Sure to provoke outrage among radical egalitarians

Scott Locklin: On the Intellectual Capacity of Women
Revisiting David Stove's Infamous Essay

Taking a very pedestrian example from current events, consider the dearth of women in physics and engineering. Academia, being what it is, considers this evidence of a vast world-wide conspiracy of invisible men who are diabolically conspiring to keep women from succeeding in the hard sciences. If you're a working academic in one of these fields, you will engage in ritual Maoist witch hunts, looking for sexist oppressors. There is approximately zero evidence for this conspiracy theory, yet it is unquestioned by hard nosed savants who allegedly fear no ghosts. Some of these true believers doubtless understand the concepts of "mean" and "standard deviation," and may even be aware of the fact that men have both a higher mean intelligence, and a much higher standard deviation in intelligence distribution; in particular in the areas of intelligence which pertain to these professions. With these two facts, the conspiracy theory evaporates: there are more male scientists and engineers because there are more males who are capable of doing the work. Virtually nobody is willing to say this, despite it being completely obvious to anyone not equipped with an academic sinecure.

The desire of women for a mate who is more "intelligent" is part of their hypergamous instinct even if some claim that it is not prevalent among American women today. (Some argue that nerds and intellectuals are avoided by women because intelligence is associated with low testosterone/lack of masculinity.) If this desire were to be universal and to be fulfilled, wouldn't we expect the male curve to be skewed towards the right relative to the female curve?

But raw intelligence or "scientific" intelligence may not be identical to what is needed for good practical reasoning, and it seems that is good practical reasoning that is needed first of all in the one who has authority in a household. Differences in the power of the imagination and how it is used may account for some differences in ability (imagining spatial relationships --> sense of direction and geometry, or abstraction + math --> modern physical sciences).

Differences in the structures of male and female brains may be related to differences in the sense powers, and differences in the sense powers may have an impact on our abilities to understand and reason. Some look to abstraction being necessary for thinking about questions of justice; we are aware how emotional attachment can lead to bias or partiality. Is it emotional "attachment" that influences our reasoning (and conversely, emotional detachment that promotes abstract considerations of justice), or is there some other interaction between emotion and reason that can explain sex differences in practical reasoning (if such exist)?

Runaway military spending

Adding on to Chuck Spinney's article from yesterday - Lawrence S. Wittner, America's Runaway Military Spending: How Much is Enough?

But why should anyone want to cut the U.S. military budget?

One reason is that—with $549 billion requested for basic military expenditures and another $159 billion requested for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the record $708 billion military spending called for by the Obama administration for fiscal 2011 will be nearly equivalent to the military spending of all other nations in the world combined. When it comes to military appropriations, the U.S. government already spends about seven times as much as China, thirteen times as much as Russia, and seventy-three times as much as Iran.

Is this really necessary? During the Cold War, the United States confronted far more dangerous and numerous military adversaries, including the Soviet Union. And the U.S. government certainly possessed an enormous and devastating military arsenal, as well as the armed forces that used it. But in those years, U.S. military spending accounted for only 26 percent of the world total. Today, as U.S. Congressman Barney Frank has observed, "we have fewer enemies and we're spending more money."

Where does this vast outlay of U.S. tax dollars—the greatest military appropriations in U.S. history—go? One place is to overseas U.S. military bases. According to Chalmers Johnson, a political scientist and former CIA consultant, as much as $250 billion per year is used to maintain some 865 U.S. military facilities in more than forty countries and overseas U.S. territories.

The money also goes to fund vast legions of private military contractors. A recent Pentagon report estimated that the Defense Department relies on 766,000 contractors at an annual cost of about $155 billion, and this figure does not include private intelligence organizations. A Washington Post study, which included all categories, estimated that the Defense Department employs 1.2 million private contractors.

Of course, enormously expensive air and naval weapons systems—often accompanied by huge cost over-runs—account for a substantial portion of the Pentagon's budget. But exactly who are these high tech, Cold War weapons to be used against? Certainly they have little value in a world threatened by terrorism. As Congressman Frank has remarked: "I don't think any terrorist has ever been shot by a nuclear submarine."

