Instead of Berbers, ‘Arabs’, Turks, and other Muslim groups, we have to our south Mexico. Maybe we could consider ourselves relatively fortunate because of this. The best book in English on Mexican culture in recent times that I know of […]
Culture
Why Didn’t Harvey Weinstein Get His Face Slapped?
My wife’s grandmother, who grew up around the turn of the last century, would tell my wife, “Never be afraid to slap ‘em and walk home” in reference to predatory young men. And evidently such men have existed for a […]
Why There Are So Many Single Occupant Bathrooms Nowadays
A California law went into effect saying that single occupant bathrooms need to be mixed gender. Now in my office we have two of those upstairs and two multi-occupant bathrooms [with showers] downstairs. Changing the downstairs bathrooms to mixed […]
On Feeling Guilty for Ordering Stuff Online
I like ordering things online and not having to hunt for them in stores. And sometimes the alternative is being eliminated. Just like paying cash or taking public transit, live stores, especially bookstores, are disappearing. There is only one major […]
How do I Stack Up for the Summer?
Given that it will probably be summer before this month of June is over, Georgea Kovanis from the Detroit Free Press has published a list of things that men ought not to wear if we want dates. Of course I’ve been […]
How Employers Impose Their Own ‘Growth Boundaries’
There has been a lot of publicity about how the imposition of ‘growth boundaries’ on metropolitan areas often succeeds mainly in driving up the price of land within the boundaries. But companies and employers often impose their own ‘growth boundaries’ […]
Is it Time for Northern Country Music?
A few years ago I did a post on how country music seemed to have a Southern bias. Well, Donald Federikovich Trump owes his victory to the northern counterpart of rednecks, whatever they are called, that won him the states […]
The Religious Right Failed to See What Was Coming
We have repeated Francis Schaeffer’s warning about ‘personal peace and affluence’ often at Blue Kennel, but it’s time to do it again. He declared, back about 1970, that the ‘Silent Majority’, a term Nixon had begun to use, was composed […]
Authoritarianism is a Hot Subject Nowadays
There is a lot of intellectual fuss about ‘authoritarianism’ nowadays, because of the rise of Donald Trump and what appears to be the overthrow of traditional ‘fusion’ conservatism. A long essay by Amanda Taub in “Vox” is the most thorough […]
The Adams Map: A Different Spectrum, A Challenge – Part 2
It occurs to me that Adams anticipates Trump. However, when I wrote this I thought the people on the lower left corner weren’t going to turn out to vote. Therefore the culture wars between the upper left and lower right […]