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By John Mark Reynolds

College presidents are not always wrong. Here is one they get right: Americans should rethink our polices toward alcohol and young adults.

Eighteen year old adults should have the legal choice to drink in this culture.

College faculty and administrators know that thousands of college students abuse alcohol, but that thousands more do not. They understand that making an act criminal and restricting the liberty of citizens to act as they wish, even to act badly, requires very powerful reasons. Traditional Christians should agree with this legal modesty based on centuries of experimentation with different levels of restrictions on bad or unwise behavior.

Why Small Government?

Small government is best. Fallen men cannot survive with no government. Anarchy is bad, but totalitarianism is worse. Even a hug from big government can hurt and absolute power can corrupt the best of men.

Most traditional Christians believe, even if they sometimes forget, that God has given each human being liberty. God let Adam disobey him. If a God who could have stopped men from making bad choices does not always do so, then it must be better so! In this age, God has often given men the freedom to defy Him openly. Of course in the end, every deed will be judged and justice done, but not yet. Christians should not rush to give the state powers that God is not using Himself at this time.

It is obviously dangerous when one group of fallen men forces another group of fallen men to do what the first group believes to be right. Using force to make a man conform threatens precious God given liberty.

Of course, liberty is precious, but not priceless. It is not the only good, though it is very good. Sometimes in the complicated and messed up world we live in this side of Paradise, some other good, like the survival of the community, forces a Christian to agree that men must be made to act as they should by force of law.

This decision is, however, a grave one.

Alcohol Not Worth Bigger Government

The social gains from banning all adults of a certain age from drinking are not worth the cost to liberty. Alcohol use is not a sin for most Christians. For most Christians moderate drinking is a harmless pleasure. Of course, like many pleasures it tempts some to overindulge and alcoholism is very serious. The abuse of alcohol is bad and many adults are prone to this fault.

It might be unwise for many adults to drink, but surely few should wish the state to begin banning all unwise actions. Most of us who have our share (or more!) of folly would scarcely be able to move under such a regime!

This true even for the minority of traditional Christians that think the consumption of alcohol is immoral. Even if true, this would only prove that drinking is the sort of act that it might be good to ban it not that it should be. Long experience shows that laws often do as much harm as good. Sadly, Evangelicals supported an experiment in constitutional alcohol prohibition in the last century. It was a notable failure.

Law and Morality

Nothing moral should be illegal, but not everything that is immoral should be criminal.

Every time the state removes a choice from citizens, it risks making children of them. A republic depends on people who can make moral decisions for themselves. If we cannot, the state will not long survive no matter what laws are made. The power given to the state in order to enforce laws is also dangerous. The more laws, the greater the police power of the state. Any good done must be weighed against this grave potential threat to liberty.

Conservative Christians, who have been martyred in the millions by abusive state power in the last century, have no reason to trust expansive state power. In very grave situations, such as abortion which takes an innocent human life, we support increasing legal restrictions on bad choices, but it does not follow that we should support every such restriction.

Alcohol Abuse Is Bad, But the Alcohol Law Is Not Wise

I am not naive about the harm alcohol abuse can cause on a college campus. For some people the temptation to abuse liquor is overwhelming. Once addicted, the alcoholic is in trouble and nobody who works with students takes that lightly. It always makes me sick to see the stupid decisions made under the influence and the years wasted by those who cannot control their drinking. For many, a life of abstinence from all alcohol is the best choice.

At eighteen, an American is an adult and the law is not the best way to prevent unwise drinking by adults. Too often it turns a pastoral problem into a legal one. There is little evidence that it does much to prevent the binge drinking all too common amongst young adults. There is some evidence that by forcing this choice underground, it creates a culture that encourages abuse.

It is illegal for all Americans to drink and drive and this will continue. It is illegal to serve drinks to minors and this should and will continue. Mothers should continue to be against drunk driving and minors drinking, but eighteen year old Americans are adults. If we have decided eighteen year old Americans are adults, then we should give them adult liberty.

As many have pointed out, at eighteen an American can die for his country and vote in an election, but is not deemed responsible enough to make his own decisions about the use of alcohol.

While young adults are apt to make bad choices with serious implications for the rest of us, such as driving under the influence, the best way to deal with this situation is not through police power. I see no evidence that there are any behavioral gains that could not be achieved through education. Driving drunk will remain illegal, but allowing college age drinking to come out from underground may actually help spot bad drivers in some cases.

This is unreasonable.

Parents, Students, and Universities Can Still Choose To Be Alcohol Free

Adults do not have a right to drink, but adults should be allowed to do so if they wish. Just because I think a choice should be legal does not mean a person should act on that choice!

I have a son who will turn eighteen in October. He is a fine young man and will vote this fall for the first time. What compelling interest keeps him from making his own choices about alcohol? Of course in some ways he is making them already and did so in the most obvious way in his choice of a school.

There will always be places, like my own university, that choose to be "dry" (alcohol free). The beauty of a free society is that such choices are possible. I enjoy working in a school where every university social event is not centered around alcohol. Thousands of students also appreciate having this choice and will continue to make it if the laws are changed. Such schools will continue to provide a dry option for parents and students who wish it.

Just because it becomes legal to drink, it does not mean private universities will have to change their policies. My son chose to attend a "dry" school and abide by the rules. The vast majority of our students like having an educational home that is alcohol free.

Evangelicals who wish should continue to support those options, but vote to treat our young adults as adults when it comes to choices about alcohol.

(I will have good friends who disagree with me on this issue and I will keep listening to their arguments. This is my view and necessarily that of my school or my co-workers.)

By John Mark Reynolds

I have longed for it, wanted it from afar, and envied my friends who owned it. I can only thank God that the Bible forbids coveting my neighbor's ox and not his iPhone or I would have been in big trouble. Fortunately the strength of this particular exegesis was not long put to the test. Due to the unlamented passing of my Palm Treo 650, the single worst phone ever conceived in the hearts of wicked engineers, I have been able to get a black 8 gig iPhone.

It sits before me now and it is beautiful.

My old Treo was clunky like a Star Trek communicator from the original series without the cool flip up antenna. It tore many a jacket pocket with its weight. One could count on it crashing every five minutes or so when one demanded unreasonable things from it like receiving phone calls or keeping my schedule. Getting it to sync with my Mac was always hard and I had to get special software to do the job.

The iPhone did everything, or almost everything, I wished right out of the box. Here are five observations after my first week of ownership:

1. Battery life is poor when using the Net or updating mail. In just a few hours of heavy use, I was running out of juice. The Treo was slower and rarely made it to the Net without crashing a few times, but once there it drained the battery comparatively slowly.

