Omniculture

Esperanto—A True Babel Fish?

August 14, 2010
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Esperanto—A True Babel Fish?

  by Mike Gray         And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. …. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon all the face of the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel ; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.              Whether you consider this passage a charming fairy tale or a literal account, the fact remains that the human race is blessed—or, some would say, afflicted—with over 3,000 languages and dialects.              It’s a sad commentary on human nature that differences in speech have long been an excuse for discrimination. One idealistic man thought he might help cure prejudice through language, as a Wikipedia article explains:              Esperanto was created in

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The Productive Class and the American Aristocracy

August 13, 2010
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The Productive Class and the American Aristocracy

For those who may have missed it, here is S. T. Karnick’s recent essay on the nation’s current cultural divide, as published in The American Thinker: As the hostilities between the current government and the Tea Party movement have become increasingly rancorous, the division of American society into two cultures holding thoroughly incompatible worldviews has become obvious. In fact, the two forces are clearly on an unavoidable collision course. Although many people may understandably be most interested in knowing which side will prevail, I think an equally important and troubling question is precisely by what means the matter will be resolved. Will reason prevail and the people in power either have their agenda confirmed or step aside gracefully? Or will there be intransigence, increasing conflict, and even violence? I do not believe that the answer to that question is by any means obvious. In his excellent American Spectator article on “America’s Ruling Class and the Perils of Revolution,” Angelo Codevilla calls these two antagonistic and irreconcilable groups the ruling class and the country party. Although I agree with Codevilla’s outline of the two groups, I prefer to characterize them as the progressive aristocracy and the productive class. In fact, I

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Hammer Films Returns to Action

August 6, 2010
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The legendary British cinema production company Hammer Films—purveyor of horror, suspense, and other genre films of wildly varying quality but usually good entertainment value—is about to begin producing movies again. First up: a gothic horror thriller starring Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame. Story here.

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The Ugly Face of Intolerance—From the “Victims” of Intolerance

July 30, 2010
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The Ugly Face of Intolerance—From the “Victims” of Intolerance

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is conducting a summer tour of twenty-three cities promoting the traditional sense of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As might be expected, a small but highly vocal segment of the population doesn’t like it, as Brian S. Brown of NOM observes: They’ve come to our peaceful marriage rallies in city after city to harass and intimidate us. We’ve seen men harass a nursing mother, refusing her request to feed her children in private and instead stare at her and block her ability to watch our rally from a safe distance. We’ve seen protestors draped in the rainbow flag storm the stage and scream, red-faced into the microphone to prevent our speakers from talking. We’ve seen them bait a five year old child, asking her if she’s being raised by her mother to be a bigot. We’ve even heard a gay marriage supporter threaten to kidnap a child in attendance at a rally. The protesters are composed of the usual suspects, the allegedly politically oppressed and socially persecuted darlings of the liberal-progressive establishment media. As usual, these people pour scorn on traditional institutions and their representatives, and they consider their

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Kathy Griffin Reaches New Low, Boycott Suggested

July 19, 2010
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Kathy Griffin Reaches New Low, Boycott Suggested

The professional snotty bore and antinomian terror Kathy Griffin, who bills herself as a comedian, called a U.S. Senator’s two daughters prostitutes last week. Clearly her dislike for Republican Senator Scott Brown’s politics is behind Griffin’s gust of revolting flatulence, but I strongly believe that it’s time that we stop dismissing such vileness and pretending that it doesn’t matter, that we’re all unaffected by such swinish public behavior. Allowing people to get away with wrongs only emboldens them to worse offenses. Like anybody else, Griffin has a right to say whatever she want to whoever will listen. And those who oppose her and others’ destruction of the nation’s public discourse have a right to be heard as well. It is time for each of the most egregious instances of behavior such as Griffin’s to be answered directly. Take a stand: I recommend that readers Retweet this message—using the button above—and ask all of their friends and associates to do so as well. Also, please consider leaving a comment on Bravo TV executive Andy Cohen’s blog here, informing him and the network that you won’t watch any shows on Bravo until it cancels Kathy Griffin’s show. Let’s let the world know

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Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Attacked, Defended

July 12, 2010
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Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Attacked, Defended

Author Harper Lee and her groundbreaking novel To Kill a Mockingbird have received a well-deserved defense in the Washington Post, exactly fifty years after the book’s publication. The fact that such a thing is necessary indicates the truly terrifying amount of stupidity and arrogance that stain the contemporary mainstream media. Columnist Kathleen Parker’s defense of Lee and her only novel is rather weak, but at least she attempts it, rebuking the spectacularly overrated writer Malcolm Gladwell’s meandering article in the New Yorker on the subject. Gladwell’s risible essay is chock-full of instances of his technique of alleged reversals of conventional thinking, which are in fact either already commonly understood or wrong or both. Gladwell’s notion that To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in1960, is insufficiently hateful toward white Southerners and is unsophisticated in failing to embrace radical politics is a truly breathtaking instance of ignorant bigotry. It is also not original, and it is wrong. Gladwell writes, for example: If Finch were a civil-rights hero, he would be brimming with rage at the unjust verdict. But he isn’t. He’s not Thurgood Marshall looking for racial salvation through the law. He’s Jim Folsom, looking for racial salvation through hearts and minds.

