Raritania

It is a commonplace to praise Jane Austen for her insight into the "manners" of the society of her time. I have to admit that, as ...

One of Thorstein Veblen's more memorable traits as a writer was his constantly coining striking phrases simply by calling things what th...

For most these days I suppose the words "civilization" and "barbarism" have a rather old-fashioned, even pretentious rin...

I recall happening across Mike Judge's Idiocracy on cable at about the time of its premiere there. I remember being astonished that a t...

These days the language we speak seems filled with usages for trivializing and dismissing the problems of the disadvantaged, above all when ...

As I have had many an occasion to remark I found the praise for Mad Men wildly exaggerated--not unlike the Saturday Night Live parody of t...

These last couple of years China's "lying flat" movement has been making the news internationally . The phenomenon may recall ...

Some time ago I (rather belatedly) happened upon Douglas Coupland's much talked-about piece about Elon Musk . I would not have wasted ...

It seems rare that anyone mentions Mike Judge's film Idiocracy and his HBO show Silicon Valley together, but it seems to me that the t...

In considering the "Bardoclasts'" case for their position recently I concerned myself mainly with the charge that seemed easie...