Britannia & the Bear: The Anglo-Russian Intelligence Wars 1917-1929, by Victor Madeira (The Boydell Press, UK) Another cache of secret documents may not make forgotten history timelier than this. Modern asymmetrical confrontation truly began after 1914-1918, chiefly between Great Britain and what soon became the Soviet Union. While American troops tipped the balance and sailed home [...]
We need to consider whether we need to stop some people from voting. Mob rule expands daily. The universal franchise, whereby every adult can vote who wishes to, is a ticket to the asylum. It is not every column that solves all of America’s problems, much less says how in a single piece of popular [...]
Spending little time in America nowadays but reading from afar, it has taken me years to understand her conservatives’ upset with diversity. It turned my American friends (at least the majority, conservatives) apoplectic, purple with rage and spluttering incomprehensibly. Anyone overhearing would have thought them idiots or stroke victims, or the hopelessly senile ranting about [...]
No, not all conspiracies are hallucinations, nor are all conspiracy theorists crazy or even libertarians. Here our sensible, responsible, even somewhat boring experts present the Top Ten Conspiracy Theories that everyone can trust. 1. Hillary Clinton is a Kleptomaniac You can see her here with her husband, after leaving Wal-Mart hiding a shoplifted ottoman in the [...]
It is not simply that carnivores eat meat—that hardly justifies the news headline*—nor that cute bears eat meat or even (cover your children’s eyes) kill other animals for the meat that they need rather than, say, buy it by the bucketful from KFC. That is not funny enough. This is—scientists have seen warm, cuddly, innocent, [...]
Far be it from us to strip down and leap into the hot-tub with Hegel and Lenin; and yet…and yet… there is an attraction to thoughts of historical inevitability. It seems as if Western collapse is a chain of unavoidable causes and effects, but this is a mistake. Unlike a lesser stage magician, its progenitor [...]
Wordsworth sang* to Milton, “thou shouldst be living at this hour,” and the same goes for G. K. Chesterton, the connoisseur of paradox. Weighing nearly four-hundred pounds at the end, today he would float like a dirigible over modern foreign affairs; plucking choice paradoxes at every hand and drawing as many lessons from our globalised Divine [...]
If you look carefully around your house you might see one, possibly under the bed; but most are probably invisible. A baku eats nightmares, human nightmares and all manner of bad dreams. He has a bear’s body, an elephant’s trunk, a tiger’s paws, an ox’s tail and rhinoceros eyes. “Oh! That baku!” you say, and [...]
“B-b-but, Lord Satan,” stammered the imp, reluctantly raising one claw to announce a question. Although he headed one of Hell’s most effective departments, technically speaking he was still an imp, and everyone knew what happened to the last one when the boss was in an exceptionally foul mood. “Our invention, called IT, shares knowledge but [...]
This is the story of three young men struggling for fame and fortune in the IT sector; finding one another and building a team, adapting the newest technology, injecting their own creativity, raising venture capital and applying painstaking effort, launching their product, outmanoeuvring competitors and rocketing to success—in the 15th Century! Parallels between the Early [...]
Historians gobble slaughter like popcorn. The heroes of most historians appear to be vainglorious killers among whom no sane soul would wish to live. Even if never articulated we always felt that something was awry, summarized in the alleged Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times.” The heroes of most historians appear to be [...]
Who would think that a great Renaissance invention was born five hundred years after the Renaissance? Yet it happened recently. Using old technology neglected for nearly half a millennium, a new, authentic and affordable Renaissance musical instrument is improving how professional and amateur musicians play and spread delight. But first some background. Renaissance music advanced [...]
Wondering about human height led me to more unfashionable thoughts. We seem to be getting taller. My virtually six-foot college sweetheart was exceptionally tall for young women in the 1970s, but that seems close to average among today’s co-eds. The anecdote seems accurate—American men around age twenty who enlisted in the Great War were four [...]
You may not be able to choose whether you are a conservative. To read Russell Kirk, who analyzed it as profoundly as Edmund Burke espoused it, conservatism is halfway between an IQ test and a prudent cast of mind. Prudence suspects untested change, while intelligence and education identify the wisdom hidden within tradition. You may [...]