Furthermore, when bemoaning budget deficits, Americans should not forget the enormous price the United States has paid for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the highly-respected National Priorities Project, their cost, so far, amounts to $1.06 trillion. (For those readers who are unaccustomed to dealing with a trillion dollar budget, that's $1,060,000,000,000.)

Before self-professed conservatives and patriots say that we need to spend as much money as we currently do on the military, they should re-examine the purposes of our military and what we actually need to adequately defend the United States. Only yesterday did I read again at the TAC blog the silly proclamation that we need to fight them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here. That's a justification for perpetual war. And they wonder why those who are in the military, or who have served in the military like Andrew Bacevich, might be a little bit upset?

Fabius Maximus: About the legacy of SecDef Gates (and his rumored departure)
Robert Gates confirms plans to leave office in 2011

Michael Sandler, Healing through Barefoot Running

RunBare
His book
Barefoot Running. Michael Sandler | elephant journal





This is for you Sarge:

Senate Bill S510 Makes it illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell Homegrown Food

Benedictines of the Immaculate

This community in Italy is the one founded by two former monks of Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux. (NLM report from 2008.) Their blog/website -- from earlier this year, Requiem for Dom Gérard.

Related: Traditional Vocations Blog

Jeffrey Tucker posts his favorite video ever

Here, featuring a performance by Stile Antico (FB):


Stile Antico: Old-School A Cappella in Boston (features audio of their concert for the BEMF)

Also via Jeffrey Tucker, a video about Abbaye Notre Dame de Fontgombault.
Something I found through Google:

Abbey of Notre Dame de Fontgombault, Benedictine - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

The state of Catholic higher education

Rick Garnett: Cavadini on Ex Corde and Boston College's take on "The Catholic Intellectual Tradition"

I think Dr. Cavadini's assessment of the impact of Ex Corde Ecclesiae on large Catholic colleges and universities is about right. Such documents only have teeth if there are bishops who are willing to enforce them.

[U]niversities begin to deal with the problem of how to be both academically credible and Catholic by vesting their Catholic identity in programming that, while certainly an essential part of the Catholic agenda, is actually present in almost any university of top quality. A focus on ethics? on social justice? on educating the whole person? What good university would eschew any of these, and in fact, not feature them? Language about social justice works its way into our mission statements, but language about witnessing to the truth of the Gospel does not, unless it is equated with the former. We seem to accept the going paradigm of academic excellence, and subordinate the "distinctive" element to that. But aren't we then selling ourselves short? Have we really made much progress?

On the other hand, for me, the mere statement of an ideal is already a lot of progress. And it is not surprising if it takes a generation to begin to move towards the cultural renewal that ideals call us to. Can we learn to "live into" this ideal? What does the language of "faith seeking understanding" mean when applied not only to a theology department but to the whole Catholic intellectual endeavor (see section 5)? Are we humble enough to admit we may not know, and to begin seeking? Of the "essential" characteristics of a Catholic university listed by Ex Corde (section 13), do we accept only no. 4, an institutional commitment to service, and not the other three? Including, "fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us from the Church?" Would that ever show up in a mission statement? Can we take responsibility for seeking the "integration" of knowledge (see section 16), and not settle simply for "inter-disciplinarity," essential (section 20) but not the same? The apostolic exhortationl, incidentally, only asks for the quest for integration, and not for a settled achievement. Do we regard the relationship with the Church as "essential" to our identities (section 27)? Would the language of section 49 ever find its way into a mission statement?: "By its very nature, each Catholic University ... is a living institutional witness to Christ and his message, so vitally important in cultures marked by secularism ..." And, most importantly, do we reserve the adjudication of how well we are doing on meeting the ideal only to ourselves and not to the Church?

Exclusive focus on the mandatum, at the expense of asking these and similar questions, made us feel that we knew what the answers to these questions were. We knew what "witness to Christ" meant -- it was either social justice, or else too parochial an idea to make it in the mainstream of American academia. Should we really give up that easily? Isn't it not only our responsibility but our strength to find a way to preserve phrases like this from lapsing either into fundamentalism, or to blending in with secularism? Isn't that our job?