This is the greatest flaw I have discovered.

2. The phone connects to the world easily.

Getting the phone to sync with Google mail is easy. Getting it to sync with Google calendar was harder, but was done in a few minutes.

Of course it is easy just to go on-line to check both services, but I prefer not to always have to do so.

Wireless connections were easy to set up. Web browsing was fast in both wireless and 3G modes. It is not my home cable modem, but it has made web use in the car (for finding my location, movies, and other information) possible.

It worked perfectly with my computer which is to expected since I use a Mac, but it still was a pleasure to use a piece of technology that required no set up after I got home from the store. The phone has yet to crash or show any software problems.

3. The phone works well as a phone. My reception was equal to any other wireless in our house, including fairly expensive phones without other features.

4. The touch screen is easy to use and soon learned to cope with my clumsy fingers. For someone like I am who cannot see very well (which makes typing hard and proofing harder), this phone is a blessing. It magnifies areas and this feature makes it easier to use in some situations than my laptop.

5. Video, picture, and music use is an added bonus. I have to commute often and this allows me to leave other devices at home. I did not get the iPhone to listen to music, watch videos, or show family pictures to friends, but enjoy doing so. This was not something I wanted to do, but the phone is changing my behavior by showing me new abilities.

Now we must all learn good iPhone etiquette to avoid boring our friends with vacation pictures or videos in even more places!

Although bad news travels fast, good news often takes the scenic route. That appears to have been especially true during the Civil War. Although Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation became official on the first day of January 1863, word didn't arrive in Texas until June 19, 1865.

On that day Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed in Galveston with news that the war had ended and that those who were once enslaved were now free. One of Granger's first acts upon landing in the Lone Star state was to read Texas General Order #3, which stated,

The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.

Although we can't begin to fathom the jubilation these new "citizens" must have felt, we Texans set aside the third Saturday in the month of June to honor the event, an annual tradition known as Juneteenth.

Like Thanksgiving (which also originated in Texas), Juneteenth is a day when families gather to pray, count their blessings, and gorge themselves on great quantities of food. Barbecue mostly. Lots and lots of barbecue. And strawberry soda.

But, for me, the day has come to represent more than just spending time with my friends and neighbors in the black community, sharing food and laughs. It has become a reminder of another kind of emancipation; the day I first heard that other "good news."

For I too was once enslaved -- shackled by chains of sin and death. Long before I was even born, though, the Greatest Emancipator paid the price to set me free. This "good news" was transported across time, carried across continents so that I would know: I had been set free.

Some of us are fortunate and hear this news early in life. For others, word of our freedom comes later. Still others refuse to believe it is true or are satisfied to be slaves to their own fallen nature.

But for those of us who accept it, life becomes something more. True freedom becomes a most precious gift. And every day becomes Juneteenth.

Not long after Al Gore invented the internet, his wife Tipper uploaded a picture of the family cat launching one of the most ubiquitous trends in web culture. But over the past year, a strange subgenre called "lolcats" or "cat macros" has developed, turning a meme into a form of folk art.

As the Wikipedia entry explains, lolcats-- a portmanteau of "lol" and "cat"--are photos of cats with comedic captions created for the purpose of sharing with others on imageboards and other internet forums. The caption is characteristically formatted in a sans serif font such as Impact or Arial Black, usually in white letters with a black outline. (In fact, this type of lettering has come to define the genre, so much so that the use of other fonts and colors seem like a violation of an unwritten aesthetic code.) The caption is intentionally written with deviations from standard English spelling and syntax featuring strangely-conjugated verbs. Despite the odd construction, the syntax has, as Anil Dash notes in a post on the topic, a "fairly consistent grammar."

The cats not only speak in a form of pidgin English (which makes the captions funnier) but they also tend to use "leetspeek", a written form of slang used primarily on the internet and online video games. David McRaney explains how this peculiar brand of folk art works as communication:

[A] fusion of sorts between learned, direct language and rapid, practical digital missives takes place with Leetspeak and macros. Both relay a great deal of information in a small burst of code. Each depends on the receiver of the information having working knowledge of the culture and its references. In a sense, these serve as argots, and help identify both sides of the information transfer as belonging to the subculture where they appear. The in-joke is part of the communication. The separation of ingroup and outgroup helps drive the rapid evolution of both leetspeak and macros.

The appeal of cat macros is that they can be enjoyed as folk art, even by those who are in the "outgroup." Listed below are a few of the various sub-genres:

Expelled {Documentary} - Ben Stein's new documentary Expelled is a Rorschach test for revealing people's true feelings about intellectual freedom. Not surprising, many people--especially academic and media elites--loathe the film. While these groups often claim to value freedom of expression and thinking that challenges the status quo, they are often rigidly doctrinaire. Most blog readers will find this point obvious, for the blogosphere is crowded with young academics that use pseudonyms for fear that they will never get tenure if they speak their minds.

But there are many Americans that are surprised by the McCarthyite tactics that are used to quell dissenting views. It is this group that Stein and company are aiming to shock in this amusing, intriguing polemic.

The film doesn't attempt to present the scientific case for ID (though Stein promises this will be included on the DVD version) nor does it attempt to undermine the credibility of neo-Darwinism (though the Darwinists in the film do a masterful job of that, albeit unintenionally). Stein's primary focus is on the freedom of academics to merely consider an idea that is deemed verboten in the Ivory Towers. He uses a series of interviews, interspersed with Cold War imagery, in a way that that is both entertaining and enlightening. It is only when it veers off into the historical connection between Darwinism and Nazism that the film stumbles. The conjunction between the two is indisputable, though ultimately as irrelevant as the connection between religion and ID. Scientific theories must be judged on their merit, not on unfortunate outcomes that may result.

Another caution is that Expelled isn't a fair movie. When Stein interviews advocates of ID he selects scientists and philosophers that are thoughtful and sober while the Darwinists tend to be either a bit nutty (Bill Provine) or unable to keep from damaging their own cause (PZ Myers). Likewise, he stacks the decks in ID's favor by interviewing intellectual heavyweights like David Berlinski while allowing neo-Darwinism to be defended by Richard Dawkins, a man who is highly educated but of only modest intellect. The result is a film that isn't balanced and isn't fair. But it is both funny and infuriating. At least it is, as Stein would no doubt say, if you value freedom. Rating: B+

Salvo {Quarterly Journal} -- Salvo has been described as "Adbusters for Church Kids" (by a detractor) and "like Richard Weaver back in the flesh with cyberpunk clothes" (by a fan). Both the praise and the criticism are apt; Salvo is both snarky and sincere, ultra-hip and uber-conservative. But it's also one of the few journals for people who can appreciate Adbusters, cyberpunk, and Richard Weaver.

