2,479 words
It was supposed to make our lives better, not consume them — or so we thought. Smartphones and social media are as ubiquitous as they are dangerous. They are a tool, but unlike most, they offer an easy on-ramp to behavioral addiction and cognitive decay. (more…)
The blacks brought by the Empire Windrush in 1948: cheap labor for Britain, or the result of cheap tickets?
The blacks brought by the Empire Windrush in 1948: cheap labor for Britain, or the result of cheap tickets?
1,788 words
(Post-)modern history
Have you ever talked yourself out of a job? The Cambridge University Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic have. The Dons have declared that Anglo-Saxons did not exist, which should free up a third of their time. (more…)
1,439 words
Trey Garrison & Richard McClure
Opioids for the Masses: Big Pharma’s War on Middle America and the White Working Class
Quakertown, Pa.: Antelope Hill Publishing, 2021
Opioids are a major killer. This poison has infiltrated every part of the American heartland, especially the post-industrial Rust Belt and Appalachian coal country. Working-class white Americans whose parents and grandparents scorned the recreational drug users of the 1960s are now hopelessly addicted themselves. (more…)
5,391 words
The following essay originally appeared in the January 1992 issue of George P. Dietz’s Liberty Bell magazine, and is reprinted from the Revilo P. Oliver online archive. (more…)
2,283 words
Withnail & I (1987) is a masterpiece of British dark-comic satire written and directed by actor, novelist, and screenwriter Bruce Robinson, who went on to write and direct How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), another strong film in a similar vein. His career seems to have petered out, though, after a couple of flops, Jennifer 8 (1992) and The Rum Diary (2011).
Richard E. Grant made his film debut playing Withnail. (He was also the lead in How to Get Ahead in Advertising.) Paul McGann played Marwood, the “I” in the title. (more…)
1,692 words
Choke (2008)
Written & directed by Clark Gregg
Starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, & Brad William Henke
Chuck Palahniuk, most recently the author of the ethnostate satire Adjustment Day and known mainly for Fight Club, inspired another feature film with his 2001 novel, Choke. The 2008 film of the same name focuses on sex addiction, a timely subject in the current era of spiritual emptiness, which is one of Palahniuk’s recurrent themes. Intentionally or not, this dark comedy serves to repel the viewer from sexual deviance more effectively than any Christian sermon about sin. (more…)
1,469 words
Matthew Crawford
The World Beyond Your Head
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016
Matthew Crawford is a new but powerful intellectual. His debut in the public sphere began in 2009 with his book Shop Class as Soulcraft, which was affectionately dubbed “Heidegger and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Slate, and positively reviewed by Francis Fukuyama. Crawford’s second polemic, however, is more far-reaching, and stands to supplant his first work as his philosophical masterpiece. (more…)
