Culture
John Derbyshire has done what few non-college professors are willing to do: he’s actually read Michelle Obama’s senior thesis. Overall, he believes (and I agree) that it will and should have minimal effect on the presidential race, but he makes a worthy point: … the slight negative is negative because the thesis reveals a cast…
In today’s Providence Journal, a young Ivy Leaguer with a hyphenated name adds too my still-short list of old-man moments (note the sentence that I’ve italicized): But that is all that I have ever known as an adult: a reviled America under George Bush, and a Congress dominated by petty bickering instead of big ideas.…
Ah the idyllic land of Northern Europe, to which the world’s eyes turn for a vision of society as it ought to be: Groups of youths torched schools and cars in a sixth consecutive night of violence across Denmark, mostly in immigrant neighborhoods, police said yesterday. Forty-three persons were arrested. The spate of vandalism started…
Filling in for Dan Yorke on 630WPRO, Matt Allen’s been talking about the ability of apparent prosperity to elevate men’s chances when it comes to wooing attractive women. I emailed him that the thought that money bought love used to really bother me. Recently, though, the amount that I work, the struggles to get by,…
Legend has it that, upon Napoleon’s crowning himself emperor, Beethoven tore or scratched Bonaparte’s name from his Eroica Symphony manuscript in a fury. The revolutionary inspiration had been perverted, but still, many followed the general even thereafter, some perhaps out of a nostalgic faith that the principles of liberté, egalité, and fraternité would win through…
I’d have added some sort of spiritual fortification to Dogbert’s advice, but his assessment is compelling. It reminds me of one of my father’s favorite topics: the notion that production and healthcare both are going to create a reality in which none of our historical social models apply. Everybody’s going to live a very long…
Andrew notes that marrying the future mother of his child would have put Mynor Montufar on the path to citizenship. The various considerations that go into figuring out why that was a road not taken highlight the fact that, while not all decisions follow rational thought processes, incentive structures still apply broadly. As Andrew describes…
Although I’m not in a position to provide links right now, I wanted to mention something that I just heard on WPRO: The unwed, nineteen-year-old father of Rhode Island’s first-born baby of 2008 was just taken in under suspicion of being an illegal alien. Apparently, a housemate of the young couple was found dead (perhaps…
What a sad, sad commentary that the first baby born in Rhode Island during 2008 was child number three to a nineteen year old girl. The picture of the mother with the baby and the father (different name; no mention of whether the other two are his) is worth a thousand words. Mom expressed hope…
As I’ve written before about the perils of allowing our kids–especially our daughters–to be to “in the know” about the latest tween pop culture icons. Being a Dad to a couple ‘tween girls certainly heightens one’s awareness of how our culture seems hell-bent on having our girls grow up too fast. Today’s ProJo contains a…