Eating Al Desko?

How to find time for yourself to think?  Oh, you righteous busybodies--here's my solution--chill out, quit your job and become a mailman. 

 

Or maybe you can program your computer to provide you more time.... 

Quo Vadis, Elitist?

Turning the tables on the dirty word bandied about to stave off bouts of inferiority.  Fact:  box seats at athletic events easily cost as much as good seats at the opera.

 

 

Literary Darwinism

Literary Darwinism probably won't be the savior of literary criticism.  It's always bad to set yourself up as the messiah--tends to garner unreasonable expectations.  However, it may open up fresh perspectives, put the cult-studs on notice that some of their assumptions are outmoded or worse--trite.  And possibly be a step in the direction of Consilience--the unifying of science are humanistic knowledge--which is a noble endeavor, even if some doubt it can ever be a reality. 

On Education and Inequality

More of the same old education hand-wringing, writ in the academic economic detailia. 

100 Greatest Detroit Songs Ever.

Need we say more?

 

 

Aw, Someone Burst Wall Street's Bubble

As one of the commentators put, "The new American capitalism = privatize profits, socialize losses."  Even when one grants that we're all in this together, it inspires vomit.   

Satanic Epistles Fetch High Price, at Expense of Public?

Even in the sale of our forebears heirlooms, conflicts can arise between public and private interest.  Especially when they were famous forebears who interacted with Satanic epistolary pals. 

 

You Ain't Goin Nowhere

A lonely voice argues that, on balance, in spite of loud and gleeful predictions to the contrary, America isn't over the hill. 
 
Says Uncle Sam, "We ain't goin nowhere."


 

On the Cuban Caudillo

To what ideals did Fidel actually show fidelity?  Even to admirers and apologists of the left, does his dubious heroism rest on anything other than surviving the pirahnas of capitalism for half a century? 

Oh, You Mean Mammon isn't All Good?

Finally, a card-carrying economic big-wig, questioning our absolute love of private property and worship of the market.

 

 

Mangy Change or Free Range Change or Strange Change or...

The sneaky rhetorical ploys of Brooks are always a delight of observe, even if one disagrees with their partisanship.

On Rap And the Pantheon

I like the idea of people trying to bring everything under one roof.  Or at least take a look at all forms of art/music and be honest about what makes it in the door and why or why not.  And, so on rap. 

 

Machines Freed Women

So nice to see Camille Paglia point out something that has long appeared obvious to me--everytime I do my own laundry (as most males in the history of the world never did). 

 

"Second, feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much the emergence of modern feminism owes to capitalism and the industrial revolution, which transformed the economy, expanded the professions, and gave women for the first time in history the opportunity to earn their own livings and to escape dependency on father or husband. Capitalism's emancipation of women is nowhere clearer than in those magical laborsaving appliances such as automatic washers and dryers that most middle-class Westerners now take for granted."