A publication of The Crux Project, Salvo is "dedicated to the cultural myths that have undercut human dignity, all but destroyed the notions of virtue and morality, and slowly eroded our appetite for transcendence." Such an anachronistic mission statement seems more fitting for dusty church bulletins than for a journal filled with satiric faux ads and articles on cutting-edge topics. Yet the quarterly manages to fill a void for its target audience (which ranges from sharp young Christians to oldheads like me who miss re:generation Quarterly). Not everyone will "get it" and not everyone will like it. But for those who are looking a quirky, culturally relevant, and intellectually stimulating read, Salvo may be just what you're looking for. Rating: A-

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War {Audiobook} -- Zombies have become the monster metaphor of choice for our post-9/11 culture. Whereas vampires and werewolves once fulfilled the role as Threatening Other, zombies show us the Threatening Us. The attack from within--from our own friends, family, and neighbors--is what makes the threat of zombies so poignant. But while most zombie tales focus on the geographically local (New York City in I Am Legend, England in 28 Days Later), Max Brooks offers a global scale apocalypse in World War Z.

Brooks frames the story as an oral history, a series of post-war interviews with notable survivors of the "Zombie World War." Each interview provides an intriguing personal perspective while revealing the larger events that transform a world plagued by the "living dead." This structure lends itself well to the audiobook format. The abridged version, which won an the 2007 Audie Award for best Multi-Voiced Performance, is read by a host of actors, including Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Henry Rollins, Rob Reiner, and John Turturro. (Here's a sentence I never imagined I'd write: Alan Alda's performance is absolutely riveting.)

Brooks' has a superb eye for the intriguing how-did-he-ever-think-of-that detail. He also manages to keep the focus on humanity, even when fighting an enemy that has lost theirs. Even those who aren't fans of the horror genre will find themselves hooked by this gripping alternative history. Rating: A+

While the current political cycle has sharpened our focus on the role of religion in the public square, we often fail to reflect on the role of the public square upon religion. Increasingly, when Christians engage others in public forums, we do so using tools that we did not develop. Whether through movies, music, or new media, we tend to start with a pre-existing cultural forms and incorporate the Gospel as best we can.

As communication theorist Marshall McLuhan argued, the tools we use to communicate a message can shape that message in ways we may or may not intend.* If this is true then Christians have a duty to critically evaluate the effect of our media choices on our message. Do our choices of media forms allow the message to remain Christian? Or are the tools with which we communicate at odds with the message of the Gospel?

In order to explore the issue in greater depth, I've decided to make it the topic of the 2008 EO Symposium, sponsored this year by Wheatstone Academy.

Responses to the following question will be accepted until 11:59 p.m. EST on Friday, April 25th:

If the medium affects the message, how will the Christian message be affected by the new media?

The top five posts chosen by our panel of judges (James Kushiner from Touchstone magazine's Mere Comments, Melinda Penner from Stand to Reason, Matt Lewis from Townhall.com, and Matthew Anderson from Mere Orthodoxy) will receive:

(1) A full tuition scholarship for a Christian high school student of the winner's choice to Wheatstone Academy. [A $950 value]

(2) The 'Quintessentials' from Stand to Reason, including the Ambassador Basic Curriculum, Tactics in Defending the Faith DVD, Decision Making and the Will of God CD set, and a signed copy of Greg Koukl's new book Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. [A $150 value]

(3) A $200 donation made to Compassion International in the name of the winning blogger.

(4) A full-tuition scholarship to the upcoming GodBlogCon (September 2008). [A $150 value]

(5) A two-year subscription to Touchstone Magazine. [A $59.95 value]

(6) A year subscription to Townhall magazine. [A $34.95 value]

The first place winner will have their choice of items with the second place deciding between the remaining four items, etc. The sixth place winner will will automatically receive the unselected item.

Those who choose only to write a brief comment promoting the Symposium are still eligible to receive a prize for participating. Anyone who includes a link to this post and a brief comment will be entered into a separate drawing for one of three copies of The New Media Frontier, forthcoming from Crossway Books.

To include your post in the symposium, send the following information to eosubmissions@gmail.com:

• Name


• Name and URL of blog or website


• Title and URL of post


• Brief summary

Finally, I am grateful to those sponsors who have generously given time and money to make this year's Symposium a reality, especially Wheatstone Academy, a discussion-based summer conference that seeks to instill a love of learning and dialogue in Christian high school students.

N. T. Wright, The Last Word [books] -- N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, is one of the most brilliant and prolific New Testament scholars in the world. Unfortunately, he is also viewed as one of the most controversial because of his association with the "New Perspective on Paul." This "perspective" (which I personally reject) causes many evangelicals to dismiss the totality of Wright's prodigious output. This is regrettable for while his work should be approached with caution, the Bishop has many valuable contributions to offer the Church.

One example is The Last Word, in which Wright attempts, as the subhead notes, to move "Beyond the Bible Wars to a New Understanding of the Authority of Scripture." This "new understanding" is premised on Wright's central idea:

"...the central claim of this book: that the phrase 'authority of Scripture' can make Christian sense only if it is shorthand for 'the authority of the triune God, exercised somehow through scripture.'"

This insight is so rich that it would take a much longer book to suss out it implications; Wright merely scratches surface. (In his introduction he preempts this criticism by saying: "I trust that those who have grumbled at the length of some of my other books will not now grumble at all the things I have left unsaid in what is a very compressed, at times almost telegraphic, treatment."). Still, he makes some valid tangential points, particularly in pointing out the "Misreadings of Scripture" on both the left and the right. While this short volume (146 pgs) will not be "the last word" on the authority of the Bible, it is certainly a worthy starting point for the discussion. Rating: B+

ALL-ETT Wallets [products] -- Remember the episode of Seinfeld where George Constanza's wallet was so overstuffed with junk that it made him sit at a tilt with it in his back pocket? George solved the imbalance problem by stuffing his other back pocket with napkins. Instead, he should have bought an ALL-ETT, the "World Thinnest Wallet." I ordered one after reading the review of David Wayne and quickly concluded that the ALL-ETT is the perfect wallet (though I share David's one criticism: "...the only problem is that you may forget you are carrying it.").

