Time’s acceleration
I don’t quite buy this, although I do think it’s harder to experience new things as one gets older. Or, at least, new fun things: The older you get the more the days seem to fly by. Why is that? … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Getting philosophical: life, love, the universe
Baby, it’s not cold outside anymore
[NOTE: Hat tip: Instapundit. The title of this post’s a riff on my recent piece about the Frank Loesser song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” But this topic is very different.] It was a long and frozen wait—twenty-four years, to be … Continue reading →
“Everybody knew”
We keep hearing stories about sexual harassers who “everybody” in certain groups “knew about all along,” for years and years, and yet no one did anything about the situation. A lot of people then condemn members of those institutions for … Continue reading →
Wunderbar
Yesterday’s post on stage musicals vs. movie musicals led somehow to me watching video after video on YouTube with great pleasure, and one of the greatest of those pleasures was to learn that Patricia Morison is still alive and kicking … Continue reading →
Advice to students: on thinking
Here’s the text of a very interesting speech given to first year students by Adam J. MacLeod, an associate professor of law at Jones School of Law, Faulkner University (Montgomery, Alabama). Fascinating. The man does not pull any punches. It’s … Continue reading →
The ivory tower contemplates the world
By Frank Bruni: …there is and always has been disagreement about the very mission of higher education. Should it grapple with the world as it is or point the way to the world as it should be? The article goes … Continue reading →
Heart of darkness: the baby killers
What state of mind allows a person to purposely target babies for killing, up close and personal? I ask the question because of reports that the Texas church attacker did exactly that: The gunman who killed 26 people at a … Continue reading →
Robert Frost on progressive education 100 years ago
[NOTE: This is written in conjunction with this post on recent events on college campuses.] Robert Frost has long been one of America’s best-known poets. During his lifetime, he was also seen as a sort of folksy New Englander on … Continue reading →
“We simply do not understand”
A little non-political item from the NY Post: The universe shouldn’t technically exist, according to top scientists who have spent their careers trying to figure out how the beginning of everything didn’t immediately destroy itself. I believe they actually mean … Continue reading →
Joyce Carol Oates: marriage, memoir, and disclosure
Joyce Carol Oates has been writing short stories and novels ever since the early 1960s. As a writer, she reminds me of Meryl Streep as an actress—that is, skillful, highly praised, prolific, versatile, and not especially appealing (to me, anyway). … Continue reading →
The magical “undo” command
Today I was trying to write a post and somehow, when I tried to cut and paste something, an entire paragraph and a half that I’d previously written suddenly disappeared. And yet all I had to do was click on … Continue reading →
Sexual harassment and the yetser ha-ra
Megan McArdle writes: Every society is going to have those who knowingly, perhaps even joyfully, break its rules. And this is the problem with phrases like “rape culture” and “teach men not to ”¦”, which imply that transgression would stop … Continue reading →