterious East comes a pair of links to some videos featuring a Bahraini Shi’ite by the name of Dhiyaa al-Musawi. In the first clip he is being interviewed, in Arabic, and he is saying some extraordinary things.
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March 13, 2008 – 10:52 pm
I got home quite late tonight, and serious scribbling is not in the cards. So go to this website, install Silverlight if you haven’t already, and have a look at where we’ve got to in the presentation of visual data.
March 12, 2008 – 10:46 pm
We’ve added a new link to our sidebar: the website Brains, which describes itself as “a forum for discussing the philosophy of: mind, neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science.” We’ve neglected the subject a bit lately in favor of political and cultural topics, but as you know this is right up one of our alleys. Do have a look.
As long as we are tilting at cultural relativism, here is a pithy account, by a former Muslim, of why we should not be shy about saying that post-Enlightenment Western culture is arguably humanity’s best effort yet.
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March 12, 2008 – 11:37 am
We thank Kevin Kim once again, this time for calling our attention to a gratifying piece by David Mamet about a road-to-Damascus event regarding the standard liberal worldview.
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March 12, 2008 – 10:26 am
We note with sadness the death of bassist Dennis Irwin. I didn’t know Dennis well, but I had met him on many occasions, and did record him once or twice. He was, in addition to being an outstanding player, a wonderfully sweet-natured man. Dennis died soon after having been diagnosed with cancer late last year, and will be missed by all. Read his New York Times obituary here.
I’ve often expressed my distaste for the Clintons: how anyone in his (or, yes, even her) right mind could want to send those Travellers back to the White House is beyond my comprehension. Lots of others feel the same way, of course; with a hat tip to our friend the Stiletto, whose pointed insights and piercing commentary we recommend to all, here is a piece by Andrew Sullivan that sums it all up nicely.
March 11, 2008 – 10:36 pm
I won’t have much more to say about the Eliot Spitzer debacle, as it’s not especially interesting, and certainly nothing new. But I wouldn’t want readers to think that when big stories like this come along, all I can do is jeer and snigger, so for tonight, let’s set aside the japery for a moment of more serious reflection. And then, back to sniggering.
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This just in from The Borowitz Report:
Amid calls for him to resign, embattled New York Governor Eliot Spitzer held a hastily-scheduled press conference in Albany today.
“After much deliberation, I have decided to resign my membership in the Emperors VIP Club, effective immediately,’ Mr. Spitzer said. “I hope that in doing so, I will allow the healing to begin.’
Mr. Spitzer expressed his regret over the recent sex scandal, telling reporters, “I have let down my fellow Emperors and VIPs, whose privacy has been unfortunately violated.’
Under a transition plan worked out with the Emperors VIP Club, Customer Number Ten would immediately succeed Governor Spitzer and become Customer Number Nine.
Mr. Spitzer confirmed that he had already handed over his key to room number 871 in the Mayflower Hotel to his successor.
An item in today’s Washington Post informs us that our only hope to avoid total annihilation is to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. Now.
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This should be interesting: our governor, former prosecutor Eliot Spitzer, has been identified as a client of a high-end prostitution ring.
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With hat tips to both the Big Hominid (from whom this entire link-based post is essentially plagiarized) and the Gypsy Scholar, allow me to introduce you to Pat Condell, a British comedian, atheist, and polemicist. If you love a good rant, you won’t be disappointed.
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Our online friend Jeffery Hodges, writing once again from his home base in Seoul, South Korea, has added an interesting essay of his own to the discussion of multiculturalism that we’ve had here recently. He cites some intriguing research into the way different sorts of cultures deal with the problem of freeloaders in cooperative systems. Have a look here.
Our friend, the inquisitive and irrepressible blogger and author Kevin Kim, is an American expat who has been living and teaching in Seoul for years. Now he is planning to return to the US for an ambitious project: a transcontinental walk to foster interreligious dialogue. He’s started a new website exclusively for this project: Kevin’s Walk. Go and have a look.
In a recent post, Bill Vallicella chides Christopher Hitchens for a humorous jab at religion that he and Richard Dawkins often make. The offending remark, in its general form, is that since we are already all atheists as regards Poseidon, or Osiris, or Thor, all that is needed to finish the job is to go “one god further”. It always gets a laugh, but not from Dr. Vallicella.
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We respectfully pause to note the death of Norman Smith, the EMI engineer who not only recorded the Beatles’ audition tape, and went on to be the lead engineer on all of their recordings up to and including Rubber Soul, but who also signed to EMI a band called “The Pink Floyd”, and produced their first two albums, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets, as well as the later double album Ummagumma.
He was one of the greats, and all of us who have spent our lives behind the console owe him a tremendous debt.
Read his story here.
It’s time to take a break from all the heavy lifting we’ve been doing for the past few days. So here’s an amusing little diversion that’s both fun and educational.
Well, I certainly stirred up some controversy with that recent post about the Dutch and their apparent willingness to ban a forthcoming film in order not to anger any Muslims. A great many topics came up, and I think some readers may now look at me as some sort of Eastward-facing version of Lester Maddox. I want to clarify a few things.
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Following on yesterday’s inflammatory post, today we have a heartening item from the New York Times. Apparently some of Iraq’s young folks are finding Islamic fundamentalism a bit confining.
