About twelve hours ago I toyed with the idea of writing a satire in which the Bush-haters blame W. for the magnitude of the disaster bearing down on New Orleans. I discarded the idea on the grounds that it’s (a) not funny, and (b) not believable enough. I mean, who could really imagine that theory… Continue reading Katrina and the Kos
Author: esr
People Getting Brighter, Culture Getting Dimmer
In response to my previous post noting that the Flynn effect turns out to be a mirage, at least two respondents have suggested that average IQ has actually been falling, and have pointed to the alleged dumbing-down of politics and popular culture in the last fifty years. I think both those respondents and the psychometricians… Continue reading People Getting Brighter, Culture Getting Dimmer
Out like Flynn
Renowned pychometrician Charles Murray has given us, in The Inequality Taboo, a concise summary of the most current science on group differences in IQ and other measures of capability. Most of it is not surprising to anybody who has been following the actual science rather than press accounts severely distorted by the demands of political… Continue reading Out like Flynn
Blame The Audience
In Summer Fading, Hollywood Sees Fizzle, a writer for the New York Times explores the theory that movie attendance is tanking because the quality of all too many mega-hyped “major movies” has plunged into the crapper. Well, no shit, Sherlock — what was your first clue? Pearl Harbor? Alexander? Mission Impossible II? What’s really news… Continue reading Blame The Audience
Libertarian realism
I hate war. Even when the results of defeat would be worse than the results of war, I hate war. It kills people and makes government stronger. But when the results of defeat would be worse, I face reality and support war. Our Islamist enemies want to kill us all — starting with Jews and… Continue reading Libertarian realism
The “Bush Lied” lie
Today’s entry in the Belgravia Dispatch does an excellent job of demolishing the “Bush lied, people died!” canard so popular among the anti-war left — Greg Djerejian echoes my own conclusions when he writes: “But if you dig into the weeds of the investigations that have taken place — one must judiciously conclude that he… Continue reading The “Bush Lied” lie
Kurds in the Coal Mine
How will we know if the attempt to reconstruct Iraq is failing? This is a serious question. With as much hysterical anti-Iraq-war, anti-Bush-Administration fabrication going in the media as there has been, it’s tempting for a rational person to dismiss every negative report as just another load of Michael Mooronism and dismiss it. That would… Continue reading Kurds in the Coal Mine
Love and Severus Snape
OK, I’ve read “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and enjoyed it I have a theory about what will happen in Book 7. Potential spoilers about Book 6 follow!.
Sowing Dragon’s Teeth
David Lucas’s op-ed in the Knoxville News-Sentinel combines with this story about active-duty military personnel criticizing Edward Kennedy and Dick Durbin’s “gulag” rhetoric about Guantanamo Bay to suggest something interesting about the long-term political impact of the Iraq War. Historically, one of the major byproducts of American wars is politicians. While it’s rare for a… Continue reading Sowing Dragon’s Teeth
American Empire Redux
A respondent to my previous post on American Empire said “For non-Americans, the concern is not necessarily “does America behave like an empire?”, but “can we trust it not to act like one when the chips are down?†(e.g. if oil supplies dwindle to the point where the US economy is at real risk). The answer… Continue reading American Empire Redux
American Empire
The American Left, and some of the Buchananite/isolationist elements of the American Right, have spent a lot of time and rhetorical energy fretting about the “American Empire”, and/or the “global system of American hegemony”. Lee Harris has written a very informative essay on Hegemony vs. Empire in which he points out that these two words… Continue reading American Empire
The Hollywood Left is from Venus?
David Koepp, the screenwriter behind the current blockbuster movie War of the Worlds has said: “the Martians in our movie represent American military forces invading the Iraqis.” As InstaPundit observed, you just can’t make this stuff up. It’s hard to lampoon the Hollywood left any more, because they keep uttering inanities that venture beyond far,… Continue reading The Hollywood Left is from Venus?
Gayness is hard, lesbianism soft
Fascinating. This NYT article bears out a suspicion I’ve held for a long time about the plasticity of sexual orientation. The crude one-sentence summary is that, if you go by physiological arousal reactions, male bisexuality doesn’t exist, while female bisexuality is ubiquitous. I’ve spent most of my social time for the last thirty years around… Continue reading Gayness is hard, lesbianism soft
Punishment, Coercion, and Revenge
Because I’m both both a libertarian and famous for conducting a successful propaganda campaign, libertarian activists sometimes come to me for tactical advice. During a recent email exchange, one of these criticized me for wishing (as he thought) to “punish” the Islamist enemies of the U.S. and Western civilization. I explained that I have no… Continue reading Punishment, Coercion, and Revenge
What Do You Believe That You Cannot Prove?
I wrote this for John Brockman’s 2005 Edge Question. Can’t see any good reason not to blog it as well. I believe that nature is understandable, that scientific inquiry is the sharpest tool and the noblest endeavor of the human mind, and that any “final answers” we ever get will come from it rather than… Continue reading What Do You Believe That You Cannot Prove?
How the Left Betrayed Iraq
Every opponent of the war in Iraq must read this essay by an Iraqi, How The Left Betrayed My Country. Short, sweet, and devastating.
A Unified Theory of Male Slobbishness and Female Preening
It’s all about asymmetrical investment, boys and girls…. One of the hot topics in the blogosphere recently has been the difference between male and female standards of attractiveness, and what this has to do with feminism and “the beauty myth”. Ann Althouse has been having fun at the expense of Laura Kipnis’s column bemoaning the… Continue reading A Unified Theory of Male Slobbishness and Female Preening
Appreciating Joe Satriani
I like to listen to instrumental electric guitar, and have a very large collection of the genre from the pioneering Jeff Beck albums of the 1970s forward, and including most of the output of Jeff Beck, Steve Morse, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Gary Hoey, Marc Bonilla, and half a dozen other guitar virtuosi. The seldom-disputed… Continue reading Appreciating Joe Satriani
Susan Sontag is Dead
Imagine a writer/playwright/intellectual whose most famous single remark was “the black race is the cancer of human history”. Who said “The Pinochet revolution is astonishingly free of repression and bureaucratization.” Who praised the attack on Pearl Harber as a brave deed. Do you suppose such a person would collect laudatory tributes and glowing obituaries on… Continue reading Susan Sontag is Dead
The Journalist as Herd Creature
In September 2004, well before the elections, I wrote an essay on the collapse of mainstream media influence. I predicted that the Rathergate scandal and the Swift Boat Vets would lock up the election for George W. Bush, despite the MSM’s most determined efforts to get Kerry into the White House. I related this to… Continue reading The Journalist as Herd Creature