— 1 — Happy Sukkot, to any readers who are celebrating! Here’s a delightfully silly relyricization for the holidays. This reminds me of the last time I went to a Sukkot celebration, and after our friend celebrated by shaking the lulav in the appropriate six directions, there was a tipsy suggestion from the crowd to shake it in eleven directions like a string theorist. (Though, I suppose, to be truly analogous, the suggestion should have been to shake it in twenty... Read more
Happy flu season, everyone! This year, when you get your flu shot, there’s an added bonus to the usual benefits of Being much less likely to get the flu Virtuously protecting the elderly, the babies, and the immunocompromised through herd immunity Because flu symptoms (fever, achiness, etc) are similar to the initial symptoms of ebola, you’re also forstalling any anxiety you, or people around you, may experience as the result of the onset of your flu symptoms. The news media... Read more
There’s an article in the NYT today covering one of my philosophy of the body hobbyhorses. Dutee Chand, an 18-year old champion sprinter, has been told she must have surgery or start a drug regimen in order to be allowed to compete in official races. The problem? Her body naturally produces more testosterone than usual, and administrators worry it gives her an unfair advantage: Arne Ljungqvist, the longtime chairman of the I.O.C.’s medical commission, said a hyperandrogenism policy was necessary because... Read more
In 2014, I’m reading and blogging through Pope Francis/Cardinal Bergoglio’s Open Mind, Faithful Heart: Reflections on Following Jesus. Every Monday, I’ll be writing about the next meditation in the book, so you’re welcome to peruse them all and/or read along. In this week’s reading, Pope Francis discusses what we do with untransfigured pain and suffering: Our limitation and our weakness can be transformed by prayer into a cross…. The problem is that when we concentrate only on external hindrances, we stop praying and... Read more
— 1 — There’s no way this feature on a live-action Oregon Trail game wasn’t taking top billing on my Quick Takes this week. Trust me, you want to read the whole thing: And then there was the problem of meat. On the trail, as in the game, if you killed a bison, you could only carry 200 pounds of meat with you. In the live-action game, participants face the task of pushing 200 pounds of meat up a hill—in... Read more
Earlier this week, I was chatting with a friend about A.O. Scott’s big piece on storytelling and the death of adulthood. Scott discusses the tendency of male heroes to “light out for the Territory,” escaping the feminized world of social expectations and perhaps a specific female person (be it mother or maiden). While Huck stepped outside of society in order to critique it, men in modern stories, Scott claims, tend to be rebels in retreat; they’ve traded in Jim’s raft... Read more
Yesterday, I was writing about ways to build mixed-age community in my large apartment building, and, today, the first day of a new month, I pulled out Jen Fulwiler’s Saint Generator and drew St. Paul of Thebes, believed to be the first Christian hermit. His life was recorded by St. Jerome (who had his own feast day yesterday). Jerome’s life of Paul closes with these words: I may be permitted at the end of this little treatise to ask those who... Read more
This weekend, when I was hosting a debate on “R: Send Your Children to Public Schools” one of the speakers said she thought the most destructive assumption of the public school system was that children should all be partitioned into same-age groups, moved about in those sets, and that any cross-age interaction is abnormal and disruptive. (I’ll note that this tends to hold for most non-public schools as well). Critics of homeschooling tend to bring up worries about “not being... Read more
In 2014, I’m reading and blogging through Pope Francis/Cardinal Bergoglio’s Open Mind, Faithful Heart: Reflections on Following Jesus. Every Monday, I’ll be writing about the next meditation in the book, so you’re welcome to peruse them all and/or read along. In this week’s selection, Pope Francis discusses the way Moses is developed, morally and spiritually, through prayer, especially through the act of turning away from unworthy petitions. When God proposes to give Moses a new people to lead, the prophet objects strongly and... Read more
Last week, I had the pleasure of seeing Desire of the Everlasting Hills at a screening hosted by the Catholic Information Center. The movie, which is available for streaming, is a documentary about three celibate, gay Catholics. Eve Tushnet reviewed the movie for The American Conservative and wrote: There are some fascinating theological contrasts: Paul’s most direct experiences of God come when he is being rescued or spared something he expected to be unbearably painful—the most intense example comes when he’s on... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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