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The struggle of civilizations, or perhaps more aptly the struggle of modern civilization against medieval barbarism, has taken a depressing turn in the Netherlands. Unlike their neighbors the Danes, who have staunchly defended their liberties despite storms of outrage from thin-skinned Muslims mortally offended by a few cartoons, the Dutch are planning a somewhat different response to Islamic fury over a forthcoming film: supine, craven appeasement.
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With a hat tip to our pal The Stiletto, we offer an article by the independently minded journalist John Stossel (who is currently a guest speaker, by the way, at this conference on the excesses of global warmism). In this essay Stossel makes the case that restrictive gun laws unfairly deprive us of the ability to defend oursleves, and make us vulnerable to violence such as the Virginia Tech and NIU massacres.
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Today’s offerings at the excellent weblog Gates of Vienna included a post that links to a recent Barack Obama campaign video, which I have embedded below.
I realize I’m only a bilious old crosspatch who, unable to hear the chorus of angels that wells up in exultation whenever the junior Senator from Illinois opens his pie-hole, has nothing better to do than snipe from his rocking chair at the sweet optimism of youth. Nevertheless, I have to say that this video gives me the shivering fantods. A pan-ethnic parade of smug and ensorcelled thralls, in varying transports of ecstasy, swim into view to explain that their god-child will fix the environment, end all war, bring the nation together, stifle corporate greed, speak for all people, make America the darling of the world, and so forth. A few miracles are left unpromised — perhaps a World Series ring for the Cubs, or a chemistry Nobel for Paris Hilton — but with O-Ba-Ma, anything’s possible.
See for yourself.
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This is one of the more appealing “viral videos”, I must say, that I’ve ever seen. We are simply hard-wired to enjoy this sort of thing, and if you can watch this without laughing along, start worrying.
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A BBC article informs us that the Turkish government, in an effort to ease the constant tension between medieval Islam and modern-day secularism, has commisioned a team of theologians to revise and update the Hadith, the body of lore and tradition based, allegedly, upon the sayings and deeds of Mohammed.
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February 29, 2008 – 10:05 pm
The conservative commentator and New York Times columnist David Brooks offers us a remembrance of his mentor, the great William F. Buckley.
Here.
February 28, 2008 – 6:21 pm
An article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal examines a bill introduced by Barack Obama that would offer tax incentives to “patriotic” corporations.
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February 28, 2008 – 3:12 pm
If you’re wondering what you’re missing at TED 2008, have a look at this on-the-spot blog. If this isn’t the place to be for these few days, I don’t know what is.
February 27, 2008 – 10:58 pm
Today was the beginning of the annual TED conference, which has become just about the toughest ticket in the world to get hold of. Held in Monterey, California, it’s a gathering of 1,000 of the “edgiest” members of the tech, entertainment, and design communities, and frankly, it sounds like a blast. Each speaker is given 18 minutes to present something amazing, and at its best, it’s a glimpse of the future.
You can learn more about the conference, and see some videos of past presentations, at the TED website, here. You can also find lots of TED-talk videos on YouTube.
February 27, 2008 – 10:23 pm
Another sad note: from my friend Pat Goldsmith I have just learned that drummer Buddy Miles, best known for his playing in Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsies, has died.
February 27, 2008 – 3:49 pm
From my lovely wife Nina comes a link to a restaurant that gives new meaning to the phrase “haute cuisine”. I don’t know how the food is, but you certainly get the atmosphere.
Have a look here.
February 27, 2008 – 1:44 pm
I’ve just learned that William F. Buckley has died. Story here.
February 27, 2008 – 12:40 pm
Continuing our recent focus on the decline of freedom in Russia, we see in today’s Wall Street Journal that Lev Ponomarev, an outspoken critic of the Russian penal system, has been charged with criminal libel:
On Friday, Mr. Ponomarev, a former aide to Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and a colleague of opposition leader Garry Kasparov, was charged with criminally “slandering” General Yuri Kalinin, who runs Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service. Mr. Ponomarev has been calling attention to the often brutish treatment of prisoners in Russia’s roughly 700 penal colonies, some 50 of which have acquired reputations as “torture colonies.” He now is required to get government permission to leave Moscow. If convicted, he could face up to three years in a penal colony.
Story here.
February 26, 2008 – 10:31 pm
I’ve been watching a spate of videos, over the past week or so, featuring various members of the group often referred to as the “New Atheists”: Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. The last two links I’ve posted here were debates between one or another of these fellows with some religiously-minded opponent, but most recently I ran across a conversation amongst all four of them at once. This video ought to be an instant hit with all the atheists out there: these fellows have achieved rock-star status amongst the heathens, and getting them all together like this constitutes sort of a Supergroup of the Damned. (Too bad the name “Blind Faith” is already taken.)
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February 26, 2008 – 2:24 pm
In recent posts, inspired by a New York Times article and helped along by our well-informed friend Jess Kaplan, we’ve looked at Putin’s tightening grip on Russia. His power-grab has hardly confined itself to increasing restrictions on democracy, but has also, and arguably more dangerously for global stability and security, involved ruthless appropriation of major private industries, and use of this command of the energy sector as a bludgeon against his neighbors. This is mighty important stuff, but nobody seems to pay much attention. Why?
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February 25, 2008 – 10:52 pm
Yesterday we passed along a New York Times story about the deepening autocracy of the Putin regime, and our old friend Jess Kaplan commented insightfully. Today he has sent us a valuable article on the subject: The Myth of the Authoritarian Model: How Putin’s Crackdown Holds Russia Back, by the Stanford scholars Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss.
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