I was recently in Stansted Airport, queueing in a low-ceilinged, quasi-temporary structure to enter the departure area for a Ryanair flight. There were two queues; the ‘priority queue’ which passengers had paid extra to join, and the ordinary one, but just one airport employee covering both, toggling stressfully between two irritated groups. Each time she […]
Academia
At the grocery store the other day, when my five-year-old made an impassioned plea for a certain kind of cereal, I said, “nah, that one’s too sweet for breakfast.” He responded with a stern reprimand: “Mom, you shouldn’t yuck my yum!” I was pretty sure that admonishment didn’t apply here, but I heroically let it […]
Late July, The Wall Street Journal published five short pieces under the title, “Have We Ruined Sex?” Among the five pieces was one by Mary Harrington. In her contribution she argues that the sexual revolution has mainly benefitted the “entrepreneurial class.” Since this appeared not in The Nation but WSJ, I was amused, so I decided to read her (2023) Feminism […]
In order of relative clout. I’ve been meaning to do some version of this for years …
Henry’s post on the correct way to argue with Hanania was good. In light of late revelations (probably you’ve heard), revisitation, for extra emphasis, may not be taken amiss. (Or skip it, if it looks like a dead horse.) Henry’s point, riffing on DD (riffing on Galbraith, riffing on Friedman) is: you don’t want to […]
I’ve been reading Gospodinov’s Time Shelter (highly recommended), and though I have not finished it yet, it has already made salient a question that I’ve asked myself before, as I suppose others have too: which was the best year to be born? I think my answer, at least for the UK and for the last […]
I’m a complete sucker for them. I don’t know why: you’d think twenty-odd years as an academic would have cured me of the idea there is anything romantic or glamorous about universities. But I keep going back to the trough. Some good recent ones: Julia May Jonas, Vladimir; R.O. Kwon, The Incendiaries; Rachel Henstra, The […]
I don’t have anything original to say, but it seems important enough to discuss. I’m going to pre-emptively rule out Trumpism and bothsidesism: you can take that to X or tell it to Ernst Thaelmann.
In my previous post on utilitarianism, I started with two crucial observations. First, utilitarianism is a political philosophy, dealing with the question of how the resources in a community should be distributed. It’s not a system of individual ethics Second, (this shouldn’t be necessary to state, but it is), there is no such thing as […]