Law professor Michael Paulsen and his son, Luke, a recent graduate of Princeton, teamed up to write a terrific book on the US Constitution. The Constitution: An Introduction does not disappoint.  It is thorough, thoughtful, well written, and accessible to all kinds of readers.  As a devoted reader of history, it helped me make many connections, as my heavily annotated copy will attest. The following interview was done with Michael Paulsen.  David George Moore conducted the interview.  Dave blogs at... Read more

One of the more interesting articles I read this week was from Nature, on interbreeding — humans, Denisovans, and Neanderthals. Here is the graph from the fine article, where you can read a good discussion. Dennis Venema and I have now submitted our manuscript to Brazos called “Adam and the Genome,” so this article from Nature interests me these days. Science challenges some traditional Christian readings of the Bible, and our book will attempt to show some fresh lines of... Read more

Maria Konnikova: What was it that set the resilient children apart? Because the individuals in her sample had been followed and tested consistently for three decades, Werner had a trove of data at her disposal. She found that several elements predicted resilience. Some elements had to do with luck: a resilient child might have a strong bond with a supportive caregiver, parent, teacher, or other mentor-like figure. But another, quite large set of elements was psychological, and had to do... Read more

From CNN: (CNN)Glenn Beck believes that God brought about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in order to encourage Americans to vote for Ted Cruz. On Tuesday, the conservative radio host and Cruz supporter assumed the voice of God to explain to listenershow Scalia’s death was a divine wake up call for conservatives. READ: Cruz on Trump: ‘I laughed out loud’ “I couldn’t help, but wonder, why? Why now? Why did you have to take Antonin now?” Beck’s co-host... Read more

I repost my review of a great biography on Harper Lee in a tribute to Harper Lee who has died today at 89. Image Charles Shields’ biography of Harper Lee is baffling because Harper Lee refused to play the game, except she did play the game for a few innings in the early 60s when her famous novel came out and it was made into a movie with Gregory Peck. I just finished Charles Shields’ biography, Mockingbird: A Portrait of... Read more

If you listen to the media you will hear that religion is dying, and in some ways the emergent movement was an attempt to say “we are the future because the present will die off.” At work in some themes and memes in the emergent movement was a secularization theory that assumed the present European situation would be ours inevitably but there was some hope to reverse the direction. One cannot dispute shifts and changes among young adults in the... Read more

By James McAuley USA problem is the 60 hour week! Liberty, equality, fraternity — and now, the “right to disconnect.” Among a host of new reforms designed to loosen the more stringent regulations in the country’s labor market, France’s labor minister, Myriam El Khomri, is including a provision that would give employees the right to ignore professional emails and other messages when outside the office. It would essentially codify a division between work and home and, on a deeper level,... Read more

From Business Insider, by Eugene Kim: Which side are you on? Does the Federal govt have a right to that information in the iPhones? A group of protestors rallied in front of the Apple Store in San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon to show their support for the company’s fight against the court order mandating that it write software to unlock an iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters. The rally, organized by a group called Fight for the Future, drew a... Read more