For example, have we really fully contemplated what the ideal of the "preferential option for the poor" means? This cannot be reduced merely to a theory of social justice, or simply to the language of justice, apart from reference to the Word of God and to God's love, for the preferential option for the poor is not a statement, in the first instance, about the poor, but about God's gratuitous love. Is it really so foreign to a university to accept this "preference," which is received through submission to the Word of God and in deference to the magisterium which serves the Word of God, as a starting point? It is not reducible to a secular agenda, but would provide "a living institutional witness to Christ and his message," as theological reflection unfolds the connection to human dignity, to the sanctity of life, and the nature of God, and as the other disciplines can be informed by this ideal as appropriate. Nor is it reducible to a fundamentalist agenda, because it is a "starting point in faith" (initium fidei), the beginning of "seeking to understand," and does not use faith as a self-sufficient end point.

It may not be a self-sufficient end point for rational or scientific inquiry, but it is an important part of the life of the students that needs to be cultivated and fostered, not undermined through overt and covert attacks. Fr. Cavadini is optimistic; I am not, and I think it is too late for most Catholic colleges and universities to change. They have made plans for the future with the same economic assumptions that other large institutions have used. (Perpetual growth, cheap energy, and so on.)

As for the Church in the 21st Century document -- I may have seen this before, or some version of it. It's nice and vague, and acknowledges that Catholic universities should be ordered towards the good of the intellect and the will. But does it really take the Magisterium seriously? Or Catholic teaching on faith and morals? When you look at Boston College, for example, and how the students live their lives and how the administration and faculty fail to give them guidance, can you take such a document seriously? I don't see anything but institutional failure.

Those who would presume to have the care of souls, even if in a limited respect, should be careful lest they lead the little ones astray.

Libertarian = Classical Liberal

The English Civil War and the First Libertarian Movement
By Jeff Riggenbach

It seems to me that none of the major players was totally in the right during the English Civil War. Who was the representative of republican thought?

James Jackson Kilpatrick passes

Daniel McCarthy, Kilpo RIP
Jim Bovard, James Kilpatrick -RIP – the Conservative Literary Path Not Taken…
Old Rebel, Columnist, wordsmith James Kilpatrick dies at 89

George Strait, "Give it Away"

I used to give him a lot of slack

in response to the exaggerated rhetoric of Republican pundits, but isn't he showing himself to be an outsider and Islam sympathizer?

Islam and America: The President’s Fictitious History by Carson Holloway

I read somewhere that Steve Sailer claims that B. H. Obama could not relate to Europe and perceived himself to be an outsider? Is this how average African-Americans, even those who are practicing Christian and received their Christianity originally from white people, would also feel while spending time in Europe? If so, this would seem to show that race is as much a component of identity as culture, and that culture (religion & beliefs) and language are not enough.

How many white Americans feel comfortable in Europe? Or in the U.K. or the country from which their ancestors came? I would think that the percentage and absolute number is greater than it is for black Americans. The claim that there is a single culture and identity for Americans seems manifestly false. There are many different American cultures and identities, and it remains to be seen if harmony and peace can be maintained.

PJB, Culture Jihad

Edit. Jack Hunter, Beyond the Mosque
Leon Hadar, The Politics of Identity

Only one case, or a possible universal treatment?

Jimmy Moore: Can You Heal Alzheimer's With Diet And Supplements? Nita Scoggan Did!

Fr. Euteneuer on World Over Live discussing Exorcism and the Church Militant

One day I'd like to go to Cape Breton

Cape Breton's top 5 Celtic music destinations

Items of Interest, 16 August 2010

Kirkpatrick Sale, "To the Size of States There Is a Limit": Measurements for the Success of Secession (via The Ohio Republic)

Oz Conservative: Delusions of gender?

Theodore Dalrymple, Our Binge Drinking Culture is a Living Hell for Everyone

Counterpunch:
Franklin C. Spinney, How the Defense Industry is Hosing Obama and the Taxpayer ... Again
Paul Craig Roberts, The Ecstasy of Empire
Jayne Lyn Stahl, Petraeus Speaks
Ralph Nader, Hopes Dimming
Gareth Porter, Top Israeli Generals and Intel Officials Oppose Striking Iran
Shamus Cooke, Is Obama Playing With Nuclear Fire?
Daniel Robelo, Mexico Considers Legalizing Drugs
David Michael Green, Losing It at the White House

The second part of Aidan Foster-Carter's essay on S. Kor education

Asia Times: Rods of love and free lunches
Education is a raging battleground for competing ideologies in South Korea. While open national debate or a neutral commission of experts would make most sense to resolve subjects from school autonomy to free lunches, to teachers' politics and the wielding of the "rod of love" for corporal punishment, it is more likely that the left and right will continue to thrash it out. - Aidan Foster-Carter

Demand for oil will go up next year?

