A Sin of Omission in the Omission of Sin

As I gradually work my way to the final chapters of Men, Women and Pianos, Arthur Loesser’s effort to cast a social history of life in both Europe and the United States around the role that the piano played in that social life, it occurred to...

Technology And Competence

In Men, Women and Pianos Arthur Loesser’s comment that pianos “have always largely been fingered by the musically incompetent” will probably strike most as elitist snobbery. However, it has a ring of truth that probably extends far...

The Decade of Fragility?

Through their Magazine the BBC is trying to compile a summing up of the first decade of the 21st century by polling their readers to “tell the story of the last 10 years, based on five themes.” Personally, I tend to prefer the single unifying...

Inconvenient Truths About Health Care As Industry

As I continue to argue that one of the most significant impediments to serious health care reform has been the efforts of a “consciousness industry” to induce a general acceptance of the phrase “health care industry” and thus...

Laura Flanders’ Armistice Metaphor

As I continue to read each piece of economic news as if it were a dispatch from the front lines of the War Against the Poor, whose objective seems to be the banishment of those below the poverty line from the virtual world of financial practices in...