Social Matter

Tacitus has got to be one of my favorite Latin authors. He’s the devil to work through: Latin and Greek are both bad about dropping the verb “to be,” but Tacitus leaves out all manner of other words too. Plus, he really doesn’t like using the same word twice, so he varies his vocabulary quite a bit. To read him, you really need three fingers for bookmarks: one to mark your page in the text, another to mark the corresponding section of commentary, and a third in the dictionary section. What makes the whole effort worthwhile is that if you […]

Imagine a red army and a blue army fighting for control of a city. (You might populate this hypothetical city with gray civilians, or you might not. I don’t think it tortures the thought experiment much one way or another.) The fighting in this city is mixed up. There are no battle lines to speak of, just sporadic flare ups of combat as both sides attempt to stake out various territories within the metropolis. Now imagine that the two armies operate with vastly different rules of engagement. The blue rules of engagement are pretty streamlined: “Shoot reds on sight. Shoot […]

Emma Watson, a recent Brown University graduate, gave a speech before the United Nations last year about the importance of cultivating male allies for the feminist movement. The campaign, titled HeForShe, made a brief splash in the prestige press before disappearing from public consciousness. Here’s what ‘HeForShe’ looks like on Google Trends: Now, let’s see it side-by-side against global search interest for another celebrity, known as Beyoncé, shown in red: The barely perceptible bump under the letter ‘B’ is the relative search interest for the promoted campaign. This is even coming from two highly recognizable, vocally feminist celebrities. So, with […]

I suppose I’m a pretty typical Millennial when it comes to my TV habits. I don’t watch too much network television, but I do love my Netflix, which I trawl regularly for good war movies and 80s action flicks. (If you’ve got any, post suggestions below.) I don’t, however, have the typical Millennial predilection for watching bad movies ironically. So the other day when I queued up King Arthur, I only made it about twenty minutes in before I had to switch it off and just watch Black Hawk Down again. The premise of the movie wasn’t the dealbreaker. It […]

‘Groups which aren’t diverse ought to be made diverse’ — that’s the law of the land, with a few small exceptions, tolerated by the law, but not tolerated by respectable opinion. The appeal to diversity tends to be made without any evidence supporting the notion that diverse organizations are better able to meet the needs of the people who rely upon them than organizations of a more uniform composition in race, religion, gender, and behavior. What distinguishes organizations from ordinary groups of people is in their homogeneity of outlook, behavior, and shared goals. What makes them special is that they’re […]

They lit the candle at both ends With a pan to catch the burning wax Raised up as a dilemma suspends Which belief shall accord with the facts All throw their coins in a sophist’s hat For to know the past is not enough The past isn’t truly made of star-stuff But the future is — nothing to scoff at To power his unprofitable turbine farm Did man sow the wind – to no alarm ‘The whirlwind comes of its own accord’ It sustains, if it only sustains in harm They lit the candle at both ends A race of […]