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September 28, 2022

Godard Is Dead. Is Cinema?

Jean-Luc Godard died on September 13, 2022, and the news in the world of cinema and culture was received as confirmation that cinema itself was dead. Godard had a remarkable influence on cinema in the ’60s, but his fame went beyond that. Continue Reading...
September 22, 2022

USC Squanders an Opportunity to Form Fraternities

Eight fraternities recently disaffiliated from the University of Southern California following the university’s response to allegations of horrible sexual assaults on campus in 2021. During the fall semester of 2021, there were several reports of girls being drugged and sexually assaulted at fraternity events. Continue Reading...
September 21, 2022

Our Lady of the Artilects Makes AI Catholic Cool

The idea of personal identity and sentience in artificial intelligences (AI) is not exactly new territory for the science fiction genre: from Neuromancer to Westworld, writers frequently contemplate the ideas of agency and moral status in close-to-human, artificially engineered agents and environments. Continue Reading...
September 20, 2022

Progressives Remember COVID but Refuse to Learn from It

There are three ways to look back at the first year of the COVID pandemic. The first is to learn from the whole experience. Recall the fear, pain, and misery brought on by lockdowns, mask mandates, and social distancing, as well as the deaths that could have been prevented but weren’t because of politics (think the nursing home debacles). Continue Reading...
September 16, 2022

Free Enterprise Is Saving African Lives

For years, Africa has dominated the podium in the “bad healthcare” Olympics. For reference, the average cost for an established patient and Medicare recipient to make one visit to a family practice in Pennsylvania (where I live) is approximately $88—the cost of less than a week’s worth of groceries. Continue Reading...
September 15, 2022

The Manchurian Candidate Is a Neglected Masterpiece

In 1959, when Richard Condon published his political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, he took a topical idea and ran amok with it. The idea was that during the Korean War a platoon of GIs had been captured by the Chinese, brainwashed (“not just washed, but dry-cleaned”), and released back home to do the enemy’s bidding. Continue Reading...
September 14, 2022

North Korea Crushes Its People as Nuclear Capacity Expands

North Korea’s chief notoriety is its nuclear program. Another nuclear test is expected soon. The Rand Corporation and Asan Institute predict that by 2027, the North “could have 200 nuclear weapons and several dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hundreds of theater missiles for delivering the nuclear weapons.” Continue Reading...