Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

Small disclaimer: my youngest son, formerly a student at George Mason University, has shaken the dust off his sandals and transferred to Texas State University , in San Marcos. Frankly I'm glad, though I was enthusiastic about his attending when he applied. There are any number of reasons I'm glad he's back in Texas, not the least of which is that tuition costs will be about a third of what they were at GMU. Though Mason has an exemplary technology and computer science program, they are also Ground Zero for various academic apologists for the whole Libertarian movement. The Cato Institute , bankrolled by Princes of Fucking Darkness David and Charles Koch , is housed there, and the Economics department is awash with Libertarian shills for the Kochs such as Don Boudreaux and Russell Roberts. A recent dustup has arisen over at  GMU over Professor T. Mills Kelly's class, "Lying about the Past," which had as part of the coursework, assignments to go out and ...

The whole culture war over Christmas can be neatly illustrated by the running edit battles going on in the Wikipedia entry for " Christmas Tree " where one side writes about the pagan origins of the Christmas tree, and the other immediately edits them out. This has been going on for weeks . Check for all the edits labeled for "Pre-Christian roots." This is a little like how Winston Smith spent his days in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. Don't like the truth? Edit it. Then your truth is the truth. I came about this because I'd researched the history of the Christmas Tree and found reference to the pagan origins in Wikipedia, then went back a week later only to find them gone. The hand of God may be invisible but some of his/her bone-headed followers are leaving fingerprints behind.