Culture: December 2007 Archives

Republican Riot: Wal-Mart Disses Jesus

Julia Gorin visits a Wal-Mart where the Christmas decorations were already taken down by December 22: "But really, Wal-Mart -- to not even keep the decorations up long enough for the man's birthday, the occasion you just made a huge profit off of, is reprehensible. This isn't the Wal-Mart I defend. This is a Wal-Mart that's losing touch with its customers, its employees, its founder and its own struggles."

the evangelical outpost: The Fountainhead of Bedford Falls: Comparing George Bailey and Howard Roark

"... Roark lives to create inspiring works of architecture but cannot do so without relying on others. When society fails to appreciate his "genius", his egotistical purity leads him to engage in a massive destruction of private property. By the end of The Fountainhead Roark is revealed to be an infantile, narcissistic, parasite. Bailey, on the other hand, has all the marking of a repressed, conformist, patsy. He lives for others (a sentiment that would make Ayn Rand gag) rather than 'following his bliss.' He compromises everything but his integrity. And yet he discovers that he has all that makes life worth living."

New York Times: Gary Taubes: What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

From 2002: "If the alternative hypothesis is right -- still a big ''if'' -- then it strongly suggests that the ongoing epidemic of obesity in America and elsewhere is not, as we are constantly told, due simply to a collective lack of will power and a failure to exercise. Rather it occurred, as Atkins has been saying (along with Barry Sears, author of ''The Zone''), because the public health authorities told us unwittingly, but with the best of intentions, to eat precisely those foods that would make us fat, and we did. We ate more fat-free carbohydrates, which, in turn, made us hungrier and then heavier." (Via Advice Goddess via Instapundit.)