I’m delighted to see that Freddie deBoer and Led-the-commenter have delivered excellent pushback on a weak point of my previous post . Their point in brief is that the mere fact that our contingent minds have had remarkable success in explaining the universe so far is no guarantee that they . . . . Continue Reading »
Freddie has written a post that forces me into the odd position of defending Sam Harris; the crux of which is the claim that once we accept the human mind as being a contingent accident of evolution, we necessarily must abandon any faith in the intellectual edifices constructed by such minds: For . . . . Continue Reading »
Eve Tushnet has an occasional series called "Things I Know But Cannot Prove," a list that every man should compile for himself in spare moments, both to keep track of what he knows—I, for one, tend to forget—and keep a little humility about what he can and can’t prove. . . . . Continue Reading »
Freddie : I gotta tell you, I’m such a fan of sweeping ideas and idiosyncratic solutions to social problems that I’m naturally kind of attracted to Newt Gingrich’s new grand scheme , even if it is from one of the more odious people in American politics. Certainly, I think . . . . Continue Reading »
Quick takes on the sparks flying off Helen’s latest: 1. Definitely Alex Massie is right as far as it goes when he heaps criticism on this notion that there is a "Red" America and a "Blue" America. True, this is fostered by all the sweet and pretty maps, but it’s . . . . Continue Reading »
This is an unusual month — polls, pols and so on. But this is an unusual paragraph too. How quickly can you find out what is so uncommon about it? It looks so ordinary that you may think nothing is odd about it, until you actually match it against most paragraphs this long. If you put your . . . . Continue Reading »
I should start off by confessing that this post isn’t at all topical, except insofar as Freddie has challenged the Pomocon stable to explain why postmodern conservative doesn’t just mean "a conservative who should know better" ( TM ). So, with that half-hearted . . . . Continue Reading »