After two years of legal proceedings, an Afghanistan war veteran, Adam Smith-Connor, was found guilty of the crime of praying silently outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth, England. Abortion has become not just a value but an ultimate value, trumping all others (freedom of religion, of speech, of thought), a tenet of a secular fundamentalism that forbids contrary beliefs and punishes dissenters.
Prosecutors have found a way to punish people without convicting them. Simply putting someone on trial--even when prosecutors know they won't get a conviction--is itself a punishment. This tactic is especially effective in prosecuting political, moral, and religious cases. And now there is a name for it: the "in terrorem effect."
FBI's revised 2022 stats show violent crime was up, not down as reported; "one of the biggest failures in food history"; and SpaceX vs. NASA.
Young men are now more religious than young women. Portlandia is replacing its entire government. And the EPA is reconsidering adding fluoride to the water.
A study has found that some 104 million people classified as "people of faith" are not planning to vote this election. Are some of you in that number? What is the case for not voting? How about the option of going to the polling place and not voting in some races but voting in others? If you are voting, what can you say that might persuade the non-voter?
Most people today see all Masons as nothing more than members of a social club. But in their heyday, as Philip Jenkins shows, the Masons played a major role in American--indeed, world--history with important religious ramifications. Why confessional Lutherans oppose them.
The Christian church has long warned against the Seven Deadly Sins. These have been staples of Christian art and literature. Now the Vatican has (not for the first time) put out a new list of Seven Deadly Sins, reflecting some different moral preoccupations.
The metaphor of "garbage time"--when the game is basically over, but you have to play out the clock-- is widespread in sports around the world. The editor of a small Chinese publication, Hu Wenhui, saw a wider application and wrote about what he called "the garbage time of history."
The rest of the story about the jobs numbers. What happened to the government's "internet for all" program. And restarting Three Mile Island to power AI.
People are still reading texts, blogs, tweets, and online articles. But fewer of them are reading actual books. This is a problem, not only for our civilization but also for our mental health.
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