My current wallet holds 3 insurance cards, 3 credit cards, 5 membership cards, 1 driver's license, and 8 one dollar bills and yet is still roughly the thickness of 3 nickels. The nylon "spinnaker cloth" version is paper thin and dirt cheap ($19.95) but I recommend spending a few dollars more ($29.95) for the fine grain Italian leather Executive. Be careful, though, when ordering it by mail. When it comes the envelope is so thin that you might mistake if for junk mail and throw it away by accident (seriously). Rating: A+

Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D [comics] -- For fans of Iron Man, the concept of Tony Stark subbing in for a missing Nick Fury as the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. is pure genius. Unfortunately, the story doesn't take advantage of the rich possibilities and instead dishes out the standard post-Civil War fare. Fanboys, however, will appreciate the extras included in the trade paperback, including a reprint of the first appearance of S.H.I.E.L.D., a classic Stark/Fury team-up, and comprehensive profiles of both Iron Man and S.H.I.E.L.D. Rating: B-

Plato's Lysis [classics] -- I suspect the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes wrote The Clouds--a satire which mockingly portrays Socrates as a foolish sophist--after reading Plato's Lysis--a dialogue that unintentionally portrays Socrates as a foolish sophist. The discussion is ostensibly about friendship (which, herein, appears to mean boy-boy love). Yet after a meandering throat clearing session followed by a dull aligning and knocking down of strawmen, Socrates concludes by summarizing:

If neither the beloved, nor the lover, nor the like, nor the unlike, nor the good, nor the congenial, nor any other of whom we spoke-for there were such a number of them that I cannot remember all-if none of these are friends, I know not what remains to be said.

I too know not what remains to be said, except, "Maybe Aristophanes was on to something..." Rating: D

Related: My friend (and Plato scholar) John Mark Reynolds reviews my review and finds it lacking:

Plato has written a dialogue, a genre that is not written like contemporary philosophy or apologetics. It is more like a philosophical play than treatise. Of course, it is not a play in the sense that it intends merely to entertain. It is trying to encourage participation.Socrates is confronting some very opinionated young men eager to love and sure they understand what love is....

Plato wrote, therefore, in a more guarded manner. He does not "hide" his meaning to frustrate modern readers, but partly for prudence. He also (see Phaedrus) worries that "dead books" that simply pronounce truths will stifle free inquiry and mental growth in a student.

JMR makes some interesting points and he adequately defends Plato and his method. On those points we are in agreement. But what JMR has not done, in my opinion, is explain what makes Lysis a good dialogue. Plato is of the greatest thinkers in history and "friendship" is one of the great themes. So are we really to believe that this is the best that Plato could do?

What say you readers? Who is closer to the truth? Me or JMR?

David Archuleta [music] -For the first six seasons the cultural juggernaut known as American Idol has seeded pop music with the great (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Chris Daughtry), the good (Jennifer Hudson, Elliott Yamin, Bucky Covington), the bad (Kellie Pickler, Blake Lewis, Sanjaya Malakar), and the mediocre (Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Taylor Hicks). But this year the show finally delivers the sublime: David Archuleta.

This week the show is down to the remaining eight contestants: David Archuleta and seven inevitable runners-up that are not named David Archuleta. The 17-year-old wunderkind is the best discovery the show has ever made. (Even New York magazine's snarky Vulture blog asks without irony, "Is David Archuleta the Greatest 'American Idol' Contestant of All Time?") Rating: A+

Recently a number of intellectual bloggers have been debating the concept of patriotism (see here, here, here, and here.) The conflict over such a mundane and seemingly uncontroversial term highlights the fact that we Americans have conflicted feelings about the word "patriot."

To question someone's patriotism is considered an insult, while to praise their patriotism is a compliment (except when it isn't). Yet strangely, the only people who refer to themselves, completely without irony or qualification, as "patriots" are old veterans, paleo-cons, and pro athletes in New England.

Of course, people who do not fit into those three categories sometimes self-identify with that label. But when they do it is inevitably accompanied by an asterisk, denoting--whether expressed or implied--that the use of the word comes with a qualifier:

*Sure, I love my country but I that doesn't mean I support ________. (George Bush, the war, etc.)

*That doesn't mean I think America is better than other countries.

*Of course I would never, ever serve (nor let my child enlist) in the military.

*But I'm nothing like those Bible-thumping, flag-fetishizing, NASCAR-loving, types of "patriots."

The need to invoke such conditionals raises the question of whether the person truly identifies with the term. A Japanese reporter once inquired of filmmaker Michael Moore, "You do not seem to like the U.S., do you?" Moore's response sums up the sentiment behind the patriot's asterisk: "I like America to some extent."

A shockingly large segment of the population suffers from the delusion that all artistic judgments are subjective. For instance, when confronted with a claim such as “John Singer Sargent is the greatest painter of the 20th century”, they believe that what is being presented is an assertion of opinion rather than a statement of fact. They do not realize that to agree is to be in possession of a correct judgment while to disagree is to simply be wrong.

Similarly, some people may attempt to dispute the indisputable fact that Battlestar Galactica is the greatest series currently on television and is, in my respects, one of the greatest shows ever. These self-deceived folks generally fall into two categories: those who have seen the show yet disagree (hence, exhibiting an inability to recognize the sublime) or those who have not yet seen the show and remain skeptical that such a claim could be true.

Rather than attempting to educated the first group—which would require more time and patience than I possess—I will focus on explaining to the second group what they are missing.

BSG is the best sci-fi show on television—ever: The paucity of good sci-fi on television becomes apparent when you consider the competition. When the Boston Globe put together a list of The Top 50 Sci-Fi Shows of All Time, they had to pad it with other genres (e.g., superhero: Batman, Adventures of Superman, Wonder Woman), series that were forgettable even when they originally aired (The Greatest American Hero, Nowhere Man), and shows no one has ever heard of (Space 1999, That Was Then) in order to come up with fifty.

The Globe ranks Star Trek as #1 and bumps BSG to #2. And indeed, the most serious challenger to BSG would appear to be the original Star Trek. But the cultural phenomenon spawned by Star Trek—rather than the series itself—is what is most interesting about that series and will continue to be its most lasting legacy; the culture of Trekkies is far more significant than any of the episodes featuring Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock. The original has also been eclipsed by its successor, Star Trek: The Next Generation—another show that, while worthy in some respects, cannot compete with BSG.

Hi, I'm Joe and I'm a media junkie.

I'm not sure if I have a problem (or if I'm just in denial) but every day I consume copious amounts of media. I subscribe to one daily newspaper, 12 magazines, and over 300 RSS feeds in order to get my fix of ideas, news, and opinions.

