Culture
Healthcare and what you get for free; making a living trying to fix the dying (state); the dictator prescription; and unhealthily sexist (female) teachers. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…
Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker is getting some attention today for taking the SNAP challenge. He’s going to live for a week on the amount of money for food that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) offers. The rules of the challenge are that you get $35 for the week and all food consumed must…
As a husband, father, son, brother, friend etc. of fine ladies young and old, I think a political campaign that continually targets women by focusing on areas related to female sexuality does a disservice to the most important organ women have: their brains. I’m pretty sure women are also interested in the economy and foreign…
Historian, teacher and cultural critic Jacques Barzun, one of my intellectual “heroes”, passed away at 104. What a life! He wrote about pretty much everything, but his historical writing culminated with his From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present. He also authored books on writing and historical method,…
It’s hardly original to suggest that the real detriment of our era of political correctness isn’t so much the specifics to which we’re asked to conform, but the habits of thought that the overly sensitive ear engenders. That’s actually a detriment with two parts. First, it makes discussion a power play. Even in the long-gone…
People across the United States should consider Rhode Island as a canary in the ObamaCare coal mine, whistling the tune of the President’s larger public welfare project. When he spoke on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, RI’s Lincoln Chafee introduced himself as “the nation’s only independent governor.” That’s “independent” as in belonging…
This essay originally appeared in the Providence Journal on June 8, 2009. Given that periodical’s revamped Web site, the essay is no longer available online, so I’m reproducing it here. The preschooler’s question at the dinner table probably wasn’t as new to recent generations as a parent’s first reaction might suggest: Can a girl marry…
I found Camille Paglia’s piece in the Wall Street Journal about modern-day art interesting and thought provoking: What has sapped artistic creativity and innovation in the arts? Two major causes can be identified, one relating to an expansion of form and the other to a contraction of ideology. Painting was the prestige genre in the…
I occasionally listen to Imus in the Morning and this morning, I was lucky enough to hear John Hiatt perform “Blues Can’t Even Find Me”. It struck a chord–no pun intended–because I think we’re spending so much time being sorta-connected to everyone via Twitter and Facebook and the like that we’re not maintaining our valuable…
Why freedom demands father-daughter dances; the U.S., less free; PolitiFact gets a Half Fair rating for its Doherty correction; and the mainstream media cashes in some of its few remaining credibility chips for the presidential incumbent. Continue reading on the Ocean State Current…