IEA: ‘Cheap oil is over’ as demand approaches new record (original)

Matthew Wild, Peak Generation

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting world oil demand will set a new record next year when is smashes through 2008’s pre-recession high – and warning that the “era of cheap oil is over.” According to the IEA’s latest Oil Market Report, published August 11, global demand will reach 86.6 million barrels per day in 2010, and then 87.9 million barrels per day in 2011, assuming a continuing global economic recovery. This means demand is set to pass the all-time high of 86.9 million barrels per day established in 2008 before the global economic downturn.

Of course, the figures assume that there will be continuing global economic recovery. Will this be the case?

And something from Juliet Schor: Rethinking scale and growth for a more sustainable world

Both for households and firms, shifting to sustainability opens up new possibilities, and intersects with ongoing changes in the economy. In Plenitude, I lay out a number of principles that should inform our thinking about how to solve the climate and eco-crises. These include re-thinking the question of scale, knowledge transmission, the role of informal economies and social capital, new consumer patterns, and the relation among productivity growth, output and hours of work.

An excerpt from JHK's The Witch of Hebron

No blogging from James Howard Kunstler, and the title of the post explains why: Vacation Special -- Excerpt from "The Witch of Hebron". I haven't read A World Made by Hand yet.

But can he win?

Rebellion: Wyoming's Micheli: Sheriffs are ultimate authority; AP: Wyoming's Micheli: Sheriffs Are Ultimate Authority

How conservative is Wyoming? Wyoming Catholic College is in Wyoming. So is Yellowstone National Park. (2012!)

Micheli for Governor

This endorsement should be no surprise:

Loving you is easy - Marié Digby

The Banished Heart

NLM: Continuum Issuing Updated Edition of Dr. Geoffrey Hull's, The Banished Heart

I wasn't convinced by his arguments, but apparently Continuum believes there is a market for the book.

Also by Dr. Hull: The Proto-History of the Roman Liturgical Reform (alt)

Sarge, you wish you were this high speed...

FERFRANS SOAR

Andrew Bacevich, Dismantling the American Empire

Tikkun

An excerpt from Washington Rules.

Referring to George Kennan, J. William Fulbright, Christopher Lasch, and Martin Luther King, Professor Bacevich writes:

The essential credo to which each of these figures subscribed, a variant of the convictions first articulated by the Cultivating Our Own Garden Founders, deserves renewed consideration today. Its essence is simply this: America’s purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as reinterpreted with the passage of time and in light of hard-earned experience.

The proper aim of American statecraft, therefore, is not to redeem humankind or to prescribe some specific world order, nor to police the planet by force of arms. Its purpose is to permit Americans to avail themselves of the right of self-determination as they seek to create at home a “more perfect union.” Any policy impeding that enterprise -- as open-ended war surely does -- is misguided and pernicious.

By demonstrating the feasibility of creating a way of life based on humane, liberal values, the United States might help illuminate the path ahead for others who seek freedom. Or as Randolph Bourne once put it, “a turning within” is essential “in order that we may have something to give without.” Yet this “giving without” qualifies as an extra benefit -- a bonus or dividend -- not as the central purpose of American life.

In short, if the United States has a saving mission, it is, first and foremost, to save itself. In that regard, Dr. King’s list of evils may need a bit of tweaking. In our own day, the sins requiring expiation number more than three. Yet in his insistence that we first heal ourselves -- “Come home, America!” -- King remains today the prophet Americans would do well to heed.

A New Trinity

Here, too, there exists an alternative tradition to which Americans today could repair, should they choose to do so. This tradition harks back to the nearly forgotten anti-imperial origins of the Republic. Succinctly captured in the motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” this tradition is one that does not seek trouble but insists that others will accord the United States respect. Updated for our own time, it might translate into the following substitute for the existing sacred trinity.

