Culture
Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic has written a piece that uses the latest Apple iPhone problems as a jumping off point to examine the “religious experience” of being an Apple “fanboy.” In short, there are 4 myths surrounding the Apple “mystique”, according to Texas A&M’s Heidi Campbell: 1. a creation myth highlighting the counter-cultural origin…
When I taught computer classes in a Catholic school, some years ago, my lunch hour reading habits periodically snagged me inexplicably in the system’s Internet filter. The most unexpectedly blocked site was that of a Catholic writer caught up, perhaps, by hostile Web sites that linked to him or comments that he didn’t delete quickly…
Mark Steyn’s talking about social engineering in the classroom (subscription required), but the method that he’s highlighting — the elimination of individual friendship — broadens quickly: … much of the contemporary scene owes its origins to silly little fads among “educators” that seemed too laughable to credit only the day before yesterday. I see the…
I’ve been meaning to bring up a letter critical of Alan Shawn Feinstein that Tim Castelli submitted to the Providence Journal not as an exercise in piling on, but because it does raise some interesting questions about charity and the drive to be a public figure: … “You’re from Rhode Island and you don’t know…
Scientist priest Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk explains that a recent scientific achievement in the news was not so much the creation of life as a rebuilding of a fundamental component, citing a Princeton microbiologist: “Every cell is a microcosm of life, and neither the Venter team nor anybody else has come close to recreating the cell…
Following up on a story that I mentioned a month ago: An ideologically split Supreme Court ruled Monday that a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won’t let gays join, with one justice saying that the First Amendment does not require a public university to validate or support the…
Mark Steyn proposes an interesting turnabout: … As paradoxical as it sounds, Muslims have been far greater beneficiaries of Holocaust guilt than the Jews. In a nutshell, the Holocaust enabled the Islamization of Europe. Without post-war guilt, and the revulsion against nationalism, and the embrace of multiculturalism and mass immigration, the Continent would never have…
The behavior of both sides of the liberal-guilt–welfare axis might find some explanation in this line, drawn from a review of Arthur Brooks’s The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future by Matthew Continetti (subscription required): It is not inequality, Brooks writes, that makes people unhappy. It is…
I really do like that some political and religious periodicals publish poetry, but I have to admit that I’m seldom impressed. Skeptic of modernity that I am, the profundity passes me by. Something about rhyme and meter in poetry… well… it works. I think (often) of Robert Frost’s “Provide, Provide.” Those who worry that fealty…
It may seem an odd adjective to use in describing a person in such an establishment role as the Providence Journal‘s Commentary page editor, but in writing and conversation Robert Whitcomb is an iconoclastic figure. His take on the reason for dissipating civic engagement among the young, in the United States, highlights the characteristic. Whitcomb’s…