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Study: Casual Sexual Attitudes Not Women’s Choice, Lead to Depression

June 30, 2010
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Study: Casual Sexual Attitudes Not Women’s Choice, Lead to Depression

By Bethany Stotts Casual sex, common on many college campuses, leaves many female students dissatisfied and with hurt feelings, according to the authors of a recent column for The Chronicle Review, a publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education. “For the past 12 years, I have taught a course on sex differences to college juniors and seniors,” writes University of Virginia professor Steven E. Rhoads in his coauthored article “The Emotional Costs of Hooking Up.” “When we talk about relationships and sex itself, most of the men, sometimes sheepishly, indicate that they enjoy hookups—but the vast majority of the women are unhappy with them,” he writes. He continues, “Women don’t want sex for long without an emotional connection, a sense of caring, if not real commitment, from their partners. As one student wrote in a paper for my class, ‘We are told not to be sexual prudes, but to enjoy casual sex, we have to be emotional prudes.’” “A lot of the men seem to believe what one told my wife a few years ago: She was teaching Shakespearean romantic comedy to an all-male college class and asked what sort of women the men imagined they would fall in love

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‘James May’s Toy Stories’ a Fun Show with Good Ideas

June 28, 2010
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‘James May’s Toy Stories’ a Fun Show with Good Ideas

Premiering tonight on BBC America is a very entertaining and informative documentary series starring James May (Top Gear). James May’s Toy Stories is a diverting and amusing program that makes a good point: that the toys of the fortysomething May’s childhood years engaged the imagination and developed the mind in ways that video games cannot. May does not argue that video games are intrinsically inferior, much less claim that they’re harmful, but instead he makes a liberal-minded point: that parents of today can recover something good that has been lost, by simply encouraging their children to seek out more physically active and open-ended forms of recreation. Activities such as Lego-building, designing tracks for toy trains and collecting train cars and scenery, and playing with modeling clay can be both diverting and educational while giving children a real-world way of exercising their creativity and learning serious lessons about physics that video games just can’t impart. After all, trying to get those last two bits of train track to fit together or build a toy bridge out of Legos can afford memorably vivid experience with the charming intractability of the laws of physics and chains of consequence. And given that many if

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Steve Kilbey’s Intimate Musical Diary

May 25, 2010
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Steve Kilbey’s Intimate Musical Diary

Let me tell you a little bit about Steve Kilbey… A long, long time ago–in the late 1980s, to be exact–an Australian rock band called The Church were on their way to significant mainstream success, or so it seemed. They had made impressive inroads into the Billboard Hot 100 chart with a darn-near perfect psychedelic pop ditty called “Under the Milky Way.” Its equally strong parent album Starfish went gold–no mean feat in that era of Poison and Def Leppard. Just imagine it: there our antipodean heroes were, trudging out of the musical underworld like Orpheus, singing those beautiful songs, playing those beautiful Rickenbacker guitars, closing in on the taillights of the Cure, damnit. But something happened. Perhaps they turned to look back at Eurydice too soon, taking their eyes off the righteous path just long enough for grunge rock to sail on by and steal all the glory. In the Church’s defense, no one could have predicted the impending Death of All Melody that would overtake the world for the better part of a decade.  In 1988, they were an up-and-coming band with nothing but bright possibilities stretching before them. And during that summer, my friend Joe Carpenter and I became thoroughly besotted with the quartet, though

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Interview with Nick D’Virgilio, Lead Singer with Spock’s Beard

May 13, 2010
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Interview with Nick D’Virgilio, Lead Singer with Spock’s Beard

Nick D’Virgilio formed Spock’s Beard with Neal and Alan Morse in 1992. They bravely set out on a progressive rock path at a time when that style of rock music might be described as waning in America. Through hard work and a willingness play wherever they could find an appreciative audience, which often meant traveling to Europe, they’ve built a solid following. Nick was gracious enough to share his thoughts on progressive rock, touring in Europe, and what it takes for a young musician to make it in the incredibly competitive music industry. The American Culture: Tell me about creating Spock’s Beard. Nick D’Virgilio: It was a chance meeting that was just meant to be. I guess it depends on what you believe. I think it was meant to be. I was at a blues jam at a bar in Los Angeles. I put my name on the board like all of the other musicians who wanted to play that night. When they called me up on stage they also called Neal and Alan Morse. We played a couple songs (I can’t remember what they were) and then talked. We found out that we liked a lot of the same

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Happy Birthday, Nancy Drew

April 30, 2010
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The Nancy Drew book series just reached its 80th anniversary. These books were of better quality than most critics acknowledge, and they have been far more influential—in a positive way—than feminists want to admit. Story here. Books here.

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Regrets, Feminists Have Had a Few

April 27, 2010
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Regrets, Feminists Have Had a Few

In a recent article on “The New Backlash Against Casual Sex,” Slate “Double X”  blogger Jessica Grose reacts with abject revulsion toward recent events manifesting what she sees as the “fervent conservatism” of the current decade. These atrocities include a new book called I Don’t Care About Your Band, in which feminist writer Julie Klausner documents her disappointments with casual sex. Espying a sinister pattern behind these events, Grose bemoans what she characterizes as a horrid resurgence of puritanism that has become a common attitude among young females and is somehow perverting even once-sensible feminists such as Ms. Klausner: Domestic bliss is now the cultural ideal for young women, which is why Lori Gottlieb haranguing women to settle for Mr. Good Enough in her new book Marry Him hit such a raw nerve. Cue the “spinster panic” articles, like this one from the New York Times in January, which talks about how successful beautiful women are “victims of a role reversal” that will leave them single because men aren’t making as much money as they are anymore. At the start of this decade, we have thoroughly internalized these recent conservative cultural messages about the importance of marriage: “73 percent of women born between 1977 and 1989 place

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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