There just isn’t any better marker for the fundamental narcissism of today’s left-wing politics that this: That’s Che Guevara’s granddaughter, Lydia, We are told that she posed semi-nude to promote vegetarianism and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. There are so many levels of wrongness and unintended irony here that it’s hard to know… Continue reading From radical evil to farce in two generations
Month: August 2009
“The new literacy” ain’t so new
Today, Wired magazine gives us an article, Clive Thompson on the New Literacy, busting the supposedly conventional wisdom that cellphones, social networking, and the Internet in general have accelerated the decline of writing skills. The author says we’re actually in an age of rising literacy unparalleled since classical Greece. Er, what?
In which I learn that I am vindicated…
This morning I had the delightful “I was right all along!” experience of learning that the one grammatical bugaboo in my life is probably bogus. The next time a copy-editor invokes it on me I shall gleefully kick him or her in the snout…
Quiddity has a qualia all its own
I changed my mind about a significant philosophical issue today, and in the process parted ways with a thinker I’ve been a serious fan of for a couple of decades now. The issue is raised by a thought experiment, of which I was previously unaware, called Mary’s Room. The simplest way of getting involved the… Continue reading Quiddity has a qualia all its own
Dr. William Short’s “Viking Weapons and Combat”: A Review
I expected to enjoy Dr. William Short’s Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques (Westholme Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59416-076-9), and I was not disappointed. I am a historical fencer and martial artist who has spent many hours sparring with weapons very similar to those Dr. Short describes, and I have long had an active interest in the… Continue reading Dr. William Short’s “Viking Weapons and Combat”: A Review