First, the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests. However necessary, military power itself is neither good nor inherently desirable. Any nation defining itself in terms of military might is well down the road to perdition, as earlier generations of Americans instinctively understood. As for military supremacy, the lessons of the past are quite clear. It is an illusion and its pursuit an invitation to mischief, if not disaster. Therefore, the United States should maintain only those forces required to accomplish the defense establishment’s core mission.

Second, the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America. Just as the U.S. military should not be a global police force, so too it should not be a global occupation force. Specific circumstances may from time to time require the United States on a temporary basis to establish a military presence abroad. Yet rather than defining the norm, Americans should view this prospect as a sharp departure, entailing public debate and prior congressional authorization. Dismantling the Pentagon’s sprawling network of existing bases promises to be a lengthy process. Priority should be given to those regions where the American presence costs the most while accomplishing the least. According to those criteria, U.S. troops should withdraw from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia forthwith.

Third, consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war -- the United States bestowing on itself the exclusive prerogative of employing force against ostensible threats even before they materialize—is a moral and strategic abomination, the very inverse of prudent and enlightened statecraft. Concocted by George W. Bush to justify his needless and misguided 2003 invasion of Iraq, this doctrine still awaits explicit abrogation by authorities in Washington. Never again should the United States undertake “a war of choice” informed by fantasies that violence provides a shortcut to resolving history’s complexities.

Were this alternative triad to become the basis for policy, dramatic changes in the U.S. national security posture would ensue. Military spending would decrease appreciably. The Pentagon’s global footprint would shrink. Weapons manufacturers would see their profits plummet. Beltway Bandits would close up shop. The ranks of defense- oriented think tanks would thin. These changes, in turn, would narrow the range of options available for employing force, obliging policy makers to exhibit greater restraint in intervening abroad. With resources currently devoted to rehabilitating Baghdad or Kabul freed up, the cause of rehabilitating Cleveland and Detroit might finally attract a following.

He summarizes this material in his WAC talk. His emphasis is on realism for foreign policy, and America setting its house in order. But is it too late? And does Professor Bacevich offer an adequate constitutional solution?

Andrew Bacevich on perpetual war

I hope to transcribe my notes today, but I found these while doing a search for a video of his talk.

Andrew Bacevich, The Lessons of Endless War

Is a Draft the Answer?

There is also a third perspective, which blames the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan on a problematic relationship between soldiers and society. According to this view, the All-Volunteer Force itself is the problem. As the military historian Adrian Lewis observed, "The most significant transformation in the American conduct of war since World War II and the invention of the atomic bomb was not technological, but cultural, social, and political -- the removal of the American people from the conduct of war." Only after 9/11, with the Bush administration waging war on multiple fronts, have the implications of this transformation become fully evident.

A reliance on volunteer-professionals places a de facto cap on the army's overall size. The pool of willing recruits is necessarily limited. Given a choice, most young Americans will opt for opportunities other than military service, with protracted war diminishing rather than enhancing any collective propensity to volunteer. It is virtually inconceivable that any presidential call to the colors, however impassioned, any PR campaign, however cleverly designed, or any package of pay and bonuses, however generous, could reverse this disinclination.

Furthermore, to the extent that an army composed of regulars is no longer a people's army, the people have little say in its use. In effect, the professional military has become an extension of the imperial presidency. The troops fight when and where the commander in chief determines.

Finally, a reliance on professional soldiers eviscerates the concept of civic duty, relieving citizens at large of any obligation to contribute to the nation's defense. Ending the draft during the waning days of the Vietnam War did nothing to heal the divisions created by that conflict; instead, it ratified the separation of army from society. Like mowing lawns and bussing tables, fighting and perhaps dying to sustain the American way of life became something that Americans pay others to do.

So the third lesson of the Iraq War focuses on the need to repair the relationship between army and society. One way to do this is to junk the All-Volunteer Force altogether. Rather than rely on professionals, perhaps it makes sense to revive the tradition of the citizen-soldier.

Proposals to restore this hallowed tradition invariably conjure up images of reinstituting some form of conscription. In place of a system based on the principle of individual choice, those unhappy with the AVF advocate a system based on the principle of state compulsion.

