In a free society, being born poor should not stop an intelligent, capable, hard-working person from becoming prosperous. Social mobility refers to the capacity for people born in a lower social class to transition to a higher social class during their lives. Industries that have historically improved social mobility include professional sports and universities. These [...]
Loyal readers know that feminists irritate me. Not the right-to-vote, equal-pay-for-equal-work, cook-your-own-damn-dinner feminists – I like those. I’m talking about the breaking-down-gender-roles, anti-pornography, all-sex-is-rape radical feminist lunatics. This kind of ideology has fueled the ongoing feminization of culture to mixed effects. On the upside, men have gotten better at expressing their emotions, women have gotten [...]
Are you thinking of pursuing graduate degree? The Internet is rife with advice on how and whether to proceed. Most of this advice is wrong. Today I am officially “Dr. Wolfe.” Here is what I wish I knew when I started. 1. Find a Reasonable Supervisor The single most important part of a PhD is [...]
The poster-child for what’s wrong with postsecondary education is the computer science program. Despite the enormous need for competent programmers, database administrators, systems administrators, IT specialists and a host of other technical professionals, computer science programs seem to explicitly ignore the professional skills of which western society has growing deficiency and proceed with materials and [...]
You would think that a fitness center, of all places, would be exempt from the lethargic malaise that pervades western society. In most cases, you would be mistaken. The modern gym is a plague upon fitness. That’s right, the very place we go to improve our health is practically custom-made to prevent us from exercising [...]
You know a conversation is headed sideways when the topic turns to morals and ethics. For any major social issue of our time – gay marriage, women’s reproductive rights, freedom of speech, religion in public schools, even climate change – you can find normally reasonable people who reach contradictory conclusions on the ethical choice. In [...]
A typical modern gym houses hundreds of individual pieces of exercise equipment, some of which appear purposefully designed to injure as many trainees as possible. Here are ten of the most dangerous exercise machines. Avoid these, and avoid any so-called personal trainer who recommends them. 1. Smith Machine A smith machine is just a bar [...]
The golden rule, AKA The Ethic of Reciprocity is at the very heart of Christian thinking. (Not that Christians actually practice it, but that’s a rant for another time). However, “do to others what you would like to be done to you” suffers from an obvious logical flaw: not everyone wants to be treated the [...]
Western society is plagued by obesity and general ill-health for many reasons: the raging incompetence of medical professionals; fitness snake-oil salesmen; belief in a variety of health-related myths; and desperate confusion about nutrition to name a few. Another serious problem is that people are generally confused about the meaning of exercise. Here are five non-exercises [...]
Recently someone told me I was a radical. With the minor qualification that ‘radical’ is not the same as crazy, I take this as a compliment. The existential threats humanity faces, and the fundamental problems with our social systems cannot possibly be solved by incremental thinking. Without radicals, we’re screwed. Want evidence do I have? [...]