I'm not sure how it happened but I do remember that I wasn't always an addict. Five years ago I was only an recreational consumer of newspapers and magazines and my online reading was limited to Slate, Salon, and Arts & Letters Daily. Even when I worked as a newspaper editor my intake was modest, relegated to skimming a handful of daily newspapers and weekly publications. On occasion, whenever I could find the time, I would spend a leisurely Saturday at the library catching up on my periodical reading. But my media habit was always modest and manageable.

Then in 2003 I started this blog and my ingestion of media increased dramatically. "Being informed" felt less like an activity of leisure and more like a labor of necessity. I started making daily visits to the 20, 30, and eventually 50 blogs listed on my blogroll. I subscribed to my local paper and bought magazines more regularly. I soon began reading a dozen online periodicals and newspapers.

Still, my media routine was constrained by time, money, and my stubborn resistance to change. For instance, during my first three years as a blogger I remained a blogroll purist. Every night I would spend hours trawling through the 50 blogs on my blogroll. That was the proper manner for a blogger. Real bloggers, I would snobbishly contend, read blogs not feeds.

Then one day, on a whim, I decided to test Google Reader and both my blogging and my media consumption changed forever. The RSS reader entirely changed the paradigm of blogging by reducing the attention cost I paid for each blog. In economic terms, the cost per post in processing time has dropped considerably, allowing me to spend more of my attention on a greater number of blogs.

The change was akin to trading in a horse and buggy for a Porsche. When I started using Google Reader in late 2006 I added the 50 blogs on my blogroll to my daily reading list. By May 2007 the number had increased to 130 feeds; today the count is up to 315.

Another paradigmic shift occurred when my friend and enabler David Wayne informed me that "you can get magazine subscriptions at ridiculously low prices on eBay." I stocked up on a number of cheap, advertising-driven publications (a 3-year subscription to Wired for $10!) but soon realized that this merely stoked the hunger. Soon, I was buying magazines by the armful to read on my 2-hour per day commute on the train.

It wasn't until today, though, that I took inventory of how much text-based media I actually consume on a daily and weekly basis. Here is the breakdown:

At the beginning of 2007, I compiled a list that included 1,034 predictions for the coming year. I later went through and narrowed it down to the top 500 that I was absolutely certain would happen. Even after cutting the list down, though, I only managed to achieve a 67% accuracy rate. (Unfortunately, I forgot to post that list so it is difficult to verify.)

This year, in an attempt to get 100% correct, I've cut my list of predictions to the ones that I'm absolutely sure will come true. Here is what will happen in 2008:

• After a heated debate over whether it is an abnormal psychological malady or the sign of a healthy psyche, the American Psychiatric Association will add "Bush Derangement Syndrome" to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV.
• When discovered alive and well and living in a beach house in Nice, France, Yasser Arafat will confess that he faked his death because "living in Palestine sucks."
• Agricultural subsidies will come under increased scrutiny after the discovery that soylent green, one of the most heavily subsidized crops, is people.
• Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) will submit legislation authorizing the president to grant letters of marque to fight the War on Drugs.
• The Iraqi government will officially change the country's name to Babylon just to freak out the pre-mill dispensational evangelicals.
• For the 56th year in a row, political activists will once again attempt to immanentize the eschaton.
• A rogue architect will use dynamite to blow up the Cortlandt Homes housing project.
• Cable news stations will ignore rampant urban crime in order to focus obsessively over the latest case of a MMPYWSW (Missing, moderately-pretty, young, white, suburban woman).
• A cable news host will refer to a confessed criminal as an "alleged suspect."
• Bloggers will continue to mau-mau the mainstream media in the hopes of being able to sell out and be co-opted by an establishment media company.
• The United Nations will be the subject of another scandal after it's discovered that no-bid contracts were offered to Halliburton for the purchase of the UN's fleet of Black Helicopters.
• A court case that no one will care about by the end of the decade will be dubbed the "Trial of the Century."
• A pathetically geeky and friendless 11-year-old will win the National Spelling Bee.
• The Irish Republican Army will file a grievance with the UN for not being included in the Global War on Terrorism.
• Congress fails to pass an immigration reform bill. Hungry, job-less workers, with no discernable skills or ability to speak our language will continue to pour in from Canada.
• After being caught exiting a Motel-6 in Boise, ID, Ann Coulter and Al Franken will admit they're secretly married.
• An internal DNC memo will reveal that the Democratic Party is seeking ways to win back control of the reins of power without having to "kiss up to poor people and minorities."
• In preparation for the 2008 elections the GOP reveals that its strategic plan consists of nothing more than relying on the Democrats to implode.

[Note: This a reposting of one of my favorite "holiday" posts. Regular blogging will resume tomorrow.]

Frank Capra and Ayn Rand aren’t names that are often mentioned together. Yet the cheery director of Capra-corn and the dour novelist who created Objectivism have much in common. Both were immigrants who made their names in Hollywood. Both were screenwriters and employees of the film studio RKO. And during the last half of the 1940s, both created works of enduring cult appeal, Capra with It’s a Wonderful Life and Rand with The Fountainhead.

Capra and Rand were also both masters of sentimentality, a literary form that is foreign to those of us weaned on irony. Our inability to appreciate sentimentality leads us to dismiss Rand and Capra as amusing but minor talents rather than as gifted storytellers. Yet each produced work that will outshine their more critically acclaimed peers. People will still be reading Rand’s novels long after the works of Sinclair Lewis and Norman Mailer have been forgotten. And Wonderful Life has already earned its place on the short list of great American films, surpassed only by Citizen Kane and The Godfather Part II.

My purpose, however, is not to defend the genius of these creators but to compare two of their protagonists, The Fountainhead’s Howard Roark and Wonderful Life’s George Bailey.

To anyone familiar with both works it would seem that the two characters could not be more different. I contend, however, that they are not only similar but a variation on a common archetype.

[Note: Since this post seems even more apropos today than when it was originally written (in December 2003), I thought it would be worthy dredging up out of the archives.]

Reading the Federalist Papers while watching reality TV is unlikely to provide profound insights. But skimming Federalist #72 while simultaneously watching a hotel heiress milk a cow on Fox's The Simple Life did cause me to draw a connection between the two. "Love of fame," claimed Alexander Hamilton, "(is) the ruling passion of the noblest minds." Obviously, this founding father never met anyone like Paris Hilton.

Hamilton, of course, wasn't the only one who considered the quest for fame a noble task. Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, considered the "passion for fame" to be "the instinct of all great souls." Fame, to these thinkers, was the dividend paid on accomplishment. Fame came only to those who had attained some form of achievement. Even the attainment of infamy requires one to take action.

