Thoughts on a subway from The Forum’s aesthete, or, music that doesn’t suck. by Sarah Albers I was being jostled by tourists on the Washington, D.C., rush-hour Metro the first time I heard “New York Kiss”. (Harry Reid could smell them, I’m sure of it.) The final track of Spoon’s new album was gorgeous: smooth, polished, but graced with the sharp, poppy spunk shared by … Continue reading Tragically Hip—Spoon
If you’re reading this column, I am going to assume that you are, on some level, desperate. Fear not, would-be hipsters! This is a good thing. All true hipsters are closeted gluttons for peer validation. Just try defending a mainstream artist while your indie kid test subject of choice is surrounded by sneering, denim-clad henchmen and you’ll see what I mean. The first rule: avoid … Continue reading Tragically Hip—Five Simple Rules for Gaining Indie Cred by Sarah Albers
Two fundamental beliefs guide conservative thought. Namely, that human nature is immutable and that one may distill the precepts of natural law by observation of this permanent nature. Early progressives began by moving away from the idea of natural law, then finally denied the permanence of human nature altogether. Man, in the eyes of liberalism, is an organism fully integrated into society. He is a … Continue reading The Insufficiency of Convention by Sarah Albers
This is a new regular feature for The Hillsdale Forum, taking the place of our “Professor’s iPod” feature of years past. Sarah Albers ran a music blog for several years before giving it all up to…study, or whatever it is Hillsdale students do that takes all their free time. We hope to receive many tidbits of smarmy hipsterness from our new contributor, and we hope … Continue reading Tragically Hip—Album Review: Reflektor
The problem with pragmatism as a philosophy is that it is not philosophy. One might call it a philosophical method, as it seeks to correlate known phenomena, but it is nothing more than that: a method of correlating truths, of securing Truth only as far as it is manifest in particular, ‘useful’ truths. It seeks to appropriate knowledge for purposes unrelated to the knowledge itself. … Continue reading Pragmatism’s Problems by Sarah Albers
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