I’ve got two speaking engagements coming up this week, and I could use your crowdsourced help for one of them. How to Have Better Fights About Religion Wednesday, March 18, 7p Shotel Dubin Auditorium, Penn Hillel 215 S. 39th St. Philadelphia, PA 19104 A Night of Intra-Christian Dialogue Thursday, March 19, 7:30p George Mason School of Law 3301 Fairfax Dr, Arlington, Virginia 22201 At the Intra-Christian Dialogue event, I’ll be part of an ecumenical panel answering... Read more
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm I’ll update this post when the episode is available to stream and download on demand. After Terry Pratchett passed away this week, I wanted to take some time to talk about how his Discworld books shaped my conscience. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can track down the books, articles, and (this week) non-violent resistance movements that... Read more
— 1 — I’ve been recommending Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop musical for a while (tickets now on sale for Broadway!) and you can see a few nice clips in this CBS story, which also includes interviews with Miranda: — 2 — If you need any further persuading, take a look at how Miranda wrote the character descriptions for the Broadway run: ALEXANDER HAMILTON – Eminem meets Sweeney Todd AARON BURR – Javert meets Mos Def GEORGE WASHINGTON – John Legend... Read more
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, passed away today. I’m encouraging other fans to celebrate his life and writing by giving a copy of one of his books to a friend and/or donating one to a school or library today. I’ve made an image and hashtag to share below, if you’d like to join in. The first Pratchett I read was Small Gods (a standalone book in the Discworld series), which led me into the whole series. My favorite characters... Read more
Monique Ocampo recently joined the Patheos Catholic channel and is also a big fan of The Last 5 Years. In the guest post below, she discusses what she learned from Cathy and Jamie’s relationship. Time is a big theme in “The Last Five Years.” The original stage production shows a large clock on the set. It’s shown in “The Schmuel Song,” symbolized by Jamie’s story and the watch he gives her. Throughout the musical, Jamie can only think of the... Read more
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm The episode is now available to download/stream on demand. This week, Rosamund Hodge’s Crimson Bound served as a jumping off point to talk about why I love reading retold stories. Every week, I put up a “Radio Readings” post, so you can track down the books, articles, and, (this week) fanfiction that I cite on the show. So, without further ado, here’s... Read more
— 1 — This week, I had a lot of fun reading an observational study of the rituals we’ve built up around our interactions with technology–what they tell us about how we understand our relationship with our devices and what they portend for designs to come. I particularly enjoyed seeing one I frequently employ: The Security Pass Hip Bump, which I first noticed a former client doing repeatedly in the library building she worked in, is particularly enjoyable. It occurs when someone... Read more
Earlier this week, I linked to the Yale Effective Altruists’ writeup of my visit (my radio program on Effective Altruism and Christian Charity is here). Today, Slate Star Codex has a post up that’s a nice encapsulation of my discomfort with the more totalizing part of EA. Peter Singer talks about widening circles of concern. First you move from total selfishness to an understanding that your friends and family are people just like you and need to be treated with... Read more
In Ethika Politika, Margaret Blume explains why she’s preferred her studies at Notre Dame to her undergrad years at Yale, my own alma mater. Yale has distribution requirements (Writing, Science, Humanities, Quantitative Reasoning, etc), but no single course is required — your math credit can come from econ or astronomy or set theory. Blume found that the Chinese menu course of study left her and some of her classmates feeling ungrounded: Yale’s system, which does not include theology and is based... Read more
I’m posting at Fare Forward today, talking about the word gap, and why solutions should include structural reform of work schedules, wages, and zoning — not just increased effort from individual parents: Poorer children start falling behind the richer children in their age cohort long before they toddle off to their first day of school or sit down for their first standardized test. Before formal instruction begins, children learn from their parents. Poorer children fall into a “word gap”—they hear and... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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