Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Why it's So Hard to Make Sense of the Reports of a Mass Exodus From the Teaching Profession

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As a new school year begins the education system is again in the headlines, with much talk of fed-up teachers leaving the profession on such...
Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Top Gun 2's Box Office Run: Further Thoughts

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With the second week of August already upon us it seems fair to say that Top Gun: Maverick has taken the box office crown for the season (a...

The Summer 2022 Box Office: A Hopefully Not-Too-Early Assessment

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With August upon us the summer film season is fast drawing to a close--the more in as the last really big release, Thor: Love and Thunder , ...

Has Top Gun 2 Really "Saved the Movies?"

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In Indiewire Tom Brueggemann made the case that Top Gun 2 has "saved the movies." His argument goes that in a Hollywood which ha...
Friday, August 5, 2022

Reflections on Jack London's Martin Eden

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When I first picked up Jack London's Martin Eden my first thought was of its being an inversion of his earlier The Sea-Wolf . Where tha...

Canceling Batgirl

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I have long since stopped paying much attention to what is said about movies that has not been long since completed and so close to a proper...
Friday, July 8, 2022

Elizabeth Bennett and the Ideal of the "Accomplished Young Lady"

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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 ...

"The Habit of Invidious Comparison"

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

What Does it Mean to Be Civilized? (A Look at Veblen's View of the Matter)

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For most these days I suppose the words "civilization" and "barbarism" have a rather old-fashioned, even pretentious rin...
Wednesday, July 6, 2022

What We Talk About When We Talk About Idiocracy

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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...

The Problem With "Confidence"

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

Remembering "Nixon vs. Kennedy"

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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...
Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Is China's "Lying Flat" Movement the Wave of the Future?

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

Some Thoughts on Douglas Coupland's Piece on Elon Musk

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

From Idiocracy to Silicon Valley

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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...