Interview with Doug Casey.
Excerpt:
Today, the media and the State have merged together as a practical matter. The people in power (the Deep State, if you will) know it’s critical that the public are all on the same page when it comes to major issues. The public can argue about whether chocolate or vanilla, or red or blue, is better. That makes them feel relevant. But big philosophical issues are off the table.
Article by Joanna Williams.
Excerpt:
Paddington is, we are told, a representative of diverse Britishness. But this is bizarre. Unable to name real historical heroes, including the many Brits of migrant backgrounds who have made their mark, the cultural elites resort to celebrating a fictional character. It’s as if these people are unable to make the case either for British values or mass migration and so hide behind poor old Paddington.
Perhaps the very attraction of Paddington as a national symbol over, say, Shakespeare or Churchill, rests on the fact that he is made up. Real people exist within a particular time period and tend to reflect that era’s values. Real people often have messy personal lives – few of us are unambiguously good or bad. But moral purity and all manner of values can be ascribed to fictional bears. They never disappoint.
9 minute video here.
He ends by saying nothing in Beethoven’s music is remarkable – except ‘the form’, meaning that every note is exactly right, ‘as if he’d had a direct line to heaven, to God.’
How Barack Obama built an omnipotent thought-machine, and how it was destroyed.
Long article by David Samuels.
Article by Gary North (from 2007).
Article by Brendan O’Neill.
Excerpts:
Jay Bhattacharya is right: ‘scientism’ is a menace to truth and liberty.
But Bhattacharya’s mission is less one of personal vengeance than of scientific restoration. He told his hearing that he wants to bring back ‘the very essence of science’ to the NIH. And what might that be? ‘Dissent’, he said.
[. . .]
That we scientists found ourselves in the position of telling the masses they ‘shouldn’t be saying goodbye to [their] grandfather as he’s dying in a hospital’ was awful, he said. What we should have done is say ‘Here’s what the risks are’, and then let people decide whether to take them.
[. . .]
That we scientists found ourselves in the position of telling the masses they ‘shouldn’t be saying goodbye to [their] grandfather as he’s dying in a hospital’ was awful, he said. What we should have done is say ‘Here’s what the risks are’, and then let people decide whether to take them.
Article here.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of “A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020). Other books include: “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017) and “The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
Jordan Peterson in discussion with Katy Faust.
Watch in particular from here. They talk about bias in parenting studies and ‘the Cinderella effect’.
Article by Ira Katz.
Excerpt:
In the counter cultural era that I grew up in, listening to classical music could be considered to be the real counter cultural expression. But this was not my intent at all. I was more like the naive child who noticed the emperor’s new clothes were nothing compared to those old clothes.
Article by Patrick Lawrence.
Excerpt:
This new round of foolishness among the Europeans is not funny. This is not a Terry Southern script. Under the circumstances — a likely settlement somewhere in the offing — it is a criminally careless of human lives and the well-being of 450 million European citizens.
I see only one explanation for this. It is the diabolic outcome of the liberal authoritarianism I go on about in this space. The neoliberal order must must must prevail no matter what the cost, no matter how obviously irrational this repudiation of reason proves.