I wrote this for John Brockman’s 2005 Edge Question. Can’t see
any good reason not to blog it as well.

I believe that nature is understandable, that scientific inquiry is
the sharpest tool and the noblest endeavor of the human mind, and that
any “final answers” we ever get will come from it rather than from
mysticism, religion, or [...]

Every opponent of the war in Iraq must read this essay by an Iraqi,
How The Left Betrayed My Country. Short, sweet, and devastating.

It’s all about asymmetrical investment, boys and girls….
One of the hot topics in the blogosphere recently has been the
difference between male and female standards of attractiveness, and
what this has to do with feminism and “the beauty myth”. Ann Althouse
has been having
fun at the expense of Laura Kipnis’s column bemoaning the grip that beauty has [...]

I like to listen to instrumental electric guitar, and have a very
large collection of the genre from the pioneering Jeff Beck albums of
the 1970s forward, and including most of the output of Jeff Beck, Steve
Morse, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Gary Hoey, Marc Bonilla, and half a
dozen other guitar virtuosi.
The seldom-disputed king of this genre today [...]