But we live in an age that values shortcuts and egalitarianism. We have neither the patience nor the inclination to wait until we've actually done something before we reap the benefits. Which is why we put such value on celebrity. Celebrity doesn't place any demands on a person; it requires nothing but itself. "A celebrity," said social historian Daniel Boorstin, "is a person who is known for his well-knownness."

Which is why Ms. Hilton is the purest of celebrities. She has no talents or skills to her credit. She appears to be, at best, of average intelligence and beauty. And while she has money, her trust fund is hardly awe-inspiring, at least by current standards of wealth. She has, in fact, nothing that would cause her to warrant notoriety. Hilton is famous simply because she is famous.

[Note: Later today I'll be sitting down with a documentary filmmaker to discuss obscenity laws. My basic position is that while they are desperately needed they are also hopelessly ineffective. I've come to believe, as Princeton Professor Robert George says, that "laws are likely to be least effective when they are needed most." I’m still trying to decided how to say that is a way that doesn't sound defeatist or pessimistic. Since that is taking up the time I'd devoted to writing new material, I thought I'd dust off this related post from 2005.]

For the past half century, technology has progressed at a blistering pace. The rapid evolution has made it impossible to adequately gauge the overall effect such changes will have on society and even if it were to stop today it would take another half century before we could fully comprehend what has occurred. But while social scientists, theologians, and other moral philosophers debate the ramifications, one aspect of technological progress is quite clear: Technology now allows the unadventurous to explore temptations once reserved for the bold.

Take, for example, the pornographic film. To view such images in the 1950's often required access to projection equipment and an underground distributor of censored material. In the 60s and 70s, though, such films could be watched -- at least in larger cities -- in the relative comfort of a seedy theater with sticky floors and raincoat-suited patrons. By the 1980s, though, the VCR made it possible to view such erotica in the comfort of one's home. But each of these progressions in distribution required the movie buff to make a public effort to obtain the product -- whether in finding a venue showing a "stag film", buying a ticket to an X-rated theater, or renting from a local video store.

The advent of cable television, though, has made is possible to bypass all human contact and have "adult videos" delivered directly to the family living room. In 2002, Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, pulled in $50 million from adult programming and all the nation's top cable operators, from Time Warner to Cablevision, distribute sexually explicit material to their subscribers. The same is true for satellite providers like EchoStar and DirecTV, which is owned by Hughes Technology, a subsidiary of General Motors.

The material offered on cable TV, however, pales in comparison to what can be found on the Internet. With only a few clicks of the mouse you can indulge the most perverse visual interests, viewing sexually charged or violently graphic photos that would make Caligula blush and the Marquis de Dade nauseous. Or, if you are more action oriented, you can carry on an adulterous cyberaffair with a lonely housewife in Des Moines, play a game that simulates killing prostitutes and police officers with other aspiring psychopaths, or gamble away your child support at an online casino.

Because technology has made it possible to turn every household into a virtual Gomorrah, it is natural to assume that the solution to the problem is also technological. But as Quentin Schultze, a professor of communications at Calvin College, notes:

Frank Capra and Ayn Rand aren’t names that are often mentioned together. Yet the cheery director of Capra-corn and the dour novelist who created Objectivism have much in common. Both were immigrants who made their names in Hollywood. Both were screenwriters and employees of the film studio RKO. And during the last half of the 1940s, both created works of enduring cult appeal, Capra with It’s a Wonderful Life and Rand with The Fountainhead.

Capra and Rand were also both masters of sentimentality, a literary form that is foreign to those of us weaned on irony. Our inability to appreciate sentimentality leads us to dismiss Rand and Capra as amusing but minor talents rather than as gifted storytellers. Yet each produced work that will outshine their more critically acclaimed peers. People will still be reading Rand’s novels long after the works of Sinclair Lewis and Norman Mailer have been forgotten. And Wonderful Life has already earned its place on the short list of great American films, surpassed only by Citizen Kane and The Godfather Part II.

My purpose, however, is not to defend the genius of these creators but to compare two of their protagonists, The Fountainhead’s Howard Roark and Wonderful Life’s George Bailey.

To anyone familiar with both works it would seem that the two characters could not be more different. I contend, however, that they are not only similar but a variation on a common archetype.

For almost half my life I've spent nearly every holiday season far from home. But the hardships of being away from friends and family have taught me to appreciate the continuity of traditions that are shared across America. I learned to appreciate Christmas lights hung hastily along roof ledges; grade school pageants; watching It's a Wonderful Life on TV; the nativity scene on the courthouse lawn; the ACLU filing to have it taken down.

While this last tradition is the newest, it's already firmly established across the nation. Indeed, my generation has never heard a "Season's Greetings" that wasn't followed by a season of protest. Yet every year I'm baffled by the animosity toward Christmas symbolism. The same secularists who think that playing Grand Theft Auto:Vice City while listening to gansta rap has no affect on children act as if hearing "Merry Christmas" will turn little Johnny into a Pat Robertson clone.

As hard as I try, I can't comprehend what could causes such a reaction. What is it about seeing a plastic baby Jesus laying in a manger on the public square that inspires such passionate outrage? Are they afraid it will lead to intolerance, religious bigotry, or--even worse--voting Republican?

[Note: The top six books, blogs, movies, music, and other pop culture phenomena that kept my attention in 2006.]

1. ok go - Here It Goes Again

This video is (almost) enough to convince you that dance is an artform. Genius choreography combined with infectious guitar pop.

2. M. Ward - Chinese Translation

The greatest Johnny Cash song that Johnny Cash never sang. Charming and beautiful.

3. Ed Harcourt - Visit from the Dead Dog

In an interview on the science in science fiction, novelist William Gibson noted, "[T]he future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." What Gibson meant was that the innovations in science fiction could already be found--at least in embryonic form--in our current ideas or technology. Much the same could be said about future societal and legal norms on marriage – they are already here, they’re just not evenly distributed yet.

A prime example is the social and legal acceptance of polygamous marriage. The legal bulwark against polygamy was the first to go, being dismantled by the Supreme Court ruling Lawrence v. Texas. “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self,” claimed Justice Anthony Kennedy, “that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.”

As Justice Scalia recognized, the decision could be used to legalize bigamy and would be a “massive disruption of the current social order.” Several weeks ago the Washington Post ran a front page story titled, “Polygamists Fight to Be Seen As Part of Mainstream Society” that showed Scalia was prophetic:

Every autumn Christians throughout North America engage in hand-wringing disputes over what to do about Halloween. The discussions tend to reflect in microcosm how we interact with overtly secular aspects on a larger scale. Should we separate and stand apart, becoming a witness by or disengagement or do we participate and attempt to redeem the event by acts of hospitality and neighborly love?

