Archive for March, 2008

Paradigm Shift

Posted: March 23, 2008 in Culture, Education, Philosophy

This post is recycled from a lengthy comment made on Morris Berman’s blog Dark Ages America (after the book of the same name). I have edited it slightly since it no longer has the context of that comment thread and I included two of Prof. Berman’s objections from his response to my comment. In a [...]

Driving Cars (less)

Posted: March 22, 2008 in Consumerism, Economics

I pulled together my papers for my tax return this week. The most surprising detail was that I drove my car just over 4,000 miles last year. Since I bought my current vehicle 4.5 years ago, I have added just under 30,000 miles, an average of about 6,670 per year. This low mileage is something [...]

Harried Life

Posted: March 10, 2008 in Culture, Economics

My employer sponsored an in-service luncheon recently on the topic Achieving Balance. The presentation was essentially a PowerPoint presentation conducted by a representative of a professional human resources company (which will remain nameless since I’m about to criticize the presentation harshly). The presenter promised an interactive, fun, lunch meeting. The part that was true was [...]

Nanny State

Posted: March 8, 2008 in Culture

Great Britain takes a lot of heat at Fark.com for being a nanny state: a country that goes to unwarranted and sometimes intrusive lengths to care for its citizens. Most policies and laws are charmingly eccentric, but a few step over the line of infringing upon individual liberties (which don’t always coincide with American liberties). [...]

Randall Denley as a curious opinion column in The Ottawa Citizen called “The Death of Mass Culture.” Denley’s complaints are two-fold: (1) we no longer have a shared, common culture to which we all subscribe, and (2) the quality of the common culture to which we used to pay attention is no longer producing much [...]