In the news today, “Charities worry tax law will cut giving.” As it happens, this is a Washington Post article that was syndicated in the Chicago Tribune, and isn’t available except from the Post; if you’re past your article limit, you can view substantial excerpts at Newsbusters (which I link to without commentary on the Newsbusters site itself). The gist of the issue: charities are worried that, as a result of the new tax law, they will see a drop-off in the... Read more
Two articles that came across my twitter feed recently: “Biological evidence that Jesus actually was born in December” at Aleteia. We’re happy to criticize portrayals of the Nativity that include a blonde, blue-eyed Holy Family, and even periodically ask ourselves if the images of the stable being snow-covered are correct, for Bethlehem. But there’s another difference between the Middle East and Europe: One continual objection was that the shepherds in the fields at night were presumed to be attending to... Read more
Chreasters, if you’re not familiar with the phrase, are those people who show up for church twice a year, on Christmas and Easter. And how they used to p*** me off — especially those who saved a whole row of seats with their coats, so that one family member would give you dirty looks as you desperately tried to find seats for your own family. And at the same time, in order to get seats for my own family, I felt... Read more
To read an article in the Times, or the Post, or the WSJ? In the first two instances, you get a fixed number of articles per month, before you hit the paywall. In the latter case, there are somewhat random “free” articles which I presume are whatever the editors want to circulate freely. There are ways around it, of course — multiple browsers/computers, clearing browser history, reading in a private window. In the case of the Washington Post, if you... Read more
Really, this is just an invitation for reader comments. At what age, if you have kids, did they stop believing in Santa Claus? How did they come to this conclusion? And, whether or not you have personal experiences, what do you think is the “right age” for kids to abandon Santa and understand that Christmas is not about a magical being giving presents? Because, sure, it’s fun to use a deliberately provocative post title to get people talking about Palestinians and... Read more
It’s cookie-baking time, or, specifically, Plätzchen-baking time, traditional German Christmas cookies. These are not super-sugary. It’s basically a butter cookie, except with less butter and less sugar than a traditional American recipe, and as you can see from the photo (not my own), they’re typically dressed up with jelly and powdered sugar rather than frosted. But the best thing about them is that they’re super-easy to make. Maybe not super-easy to make, as a top-notch cookie, but, as a satisfactory cookie for... Read more
Today, the UN voted by a margin of 128 – 9, with 35 abstentions, “in favor of a draft measure that makes US President Trump’s Jerusalem decision ‘null and void,'” as Deutsche Welle reported. Now, I wouldn’t have been as irritated if the vote was for resolution that proclaimed, “guys, we really wish you hadn’t done this,” rather than this “null and void” language. And, as Eylon A. Levy writes at The Forward, there’s a lot of hypocrisy in this... Read more
Three articles that I wanted to share, each of which doesn’t individually merit its own blog post in terms of my comments on it: From City Journal, “The Age of Outrage; What the current political climate is doing to our country and our universities,” by Jonathan Haidt. Why is there such increasing polarization? Haidt identifies five trends: the lack of a common unifying enemy, the “outrage stories” in today’s social media, the impact of immigration and diversity reducing “social solidarity... Read more
So in my twitter feed today was a New York Times editorial lamenting the benefit provided to private school families, “How the Republican Tax Plan Uses School Savings to Hurt States.” The claim: the new tax bill allows families to use 529 plan savings on not just university tuition, but tuition at the elementary and secondary level as well, or for homeschool supplies. With respect to federal taxes, it’s not a big deal: the benefit to families consists of, Roth IRA-like,... Read more
Well, what do you know? I’m not the only one staring at GSS data on religious observance. There’s a paper out that came to my notice by means of a link in an article somewhere, “The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research,” by Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock, which, as its title suggests, proposes that religion on America remains exceptionally more intense than elsewhere. Given that this is a scholarly paper, it references a... Read more
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