Category Archives: Popular Culture

Why Do They Torment Us?

Lileks has thoughts on the never-ending attempts of the fops in Paris to foist retro fashions on us. It will probably go on until the last baby boomer has retired from the fashion industry (including fashion sections of newspapers).

Also, this:

In related fashion news: on this day in 1946, the bikini was introduced, a swmsuit named after an atomized Pacific atoll. Good thing they didn

Still Boldly Going

Unlike the socialist French captain of the Enterprise, the original star ship captain thinks that space is important:

What’s Shatner’s assessment of NASA’s mission to head back to the moon and Mars?

“I think the country needs a noble objective, and among the notable objectives are peace, democracy and all the political things that abound,” he said. “One of the other things we need is a goal, which becomes unattainable. As soon as we go to the moon, we want to go to Mars, and as soon as we go to Mars, then it’s somewhere else.

“A constant need for a goal is a human condition, almost like a dream. It’s almost unattainable, but you continue to strive, and a journey through the stars will be a means of identifying this great country.”

Pretty nice words, coming from a Canadian, eh?

Playing Outside

Ann Althouse has a post about a byegone day.

I didn’t like playing outside that much myself–I’d always rather stay inside and read a book, but I did have a good time, generally, when I did.

We overtoy our kids. At the risk of sounding like a codger, or worse, Grandpa Simpson (“Let me tell you how it was in my day, sonny”), we used to go over to my grandmother and grandfather’s house to visit. In the basement he had taken a steel rod, bent a handle at one end, and on the other, put a wagon wheel (a children’s wagon, not a Conestoga). He made two of them. One would grip the handle end, and push it up and down the driveway, sidewalk and street, often at high speeds. One would also attempt to do it on the softer lawn, but this was a rapid education in physics.

We used to fight over them. One of them, for reasons long forgotten, was considered superior. We had a great time. And turned out all right, I think, comments from the anonymous loons here notwithstanding.