The advantages offered by such a system are hardly trivial. To the extent that Iraq and Afghanistan have exposed the operational, political, and moral problems produced by relying on a small professional force, a draft seems to offer one obvious way to alleviate those problems.

For those who worry that the existing army is overextended, conscription provides a mechanism for expansion. Triple the size of the army -- in essence restoring the structure that existed during much of the Cold War -- and the personnel shortages that constrain the prosecution of ground campaigns will disappear. Sustaining the military commitment to Iraq for ten or twenty years, or even a century as Senator John McCain and many neoconservatives are willing to contemplate, then becomes a viable proposition.

War planners will no longer find themselves obliged to give short shrift to Contingency A (Afghanistan) in order to support Contingency B (Iraq). The concept of "surge" will take on a whole new meaning with the Pentagon able to dispatch not a measly 30,000 reinforcements to Iraq or another few thousand to Afghanistan, but 100,000 or more additional troops wherever they might be needed. Was the problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom too few "boots on the ground" for occupation and reconstruction? Reconstitute the draft, and that problem goes away.

Creating a mass army might even permit the United States to resuscitate the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine with its emphasis on "overwhelming force."

For those distressed by the absence of a politically meaningful antiwar movement despite the Iraq War's manifest unpopularity, the appeal of conscription differs somewhat. Some political activists look to an Iraq-era draft to do what the Vietnam-era draft did: animate large-scale protest, alter the political dynamic, and eventually shut down any conflict that lacks widespread popular support. The prospect of involuntary service will pry the kids out of the shopping malls and send them into the streets. It will prod the parents of draft-eligible offspring to see politics as something other than a mechanism for doling out entitlements. As a consequence, members of Congress keen to retain their seats will define their wartime responsibilities as something more than simply rubber-stamping spending bills proposed by the White House. In this way, a draft could reinvigorate American democracy, restore the governmental system of checks and balances, and constrain the warmongers inhabiting the executive branch.

For those moved by moral considerations, a draft promises to ensure a more equitable distribution of sacrifice in war time. No longer will rural Americans, people of color, recent immigrants, and members of the working class fill the ranks of the armed forces in disproportionate numbers. With conscription, the children of the political elite and of the well-to-do will once again bear their fair share of the load. Those reaping the benefits of the American way of life will contribute to its defense, helping to garrison the more distant precincts of empire. Perhaps even the editorial staffs of the Weekly Standard, National Review, and the New Republic might have the opportunity to serve, a salutary prospect given the propensity of those magazines to argue on behalf of military intervention.

Reconfigure the armed services to fight "small wars"; empower the generals; reconnect soldiering to citizenship -- on the surface each of these has a certain appeal. But upon closer examination, each also has large defects. They are the wrong lessons to take from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Andrew Bacevich And The Perpetual War Machine
Antiwar: Scott Horton Interviews Andrew Bacevich (mp3)

Peter Hitchens dislikes the new BBC Sherlock Holmes

The updated one, produced by Mr. Moffat. From: Mr Cameron may need sharp elbows but the real middle classes never did:

I’ve tried to like the BBC’s 21st Century Sherlock Holmes. And I have to concede that the idea is clever and the choice of actors – especially Benedict Cumberbatch – is quite brilliant. But in the end it is wrong. While one or two people may be persuaded to go back to the books, most won’t. The TV version, if it succeeds, will become the accepted one.

The authentic detective will fade into obscurity, elbowed out of the way by a funky Dr Who figure – Sherlock Wholmes.

And this will be a terrible pity. Because those who still read the originals know that they are in fact works of imaginative genius, which cannot really be separated from the Victorian and Edwardian England in which they are set, in which any suburban villa could conceal a scandalous secret brought back from India, Australia or America. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes is a far more interesting and drily witty person than any BBC scriptwriter could ever be or imagine.

Too many of Doyle’s works – Brigadier Gerard, Professor Challenger and the great historical novels, not to mention his marvellous short stories – have already been wrongly forgotten. We mustn’t let this happen to Sherlock as well.

I doubt Mr. Hitchens likes the updating of Shakespeare, but I haven't read anything written by him that confirms this. Sherlock will be shown on Masterpiece Theater/Mystery later this year (October 24-November 7).

Sherlock will be back for a second series BBC confirms‎.
A fan site.