Newmark's Door

Why some of the Easter Island moai have "hats"

They may be "early example of Pacific 'bling'".

Interesting, but as Fark would say, "Still no cure for cancer."

O.K., so Richard Nixon wasn't funny

In fact, according to Gene Weingarten he was really, really unfunny.

There are worse qualities in a president.

Another fine P. J. O'Rourke piece

P. J. reviews a new book about Pete Seeger. He notes that Mr. Seeger is ". . .  a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man." And then P. J. asks:

Thus is raised a momentous question, maybe the most momentous question of the modern era: How is it that legions of modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured people pledge their troth to political systems that burn continents and bury innocents by the hundred million? 

Excellent question. 

This is one proper smackdown

Rocco Landesman, the recently appointed head of the National Academy of the Arts, said, "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln."

Historian John Steele Gordon reports that that single sentence contains five errors.

(Link via Hot Air.)

Ayn Rand has been in the news a lot lately . . .

. . . but this is getting ridiculous. Just about one week's worth of miscellaneous browsing and I hit upon five different discussions:

"Why Ayn Rand is Hot Again: The unconservative Ayn Rand and her relationship to the American right".

"Howard Roark in New Delhi".

"Mrs. Logic: Ayn Rand never got into an argument she couldn’t win. Except, perhaps, with herself." (New York irony!)

"Wesley Mouch Award".

And, of course, the essential "Ayn Rand Power Dressing".

"Lincoln Off His Pedestal"

He's even more admirable off than on. James M. McPherson reviews three recent books on Lincoln and one on Mary Todd (NY Review of Books, 9/24).

Related: Justice Clarence Thomas speaks about Lincoln.

11th century Chinese iron production . . .

. . . is perhaps a cautionary tale for modern times:

An unfavorable ideological climate can stop the growth of capitalism in its tracks, as history amply reveals. Stark provides the example (among others) of iron production in eleventh-century China. The late tenth century saw the development of an iron industry in parts of northern China; by 1018, approximately thirty-five thousand tons were being produced every year. But by the end of the century, the industry was dead and its facilities abandoned. What happened, [Rodney] Stark explains, is that the imperial court came to the conclusion that the new industry-created wealth tended to undermine Confucian values as well as social harmony and stability because it implicitly challenged the view that commoners should be content with their state and should not seek after riches. “So, they declared a state monopoly on iron and seized everything” (p. 72).

Note that ". . . it is possible that Chinese iron output in the 11th century was approximately equivalent to total European production at the at the start of the 18th century." [footnote omitted]

Wow. (Quibble here.)

The epic battle of Woodstock and P.J. O'Rourke has been fought . . .

. . . and P. J. wins by TKO. Two samples:

It was not, by the way, a decade: The sixties were a strange episode of about 80 months' duration that started when the Baby Boom had fully infested academia (roughly the 1966-67 school year) and came to a screeching halt in 1973 when conscription ended and herpes began. . . .

"The people at Woodstock," the book quotes [Pete] Townshend as saying, "really were a bunch of hypocrites claiming a cosmic revolution simply because they took over a field, broke down some fences, imbibed bad acid, and then tried to run out without paying the bands."

"Abandoned Places In The World"

Eerily interesting, like rubbernecking a car wreck.

Permit me to quibble, Professor Arthur

W. Brian Arthur has a new book The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves and in it he apparently writes, "I don't believe there is any such thing as genius."

Excuse me? Sure, genius is rare. But don't Einstein, Newton, Shakespeare, Darwin, and DaVinci qualify?