Last year my friend Bonnie from Intellectuelle adds a thoughtful contribution to the discussion, one in which I must confess to be in almost total disagreement with. But one section in particular caught my attention:

I think it could be wishful thinking to say that we can ?redeem? Halloween by trick-or-treating in good will. It may not be expressive of good will toward those who do not understand the truth of spiritual matters. Again, aren?t we endorsing the holiday itself by participating in it? The only alternative to non-participation is to hand out leaflets containing the history of Halloween (with appropriate verses of Scripture, plus a candy bar) or tracts to trick-or-treaters...but whether or not that is neighborly is a debate in itself. [emphasis added]

Reading that sentence about handing "tracts to trick-or-treaters" sent chills down my spine and reminded me of the most frightful man ever to be associated with Halloween: Jack Chick.

�Young people today are not stupid,� says Alexia Loundras, a music journalist from England, �there is simply no way that my 14-year-old sister would dream of thinking it was fashionable to describe themselves as 'whores'." Youth culture in the UK must differ radically from that of the U.S. For in America, songs about being a whore top the music charts.

Take, for example, Nelly Furtado�s �Promiscuous�, currently #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song, about a self-proclaimed �promiscuous girl� and �promiscuous boy�, even won in a best song category at last night�s Teen Choice Award. Since one of the definitions of �whore� is �a person considered sexually promiscuous�, we can discern that (a) young people think it is fashionable to describe themselves as 'whores', (b) they are too dumb to even know the definition of the term whore, or (c) they are so stupid that they think it is fashionable to describe themselves as 'whores'.

None of these options speaks well for America�s youth.

Furtado isn�t the only wannabe-whore topping the music charts. The top spot is currently held by Fergie whose song �London Bridge� compares her nether regions to an old, crusty, highly-trafficked span of roadway. �I�m such a lady, but I�m dancing like a ho,� she claims in one of the more tame lyrics. Just behind Furtado on the charts is �Buttons� by the burlesque dance troupe-turned singing group The Pussycat Dolls, mewling about how their paramour won�t undo their buttons fast enough.

Furtado, Fergie, and the Pussycat Dolls are the latest example of �whore chic�, a trend that is closely related to the �pimp chic�, a fad that that has been around for at least thirty years.

Although the phrase �seeing is believing� has become a clich�, it embodies a truth about the way we interact with our surroundings. Indeed, our perception of knowledge is so closely tied to visualization that we use the metaphor �I see� as a way of saying �I understand.�

But when it comes to mechanically created imagery, what we see doesn�t always match reality. Take, for example, the photo on the right. It appears to be a picture of a lovely young woman wearing a hat. But look again. (Click here to see a larger image.) Notice anything out of the ordinary?

What is unusual about the photo is that it is not a photo at all. Rather it is a drawing, produced by the amazingly talented artist Halim Ghodbane using Adobe Illustrator. When we believed the image was a photo, we believed (albeit unconsciously) that the girl actually exists. But once we are made aware that this is just a drawing, we cannot be sure the girl exist anywhere outside of the artist�s mind.

In a similar way, recent controversies over manipulated images has lead us to question what is real and what is propaganda. The retouching of a photo by photographer Adnan Hajj initially raised questions about the integrity of Reuters. But once the public became aware of the deception, bloggers began to look closer and uncovered numerous examples of image manipulation by other agencies, including the Associated Press and The New York Times.

[Note: I'm taking a break from blogging over the Independece Day holiday. I'll be back with new posts on Wednesday.]

"In every culture war the existing customs and traditions of a society are called to the bar of reason and ruthlessly interrogated and cross-examined by an intellectual elite asking whether they can be rationally justified or are simply the products of superstition and thus unworthy of being taken seriously by enlightened men and women," says Lee Harris in his recent article in Policy Review. "But is it possible to defend tradition with the help of reason? Can a particular tradition be justified by reason? And what if our traditional belief conflicts with reason can we rationally justify keeping it?"

"The Future of Tradition" is further evidence that Harris is one of the finest essayists in America. The article is densely packed with gems that can be mined from a close and careful reading. But as much as I would prefer to heap praise on the essay, I must first dwell on its significant flaw. In a brilliant piece of analysis, Richard Nokes sheds light on the weakness of Harris's primary assumption:

The article is interesting, but it is founded on a false premise: that tradition and reason are potentially competing modes of thought, and that reason itself may potentially be a superior mode of thinking than submission to tradition.

Harris misses this point (or perhaps pretends to): Reason itself as he is using it refers to the Western rational tradition. In other words, reason is itself a tradition, a particular disciplined mode of thinking that may or may not be superior to other modes of thinking. Why, in his examples, do cultural fights between reason and tradition end in disaster? Because if reason wins, it undermines its very traditional foundation, and if tradition wins, it destroys the very reason it birthed.

Allow me to explain it this way: What if I attack Western rationalism as a system of thought? How can you defend it? If you defend it through reasoned argumentation, you are creating a very small circle of logic, no larger than when someone asserts "The Bible is true because it says so." Instead, one must do what Harris feels compelled to do every time he brings up the Sophists -- justify reason according to intellectual tradition. In fact, Harris's article has the great virtue of acting as performance art in that it justifies tradition by appealing to reason on the surface, but beneath the surface is really justifying reason by appealing to tradition.

There is indeed a rich irony in a culture war that pits Reason against Tradition. As Nokes rightly points out, the two are quite inseparable, perhaps even dialectically intertwined. After all, few people adhere to customs and traditions that they consider to be undeniably irrational. Likewise, reason depends on custom and tradition in order for knowledge to be developed, accumulated, and transmitted.

What we have then is different tribes warring over their particular traditions, with each side appealing to the superiority of its own history in order to argue its case in the public square. The debate is complicated, though, by a tendency to ignore or selectively use their tradition's own histories. As David Koyzis contends, an appeal to tradition per se tends to ignore what might be called the "temporal multiplicity of traditions" -- the propensity of traditional notions to develop and mutate in such a way that the later form looks markedly different than the earlier manifestation.

[Note: This post, part of an occasional series on popular cultural trends, examines the use of sexual imagery in advertising. While it contains no overtly explicit material, some readers might find the subject matter offensive.]

Times are tough for advertising executives. The old rules haven�t changed but applying them in creative ways has become exceedingly more difficult. Take, for example, the old truism that �sex sells.� How do you apply that axiom in a culture that is literally saturated in sexual imagery? When sex is the background noise, it is nearly impossible to use it to be heard. Even pushing the boundaries has become a futile exercise when what was once taboo has become banal, pass�, and trite.

