Musings of a Patriot

Category: culture

  • Buying Local

    There is nothing completely new in the premise of Scott’s Buying Local Saves? I’m fairly sure that I have heard stories almost exactly like this one: . . . Kelly Cobb’s effort to make a suit of clothes using only resources available within a 100-mile radius of Philadelphia. ‘The suit took a team of 20…

  • The Best of Times and the Worst of Times

    I enjoyed reading Scott’s It’s Worse, but It’s Also Better and then I was surprised to hear on NPR a piece on how our society is Going Ghetto. It’s easy to get caught up in the idea that our culture is going downhill fast which is why it was so refreshing to read Scott’s take…

  • All for the Love of Money

    I remember being alarmed last year to learn about the number of people using negative amortization to finance their homes. In some areas it was over half of all home loans and the highest rates of negative amortization loans were nearly 2/3. Negative amortization comes in the form of an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM) where…

  • Mixing Fax and Email

    There was a time when I thought that fax machines were obsolete. The more I think about it, the more I conclude that they could be obsolete, but for some reason they aren’t (the same is true of pagers). Rather than arguing that they should be obsolete, I would argue that there should be a…

  • Political Forgiveness

    In covering the confession by Newt Gingrich concerning his affair of the late 90’s, CNN speculates that critics will call the religious right hypocrites if they forgive him for the affair when they are/were so critical of the infidelity displayed by Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. I think there would be an element of hypocrisy…

  • Interesting Idea

    So, this idea of a Redesigned alphabet is apparently not new. I was intrigued by the alphabet shown on Northtemple but I but I was less impressed by the font I found from the comments under the original post. The idea is interesting, and there could certainly be some interesting alphabets generated which have identical…

  • Are Children Dumber Today Than They Used To Be?

    Lest I get in hot water with all the parents out there, my short answer is “no.” Now let me explain the question. I recently learned of a bill coming before the Utah Senate which would fund all day kindergarten throughout the state. Perhaps I am thinking of my own kids only, but I am…

  • Title Game Follow-up

    I thought I would follow up to my Title Game post. Basically, the talk of a Ohio State/Michigan rematch for the title game is an embarrassment for the Big Ten Conference. Both of them lost their BCS bowl games. I think that rust was an issue in both games. Michigan got outclassed by USC but…

  • Partisan Playground

    Three days after the elections I get an email calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. It sounded a lot like playground politics. "You impeached our president so now that we are in control of congress we will impeach yours." I thought it was typical of staunch partisans that they would exaggerate their position…

  • Choose Your Words Carefully

    As I was driving around today between the hospital and various other places I noticed a number of news articles about the verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial. Their titles got me thinking about the power of words. One paper titled their article “Dictator gets Death.” Another talked about the “deposed Iraqi leader.” A story…