State of the Culture

  • This world is highly lacking in empathy and overflowing with judgemental, apathetic douchebags. It's clear from the context that no irony was intended. Yes, I laughed out loud. 

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  • I've been complaining for a long time–yeah, I know, this sentence could end right there, but I'll continue anyway–I've been complaining for a long time about the "generations" construct which is a sort of pop sociology thing that sometimes seems barely a step up from astrology. This chart, harvested from Wikipedia, sums up the system,

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  • Remarkable Insight On My Part

    A quick post from Fairhope Brewing, where they are actually encouraging people to come in and use their Wi-Fi, even opening in the mornings just for that purpose. Thank you, FBC. I have a new computer, and have taken the occasion to go through a lot of old files and discard, organize, etc. In the

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  • Bad Writing

    If you can even call it writing…. Maybe just jargon. Or guff. I received an email on my work account with this subject: Implement Engaging Prevention Training at [college] I wondered what it meant. Training for the purpose of preventing something, apparently. Opened the email and saw a company logo with this text: Proven, Engaging

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  • Having finally read this well-known and so-often-recommended book, I'm sorry to say that I was a little disappointed in it. It's not that there is anything wrong with its actual contents–it's a good book, and I recommend it–but that the contents aren't quite what I was expecting. I assumed that the topic named in the

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  • I know I can be pedantic, but I like to think I'm not excessively so. I deny that I'm a grammar Nazi. I understand that language is constantly shifting, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Some departures from standard grammar–I hesitate even to say "correct," so wary am I of being overly

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  • "Visited" as opposed to "revisited," which is what most people who are interested in this book are doing now if they are discussing it. It was published over thirty years ago, in 1987, and attracted a great deal of attention then. I was aware of it, and had a rough idea of what it was

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  • This piece by Stanley Kurtz at National Review is a commentary on the very rapid growth of the belief, and subsequent practice, of left-wing journalists that views which they despise should not be heard. It's worth reading in its entirety, but here's how Kurtz ends it: Classical liberalism arose to prevent murderous civil strife between those

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  • Impermissible Ideas

    As it always had the potential to do, the philosophical and religious neutrality which is the ostensible framework of the American system is collapsing. See this post by Rod Dreher, one of many in which he describes the movement in big-time journalism to full-on advocacy for various left-wing causes. Here's an anecdote: All this put

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  • NOTE: the essay itself has been removed for the moment. Explanation later. As some readers of this blog know, I've written a book which is part memoir and conversion story, part cultural history of the phenomenon we call "the Sixties." I have a certain amount of evidence that the attempt is not really successful. It's

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