�Advertisers have gone too far,� says culture critic Chuck Klosterman, �and I don�t mean too far as in �too extreme� or �too sexual� or �too dangerous.� What I mean is that they have taken their logic too far.

Advertisers are no longer selling an idealized version of existence; they are actually trying to sell a lifestyle that consumers haven�t even considered as a remote possibility. Suggesting that drinking a certain kind of vodka will increase a person�s likelihood of having sex with two women simultaneously is almost like suggesting that drinking a certain kind of gin will make him invisible. It�s more than just implausible; it�s basically inconceivable.

Inconceivable though it may be, there has been a marked trend in advertising that attempts to use the allure of multiple sexual partners to sell products. Polyamoury has become a recurring them in print and media advertising. Having reached the limits (for now) of exposed flesh in sexual imagery, advertisers are forced to stretch the laws of logic by increasing the number of sexual partners. The following photos are representative of the trend that can be found on billboards, in magazines, and even on the sides of public busses. While the sample size is small (12 ads for 3 products), it should be sufficient to draw your attention to the trend. Once you see the pattern, you'll begin to notice just how prevalent it has become.

In order to prove to customers that its software wouldn't break down under heavy use, the AskMe Corporation decided to create a website that offered a version of its software to the wider public. AskMe.com was launched in February 2000 and quickly became one of the most popular knowledge exchange sites, drawing ten million users in the first year. The advice on the site was freely offered by self-appointed experts who were ranked by the people who sought out there advice.

In June 2000, Marcus Allen registered as a legal expert. Allen became a prolific responder, answering, in one two week period, 939 out of the 943 he received. By the end of July he was the 3rd ranked expert on criminal law at AskMe.com.

But then Allen made a change to his online profile: he admitted he was only 15 year old high school student. The lawyers on the site attacked and drove his rankings down. But the people to whom Allen gave advice still supported him and within a month he rebounded to become the AskMe.com's #1 ranked legal expert.

On the surface, this incident may be read as a cautionary tale about trusting the Internet's self-professed experts. But what about the people who were satisfied with Allen's answers? There is no evidence that the teenager's answers were inadequate --at least not any more so than the average law school graduate. The problem appears not to be with inaccuracy but with our need for reliable authority.

At Wal-Mart's annual meeting last year, CEO Lee Scott announced that the company wanted to attract customers with lots of discretionary income and so would be including more items like organic foods. If you find the idea of organic foods at Wal-Mart to be oxymoronic, you�re not alone. �Eating organic has been fixed in the collective imagination as an upper-middle-class luxury, a blue-state affectation as easy to mock as Volvos or lattes,� says Michael Pollan in the New York Times. �On the cultural spectrum, organic stands at the far opposite extreme from Nascar or Wal-Mart.�

Wal-Mart could start sacking groceries in Louis Vuitton bags and the Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, upper-middle-class wouldn�t shop there. So what could Scott be thinking? Have the business geniuses in Bentonville, Arkansas lost touch with reality?

Perhaps. But it could be that they are simply marketing to a different demographic than you might suspect. We commonly assume that the only market for organic food is what David Brooks calls "Bobos."

In 2001, Brooks produced Bobos In Paradise, a work of �comic sociology� that explored the lives of people who tend to prefer Volvos, lattes, and organic food:

These are highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of ambition and worldly success. The members of the new information age elite are bourgeois bohemians. Or, to take the first two letters of each word, they are Bobos.

Bobos are similar to yuppies in that they tend to come from the upper-middle and upper class and believe American society to be meritocratic. But while America in the 21st century is admittedly more egalitarian than most societies, our country is not, strickly speaking, a meritocracy.

True, one doesn�t have to come from an �old money� family (like George Bush or John Kerry) in order to gain admission to an Ivy League school. But it does help if one�s parents have enough money to pay for private school and SAT tutors. Social mobility may be fluid in America but is still favors those who are already privileged in some way. Children born to wealthy, highly educated parents have a head start on becoming wealthy and highly educated themselves.

But while our egalitarianism has made the social climb considerably less steep, technological advances have all but leveled the path of cultural mobility. For decades, changes in technology have allowed elite culture to seep down to the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Whereas great art, literature, and music was once the purview of the wealthy, almost anyone can now afford a ticket to the Jackson Pollock exhibition, the Penguin paperback of Dante's "The Divine Comedy", or an audio CD of Mozart concertos. Being allowed to taste the fruits of highbrow�or at least bohemian--culture can shape the palates of even the poorest American.

So what happens when someone has one foot in the bohemian world of creativity while their other foot is still firmly stuck on the low-rungs of the economic ladder? What do we call those who acquire the taste of the bohemian but do not have the educational credentials or wealth of the bourgeois elite? The members of this hybrid class are boorish (peasant) bohemians. Or, to combine them into one word, they are Boorbos.

Forget the scare over avian flu; the U.S. already has an epidemic that is sweeping the nation: pessimism.

Pessimism is highly contagious and appears to have already affected a large majority of America. How else can we explain polls that show 73% of the population believes our country is headed in the �wrong direction� while 64% of Iraqis polled say their country was headed in the right direction? Do we really have less reasons to be optimistic than do Iraqis?

The answer, of course, is emphatic "no." Contrary to the large number of liberals and conservatives who claim to live in the �reality-based community�, many people have formed opinions about the direction of our country that are not based on fact or evidence. Their pessimism is rooted in faulty perceptions and a lemming-like following of the "conventional wisdom."

When asked "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?� respondents to a recent CBS News/New York Times Poll said the �War in Iraq� (23%), �Gas/Heating oil costs� (14%), and "Economy/Jobs" (12%). Immigration and health care came in just above the margin of error (5% and 4% respectively). The largest category was the completely undefined �Other� (38%). (What is it that these people consider the �most important� problem if not the war, economy, immigration, or health care? The cancellation of 7th Heaven?)

In his analysis of a new Brookings Institution report, Bill Crawford at All Things Conservative adequately addresses the misperceptions about Iraq. So I�ll focus on the economy, jobs, oil costs, and the vague issues that might fall under �other.�

The Economy

The undisputable fact is that we are in an economic boom, and have been for some time. Yet a Gallup survey shows that 64% believe the economy is getting worse. Only 33% described it as good, 40% as fair, and 23% as poor. And this was before gas prices leapt more than 30 cents a gallon!

The pessimistic attitudes, however, don�t match the evidence: