Author: Marian Kester Coombs (Marian Kester Coombs)

Some millennia after the Earth spun out of nothingness and began hosting life forms, there dawned the Age of Reptiles, which gave way to the Age of Mammals.  Then came the Golden Age, the Age of Fable, the Age of Augustus, the Age of Migrations, the Dark and the Middle Ages, the Age of Absolutism...

Digitomania is the compulsion to digitize all human activity.  Its compulsive nature is betrayed by the casual, thoughtless manner in which we are casting ourselves down the slippery cyberslope, “acknowledging” the “perils” yet completely unwilling and unable to pull ourselves back. Digitomania gaily mirrors 17th-century Europe’s “tulipomania.”  That classic bubble is described with wicked humor...

The cultural critique of “robotization,” “automation,” “computerization,” “the cybernetic society,” “technofascism”—the takeover of human affairs by artificial intelligence—was born of artist/poet William Blake in the 18th century.  On page after page of beautifully crabbed script, Blake raged against Reason: None could break the Web, no wings of fire. So twisted the cords, & so knotted...

Pundits have been calling them “designer babies” since the first egg was fertilized and nurtured ex utero more than a quarter-century ago.  Little Louise Brown was her parents’ biological child, however, who happened to begin life in a test tube for medical reasons: Her mother’s Fallopian tubes were blocked.  Pioneering British physicians used laparoscopy to...

More than ever before, homosexual characters and situations are being featured on television.  Needless to say, the lay of TV Land is overwhelmingly favorable: cheery, cuddly, cute, and camp. The first of such programming originated in the formerly Great Britain, either imported directly (East Enders, Absolutely Fabulous) or adapted to the American small screen (All...

As a race, the British are considered neither the most intellectual nor the most artistic, Britain’s role in the invention of modern physics (Newton) and modern painting (Turner) notwithstanding.  Yet their ability to make cultural icons of near-universal appeal is second to none.  Quite apart from the philosophical contributions of Locke and Burke and Hume...

Does God take sides in conflicts between men?  If He does, how can we tell?  Is the side favored by God always victorious, or can a lost cause also have been blessed? Bob Dylan mocked the very notion of God taking sides in human warfare: Accept it with pride, For you don’t count the dead...

When you’ve done something pretty bad, or nothing particularly good, the best defense is a good offense.  Attack mode works better than the smoothest excuses—God forbid you should ever apologize!—to obscure your faults and silence criticism before it is even uttered.  Thus we find that the loudest complainers in our midst are those who caused...

A kid today, if he aspires to anything other than slack itself, aspires to one of three “crafts”: acting, sports, or rock ’n’ roll.  He wants either to play a part, to play a game, or to play guitar.  He wants to be a player.  The work ethic has been replaced by the shirk-and-perks ethic: “I’d...

Robin N—wasn’t sure what was wrong. The suburban Milwaukee mother of three had experienced a pang upon turning 35, but these “pangs” seemed to be intensifying as the months passed. Sometimes, they took the form of paralyzing depression; other times, of anxiety verging on panic. She found herself fearful of going out in public or...

“All politics is local”: once a savvy saying, now a wistful whine. All culture, too, used to be local, but that’s changing fast. The rule of thumb for distinguishing between vestiges of the merely local and harbingers of the emerging global is simple: efficiency. You can fit many more units of global into your life...

News Item: “Al Gore helped lead the federal response to Y2K, hut that doesn’t mean his own Internet operations went hug-free. The computer glitch took a tiny bite out of Gore’s campaign Web site. The damage came inside his “virtual town hall,” where a message from a supporter was dated January 3, 19100. . ....

Forget Back to Basics, language immersion. New (and newer and newer Math, the seven types of intelligence. Learn by Doing, the Great Books, discovery learning, arts-based education. Core Values, self-esteem, and even phonics. American parents have found a new savior for their children’s imperiled education; the computer. All across the country, parent-teacher associations and ad...

They say you can’t fight city hall—but a group of California parents calling itself Mathematically Correct (MC) has taken on the statehouse and won the right to restore a rigorous math curriculum to public education. It is only just that the tide should begin turning in the former Golden State, which, because it boasts the...

What if the federal government spent a billion tax dollars over nearly three decades to study thoroughly the question of which teaching method best instills knowledge, sharpens cognitive skills, and enhances self-esteem in young children? And what if such a study were able to determine exactly which method best accomplishes all three? Would American parents...

The longer one observes American public schools today, the more comprehensive and deep-rooted the globalist infection appears. The erstwhile revolutionary-leftist underground has become the establishment, in public education and every other institution. Educators now call themselves “change agents,” in Timothy Leary’s radical parlance. No lie is too big (“Diversity = Excellence”) and no trick too...

Girls mature physically and socially earlier than boys, God’s way of bettering the survival odds for female children. This accelerated maturation coupled with the intrinsically feminine culture of public education, where the ideal student is a little woman, accounts for the scholastic dominance of girls in the early grades. But as puberty strikes the old...

A first-grade teacher in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., concludes that while some of her pupils suffer various degrees of parental neglect, others seem to be experiencing the opposite extreme: such pampering at home that they cannot even tie their own shoes, and must have it done for them. It takes a while before she...

Last June, the 19,000 delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention voted to boycott the Walt Disney Company for its “promotion of homosexuality” and the other “anti-family” values. The convention pointed to Gay and Lesbian Days sponsored by Disney theme parks; to such twisted fare as Priest, Powder, and Kids, all films produced by Disney’s Miramax;...

It would be easy to view the recent spate of movies and documentaries that side with Amerindians against the white man as no more than a long-delayed surge of racial revenge, and of course that emotion is openly expressed in all of them. I refer to the cycle, begun by Dances with Wolves, that includes...