The book is subtitled “Travels Among the New Greek Ruins” but this is a bit misleading; though the author does indeed travel throughout Greece for an eye-witness view of the events there (he’s an American son of Greek immigrants, so he speaks the fluent Greek he learned in Saturday Greek School and understands Greek culture as passed down to him, but with an outsider’s perspective), he spends the majority of the book providing historical and cultural context.  To be honest,... Read more

Just an FYI:  I tend not to link to articles unless I genuinely have something to say about them, but I do share links on my facebook page — either items that stand on their own, one way or another; or pieces I think are interesting but I don’t have enough background knowledge to intelligently comment on them; or items that I’m saving to blog about later, when the opportunity presents itself. So, if you “do” facebook, I invite you... Read more

A story in the high school district community education brochure that came today, similar to countless other stories you’ve surely read as well:  a college-bound student who, a mere X years ago, had just arrived here from [fill-in-the-blank 3rd world country], but inspired everyone by his/her ability to overcome adversity. And this is something that I wonder about, and present to you for discussion: We hear repeatedly about how crucial early childhood education is, even to the point of the... Read more

1) Illinois teachers’ pensions are in the news today (“School districts escape pension penalties with help of state loopholes“) because, even though the state passed a law in 2005 to eliminate pension spiking — the 2005 law required a cost shift: Local districts had to use their own taxpayer dollars to make extra pension payments when raises higher than 6 percent were given to departing educators. Those extra payments, commonly referred to as penalties, cover the higher pension costs resulting from... Read more

The article itself is fairly mundane, about the impact that a person’s debt, student loans in particular, has on their prospects for marriage, or for a successful marriage.  The author pretty much presumed that each spouse continues to manage their own finances, and that the disputes that arise are from one spouse having more discretionary income than the other. But the comments — as I’m reading them, anyway, now — are quite interesting and thoughtful. Taran Wanderer says, If you... Read more

According to Real Clear Religion, who, it should be noted, use the headline “most beautiful churches” but throw in a few mosques, temples, and synagogues for good measure.  It’s a bit tedious to click through one by one rather than scrolling, but there’s quite a nice selection, including Sainte-Chapelle, above. What’s your favorite — among RCR’s picks or your own? Relatedly, in my town, there are two “competing” Catholic churches, one of which was established in 1902, but when it... Read more

That is, so far as I can tell, the rationale for supporting Obama’s deal with Iran — the belief that the rest of the world was pretty tired of enforcing sanctions against Iran, so that we were bargaining from an extreme disadvantage, and that any willingness by Iran to cooperate, even if only superficially, was better than the alternative, the inevitable end of the sanctions regime with nothing to show for it. You buy it? Read more