South Park’s Comic View of Human Nature
When South Park aired on Comedy Central in 1997, its crudeness and profanity earned it TV’s adults only MA rating. Twenty-three years and more than 300 episodes later, it continues…
Share
Culture & Media
279 posts
Constitutions, Frontiers, Revelations and Truths: New Books by Jonathan Rauch, A. C. Grayling, Erik Hoel and Salman Rushdie
This article consists of reviews of four books that, while different in many ways, have certain things in common. Some of the connections are fairly direct—A. C. Grayling’s The Frontiers…
Share
Middle Eastern Billionaires and the Working Man’s Game
“We got our club back! We got our club back!” fans of the Newcastle United Football Club chanted joyously outside St James’ Park stadium as the news broke that Mike…
Share
China’s Uyghur Prison-State
Genocide is a crime that has recurred throughout history, but that—one would hope—enlightened humanity would have put far behind it by now. But of course this is not the case.…
Share
Why We Should Treat the Bible as Literature, Not Scripture
In the 17 May 2021 episode of his podcast, Jordan Peterson talks to Stephen Fry about how atheists view the moral value of mythology. (Fry, a well-known atheist, is also…
Share
Autism and Its Abusers: The Contrasting Cases of James Damore and Greta Thunberg
In July 2017, engineer James Damore was fired for writing an internal memo entitled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” Although the memo offered ideas on how to make the company more…
Share
Updike’s Panther: Rabbit Redux at Fifty
“Say what you see.” That was Roy Walker’s advice to contestants on the UK quiz show Catchphrase. We are attracted to other people’s observations—it is one of the reasons we…
Share
Beating Them at their Own Game: Why Manga is Overtaking American Comics
These days, it’s taken for granted that the comics industry has become a media juggernaut in the western world—as evidenced by the myriad movies based on comic-book heroes that have…
Share
In Defence of Virtue Signalling
O fons Bandusiae, splendidior vitro … cras donaberis haedo, the ancient Roman poet Horace declares in Odes III.13. (“O Bandusian spring, clearer than glass … tomorrow you shall be offered…
Share
The Historical Revisionism of DMX’s Woodstock ’99 Performance
The documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage recently dropped on HBO and select streaming platforms. It covers the disappointing second sequel (after ’94) to the 1969 Woodstock music festival,…
Share
Why Don’t We Have a Spotify Model for News?
I’ve never really needed to pay for my news. When I was a teenager, I’d buy magazines to learn about the latest in gaming, but by the time I reached…
Share
“The Great American Race Game.” Film Review
In its struggle against left-liberalism, one of the conundrums faced by the Anglo-American right in all its hues is how to shake off its longstanding image as a shady coterie…
Share
The Flat Earth Movement and the Problem with Scepticism
In May 2018, three men went on the British ITV programme This Morning to explain why they believed the earth was flat. “I think it’s right to be sceptical about…
Share
Masochistic Nationalism by Göran Adamson. Review.
The Swedish sociologist Göran Adamson’s latest book, Masochistic Nationalism: Multicultural Self-Hatred and the Infatuation with the Exotic (2021), identifies two forms of nationalism in contemporary society (white supremacist and anti-white)…
Share
Sensitive Masters and Wheelchair Accessible Torture Chambers: Dungeons & Dragons in the Culture War Era
In recent years, the culture wars have come for roleplaying games such as Dungeons and Dragons. Role-playing communities are split on whether their game platforms are becoming what is often…
Share
Black America: Is There Truth in Advertising?
If you’ve seen any American television advertising of late, you might easily conclude that the nation has undergone an astonishing demographic shift: there are no more white people. All right,…
Share
Where’s My Jetpack! How Future-Oriented Thinking Could Revolutionise Tourism
In Where’s My Jetpack?, Daniel H. Wilson takes a satirical look at the futuristic technologies that science fiction has optimistically imagined, but that have thus far not been invented, such…
Share
The Mathematics of Twitter Mobs
Twitter is not real life, but, since it was launched in 2006, the platform’s influence has steadily spread. The platform now boasts 330 million active users worldwide. That sounds like…
Share