On Monday night, the dissident Chinese author Liao Yiwu gave a reading on my campus. He read a poem, “Massacre,” about the killings of the pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. For writing that poem, Liao was tortured and imprisoned for four years. This led to
We had another G.O.P. presidential candidate debate. I’ve stopped watching them, finding them too disheartening. If you watched it, please report in the comments. Did anyone rise or fall?
One side effect of the foreclosure crisis: Many banks do not want to hold and pay taxes on run-down properties that no one will ever want to buy. So they are razing the decrepit buildings that plague so many of our big cities and are
Lutheran journalist Mollie Hemingway has a fascinating piece in the Wall Street Journal about how the Episcopal Church in the USA is trying to thwart the new conservative Anglican denomination: When the Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, N.Y., left the Episcopal Church over
Interesting discussions about “Manliness” in that contest we started last weekend. As was noted in the thread, many of the virtues that were put forward could also apply to women. Perhaps they apply to men, though, in a distinctive way, but that way is what
The Reformed world is all in an uproar about what they call “the Federal Vision,” with many prominent Reformed folks embracing this new way of being Reformed with great excitement while others are denouncing it as an out-and-out heresy. (For example, Peter Leithhart, who has
Some of the demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters: Demands posted in OWS’s name include a “guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment”; a $20-an-hour minimum wage (above the $16 entry wage the United Auto Workers just negotiated with GM); ending “the fossil fuel
Scientists have sequenced the genome of a strange little creature, the naked mole rat. Why? Because it never gets cancer, lives an unbelievably long life without mental decline, and has many other amazing powers that may hold clues for human health. Mole rats are hairless,
A reader of this blog with quite a bit of expertise on employment law and who is also sensitive to the religious issues involved has sent me what I think is the best analysis I have seen of the Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC case currently before
Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812. We have been commemorating the Civil War and tend to mark significant anniversaries of other major events in American history. But not much is being planned for this one. Except in Canada, which is
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