Writer
Joshua B. Lipson
Latest Content
Sympathy for the Devil
We should laugh off the event, but first we must consider the severe logical and moral distortions perpetrated by its decriers.
Free Your Mind Instead
The message remains what it has always been: no perspective or conjecture is too absurd or too dangerous. No cow is too sacred to be tipped.
Monomania: Now What?
When I turned in my thesis last month, the world seemed to exhale deeply. A great monomania had evaporated, leaving a gaping hole that one’s supposed to think of as room to explore. And yet aside from the standard-grade senioritis, I found myself at a loss for what to do with my freedom.
The Poverty of Politics
I once bought into the feel-good canard that what you studied as an undergrad didn’t really matter—but four years later, I have a revision to offer for those coming after me: Study something that teaches you to think in new and unintuitive ways, and immerse yourself in like circles.
Have We Learned Nothing?
Any conservative or liberal worth his skin ought to know that he doesn’t want another Afghanistan or Iraq.
Fear of a Russian Planet
While the struggle over Ukraine does indeed pit Western interests against Russian interests however one slices it, America should recognize that Russian realpolitik, when its strategic goals intersect with ours, is a force to be harnessed, rather than repelled altogether.
History’s New Genetic Vanguard
The contemporary population genetic landscape of the Old World continents is shockingly new.
A More Benign Intoxicant?
We might do well to experience the graces of a plant thought widely to combat stress, increase empathy, and spur creativity.
Moses in the Desert
Within a matter of months, the Israeli government will be expelling between 30,000 and 40,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel from their traditional villages, razing their homes, and resettling them in state-built townships according to its own semi-private master plan.
No Thanksgivukkah for Me
There is no meaningful way to square the circle. Thanksgiving is a holiday of ecumenical ideals, and Hanukkah a festival of bloody national liberation.
World of Rosencraft
But most importantly, I submit that my exercise in political [dys/u]topia is exactly the kind of act of “applied imagination” that a student of history, politics, and culture should be engaging in—infinitely more stimulating and attention-sustaining than Facebook or Gawker, while less time-consuming than writing a political novel.
Fewer Existential Crises, More Babies
Secular liberals, male and female, I urge you: fewer existential crises, more babies.
Thinking Right
A world without religion, rotary clubs, wealth-equalizing measures, and norms of decency might be a better one for me, Joshua Lipson.
Siren Yogurt
We’ve all been to yogurtland. The neon-and-antiseptic walls, the nave-like proportions; the blessed infinity of choices. The soulless negative of a charming, family-owned ice cream shop, but less likely to stop your heart. Self-serve frozen yogurt is the undisputed “in” dessert of the global bourgeoisie—but nary a good enough yogurt joint for the job in Harvard Square, the fermented dairy delight’s ideal market.
Burning, For You!
Forty-eight hours before shopping week began, I was eating dust, watching a man on a giant spaceship go up in balls of fire. You should have joined me.
