More Right than he Knew he Was

Thomas Mann once remarked, against Nietzsche, that the world never suffers from a surfeit of reason. And he never went online!

Leon Wieseltier, "Reason and the Republic of Opinion" (via)

Bilingualism and Cognition

"It’s easier to bear in mind that the map is not the territory when you have two different maps."

- Eric S. Raymond, "Cognitive disinhibition: not the whole story of genius"

Literature Summarized

Anthony Burgess said there are two kinds of writers, A-writers and B-writers. A-writers are storytellers, B-writers are users of language. [...] [I]f the prose isn’t there, then you’re reduced to what are merely secondary interests, like story, plot, characterization, psychological insight and form.

Martin Amis, interviewed by Francesca Riviere

Consider the Alternative

Consider all those irritating people who over the last few years have taken to commenting whenever there’s a study they don’t like: “Correlation is not causation!” Well, sure, that’s lame, but that’s actually an improvement over what they had previously assumed.

Steve Sailer, "The Rise and Fall of Statistics"

The Old Standby

Whatever truth correlation does not equal causation might have is outweighed by the damage it does when it is used to ignore evidence.

- Seth Roberts, "The Link between Lead and Crime"

Under the Feet of Giants

I just don't think I'll ever be able to bring myself to truly enjoy rock & roll.  Whether it's the music, or it's me, or it's the culture I've been brought up in I don't know, but to me rock & roll (and I'm using that phrase to refer explicitly to the Elvis Presley / Chuck Berry / Little Richard / Jerry Lee Lewis / Buddy Holly axis and not anything later) is largely wallpaper music, a soundtrack to any TV show or movie scene that wants to tell you it's the '50s or early '60s without labouring the point (like Holly's own "Heartbeat" when sang by Nick Berry and used as the theme tune to, erm, Heartbeat).  In any other context, it has been thoroughly defeated by the times - it laid the groundwork for other genres to expand on and then saw itself battered into irrelevance by them when they came along.  And not in a particularly good way, either; some country and jazz sounds weather-beaten to me, its age becoming a virtue as it offers a tantalizing glimpse of a time long before mine, but rock & roll just sounds old.  It's the difference between the continuing appeal of Mount Rushmore itself, and a newspaper one of the builders was reading while working on it.

Iai, [Review of The "Chirping" Crickets by The Crickets]

Answer That One, Christians!

I would argue that physical gratification (though less pleasurable and intense than commonly believed) is not especially wicked. Millions of people have killed themselves over “love”, but who has killed himself over his masturbatory habits?

Elijah Armstrong, "How to Eliminate the Evil of Human Sexuality - and Benefit in Other Ways"