Culture

Bullies, Allowed and Not Allowed

By Justin Katz | November 30, 2011 |

It’s a substantially different issue from the banalization of Christmas trees, in a number of ways, but I think there’s something of the same mentality as emerged from Morgan Hill, CA, here summarized by Glenn Garvin: … When a federal judge in San Francisco ruled earlier this month that school administrators in a California town…

It’s Almost Like an Unintentional Social Theme…

By Justin Katz | November 29, 2011 |

Instapundti Glenn Reynolds put up two posts/links this afternoon that offer an interesting juxtaposition when combined. At 5:21 p.m.: 21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Dinner Table Talk For Lesbians & Their Possible Sperm Donors. At 1:32 p.m.: STUDY: Adolescent boys more prone to delinquency without a father. “The sense of security generated by the presence of a…

Kunis and Timberlake: Two Stars Who “Get it”

By Marc Comtois | November 22, 2011 |

I’m hardly a regular consumer of celebrity culture, but the fact that Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis followed through with their promises to attend respective Marine Corps balls gives me hope that at least some of our contemporary Hollywood stars “get it.” By all accounts, both were good dates. Timberlake blogged about the experience and…

The Cultural Cycle We’re In

By Justin Katz | November 17, 2011 |

Commenting on the image cut by “union protesters” (that is, protesting union members), Alice Losasso of West Warwick quotes Scottish historian Alexander Tytler as follows: “The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:…

The Employee’s Leverage

By Justin Katz | September 9, 2011 |

Statements such as the following are so foreign to my way of seeing things that there must be some fundamental question at the bottom of the difference: To understand how we got here, first consider the Ben Franklin-Horatio Alger-Henry Ford ur-myth: To balk at working hard — really, really hard — brands you as profoundly…

The War Will Find the Shire

By Justin Katz | August 14, 2011 |

As always, Mark Steyn does an excellent job articulating the conservative perspective, this time on the British riots: While the British Treasury is busy writing checks to Amsterdam prostitutes, one-fifth of children are raised in homes in which no adult works — in which the weekday ritual of rising, dressing and leaving for gainful employment…

A Father Is a Father

By Justin Katz | August 6, 2011 |

At its core, the key argument against same-sex marriage is that it prevents our society from creating any distinction between relationships that are plainly different in significant ways. Men and women are different, and when they pair up, their intimate relationship has consequences that no other form of relationship has. Moreover, an ideal doesn’t have…

Continuing Downness on the Economy

By Justin Katz | August 4, 2011 |

Thinking further about an aspect the topic that I raised this morning — namely, things that prevent Americans from forging their own way in this economy — many additional factors came to mind. A huge one is debt. On my short lunch break, I don’t have time to go in search of the link, but…

Self-Government’s Intrusion on Fantasy Life

By Justin Katz | July 30, 2011 |

The argument over the value or harmfulness of television is an old one, but Ben Berger brings it to an important insight. He notes that the medium itself has downsides, and that it tends toward content that compounds them: … Postman and his fellow media guru Marshall McLuhan both insisted that “the medium is the…

Notes on Summer Reading in Rhode Island

By Carroll Andrew Morse | July 9, 2011 |

Last evening, during a visit to a bookshop, I took a quick look at the table labeled “summer reading”. I am not 100% sure that “summer reading” referred specifically to a high-school reading list, but two of the titles on the table were The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and Slaughterhouse Five by…