Ideas. Opinions. Adoxography. Satire. Parrhesia. Senex Iratus. Skepticism. Vox clamantis in oppidum. Now with 50% more snark!
I grew up in the 1950s, and heard him on the radio (AM stations playing pop music, of course) in the late part of the decade when Elvis was at his artistic peak. As a pre-teen, I wasn t a fan of anyone in particular, but I liked what I heard of early rock roll in general, including his music. It had spirit, guts, spark, and it annoyed my parents. As I entered my teens, Elvis was still around,…
I was reminded this morning of Henry David Thoreau, who wrote about his bean field in Walden, his famous journal of contemplations about living on his own in a rustic cabin, about Concord, about democracy, about his neighbours. Somewhat like Michel de Montaigne, albeit writing three centuries later, Thoreau seemed to find something to write about in every aspect of his two-year sojourn in the…
Elon Musk, aka the MAGA SpaceNazi, was so triggered by Christopher Nolan s recent film, The Odyssey (or more accurately the casting in it), that he huffily screamed on Xitter that his shitty, Musk-influenced AI program, Grok, would produce a manlier, AI-generated version by year end that was historically accurate and true to the art of Homer. Variety Magazine wryly noted that, Given the presence…
The USA is going through yet another Red Scare — its third in barely a century — according to the paranoid, hyperbolic statements made by the Deranged Dictator Donald Trump in his speech, July 4. Trump s comments were made at his failed Freedom 250 event, which he hosted to replace the celebration of the USA s 250th birthday. That change was appropriate, given the USA ceased to be a democracy in…
Once upon a time, the USA was a democracy. While vestiges of democracy can still be found in the USA, it is being actively and aggressively eradicated at the federal level, and also in several Repugnican-controlled states like Texas. But what has the USA become post-democracy? Democracy is a portmanteau word meaning, government by the people, system of government in which the sovereign power is…
It s been a few years since I last posted about my excursions into shaving with a safety razor (double-edged blades). In my last post on the subject, dated almost exactly six years ago, I had just purchased a Wilkinson twist-to-open (TTO) or butterfly head razor. Well, quite a few years have passed without new purchases until this past weekend, when two new razors arrived. Photo on the right:…
Richard Dawkins is no stranger to shaking the cultural tree to see what falls out. In 2024, Dawkins was interviewed by Rachel Johnson on British TV. He noted in that interview that he was a cultural Christian. And did that statement ever create a ruckus among both the faithful and nonbelievers. Some even went so far as to claim Dawkins had converted from his lifelong atheism. Piffle.* The…
