My grandfather had an eighth-grade education. The story was that he dropped out to help his parents run the farm, but judging by the number of creative ways he skipped school, I can’t imagine the decision was difficult for him. Truth is he didn’t want to be there. Even so, my grandfather was an expert carpenter. He made beautiful and solid furniture that lasted. He … Continue reading Why Do We Think The Working Class is Less Intelligent?
One popular theory explaining the rise of Donald Trump is that runaway political correctness provoked a mass reaction that propelled the least politically correct presidential candidate in history to electoral victory. The (mostly white) masses, tired of hearing about transgender bathroom issues, exhausted by black/white rhetoric, and feeling threatened by the increasing regularity of “thought policing”, elected a man who rejected the identity politics of … Continue reading The 3 Faces of Political Incorrectness
At the beginning of February, more than 100 million people will tune into Super Bowl LI to watch the Falcons face the Patriots. Another 72,000 will be in attendance at the NRG Stadium in Houston. Nearly 1/3 of the U.S. population will watch the same game at the same time cheering on players they’ve never met. Some will glance up with passing interest. Others will … Continue reading How Sports Bridge Our Cultural Divisions
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Middle Earth collection to create a new body of mythology, and largely to showcase more than a dozen original languages, including Elvish. The fictional Elvish language can be heard spoken by fans at conventions like Comic-Con, but its real life counterpart, Elfdalian, is actually spoken in the dense woodlands of Alvdalen, Sweden. The … Continue reading Elvish Has Been Spoken for Centuries In This Small Swedish Community
When I was eight days old, an unlicensed surgeon took a scalpel to my penis and left an ancient covenant where my foreskin used to be. The brit milah or “covenantal circumcision” marked my permanent spiritual inclusion in the Jewish nation. I was branded as Jewish, whether I wanted to be or not. Continue reading How to Keep Jews Jewish by Being More Like the Amish
