The book: The Bully Pulpit, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. When this I book came out, I had zero interest in reading it. Zero interest. Teddy Roosevelt just doesn’t thrill me all that much. H.L Mencken’s essay, “Roosevelt: An Autopsy” concludes: Enormously sensitive and resilient, almost pathological in his appetite for activity, he made it plain to every one that the most stimulating sort of sport imaginable was to be obtained in fighting, not for mere money, but for ideas. There was no … [Read more...] about Taft for President
Modern Society
Pity Poor Malcolm Gladwell
Imagine you were a rather good journalist, who could write stories about people and events which were worth reading. Interesting stories in which a fine ear for a telling anecdote helps illustrate a larger point. Imagine you are making a decent career doing that. Imagine you have worked your way up to writing for The New Yorker. (The New Yorker! That is a magazine Easterners of High Class all read. Californians? Well, I never understood why a magazine pretending New … [Read more...] about Pity Poor Malcolm Gladwell
Wait a Minute, Mr Postman
Will the US Postal Service survive for another 20 years? Should it? Mail fascinates me. I have no idea why. (Then again, I have no idea why I am fascinated by 90% of the things which fascinate me.) It’s not that I like sending physical letters; I don’t. I have converted every bill I can to electronic payment. And it’s not that I get a lot of mail I like to receive. My Wall Street Journal is delivered by the USPS, but that is just an … [Read more...] about Wait a Minute, Mr Postman
On Technological Stagnation
“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.” Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth Amendment. Thus begins Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels: 1953-1956. The first thing to note about this novel is that it does cause one to wonder (once again) about the … [Read more...] about On Technological Stagnation
The New Class Conflict
Every now and then a book comes along which while not really saying anything you didn’t know already, rearranges all those bits of knowledge into a new, and fairly interesting, pattern. Joel Kotkin, The New Class Conflict is such a book. Here are the bits of information: 1. There is a growing divide in American society (See Charles Murray’s Coming Apart for the best description of this divide.) The divide is not solely income based. The divide is also a cultural … [Read more...] about The New Class Conflict
Corporations, Marxists, and the Academy
Why Teach? An interesting question, that. Mark Edmundson asks that: Why Teach? In Defense of a Real Education. In a curious way, this was a rather thought-provoking book. It’s a collection of essays which, truth be told, meander all over the place, united only by the fact that they have something to do with education. The book is best described as a cri de coeur. Edmundson looks out and sees a sterile corporatized (a favorite … [Read more...] about Corporations, Marxists, and the Academy