Debunking the NYT’s Numbers on Contraception

Last updated on: September 17, 2014 at 12:23 pm By Leah Libresco

You may have seen the New York Times‘s much shared infographic on contraception failure rates, and I’m here — statistics cop badge in hand — to tell you that it ain’t necessarily so. There are some huge methodological flaws in the way that the NYT chose to model the risk of unplanned pregnancy over ten years, and I’m explaining just how badly they went wrong at The American Conservative. The NYT generated these graphs by looking only at failure rates for contraception over one year, and then doing some... Read more

And a little child shall lead them (for the lack of anyone else) [Pope Francis Bookclub]

Last updated on: September 16, 2014 at 3:53 pm By Leah Libresco

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 chapter, Pope Francis praises the way that David follows God during the chaos of Absalom’s rebellion: David places his liberty at the service of God’s designs and cooperates with God’s desires. In so doing, he does not lose what... Read more

Justice Laid (Possibly Unlawfully) Bare

Last updated on: September 16, 2014 at 9:32 am By Leah Libresco

I’m reviewing Arguendo today at The American Interest, and explaining how this play about a Supreme Court case deciding whether stripping was First Amendment protected speech winds up painting SCOTUS in a romantic and heroic light. The justices begin on a plinth that resembles the actual Supreme Court (set design by David Zinn), but shortly after the arguments begin, they send their wheeled chairs zooming down ramps to the main part of the stage. For the rest of the play they scoot around,... Read more

Nice Guys and Casual Dates [Sequence Index]

Last updated on: September 23, 2014 at 1:30 pm By Leah Libresco

In the Fall, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of… friendzoning? In September 2014, several other bloggers and I wound up in a dialogue about friendship, romance, and the very rickety bridge that connects them. We talked about the why of the frustration behind, “But I’m a Nice Guy!” (not to mention the frustration that girls feel when they get hit by that phrase) and the societal shifts that may make it a lot harder to date and discern... Read more

The Loves We Need From Other People

Last updated on: September 14, 2014 at 1:35 pm By Leah Libresco

Apropos of our discussion of friendship, romance, and the very confusing boundaries and barriers between the two, I wanted to share this excerpt from Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. In this part of the book (in the section titled “The End of Loneliness”), Hill is listening to a professor speak about a queer woman who was trying to figure out how (or if!) to sublimate her love and desires for women into love of God.... Read more

To Mary Through Henry Adams

Last updated on: September 13, 2014 at 11:11 am By Leah Libresco

It’s been a week of Marian feasts. Yesterday was the feast of Mary’s name and this past Monday was the feast of her birth. I lucked into doing extremely thematic reading for the week, since this is when I finally got around to reading the copy of Henry Adams’s Mont-Saint-Michel and Chatres that I had on my kindle. Adams (descended from the presidential Adamses) is also the author of The Education of Henry Adams, which was my favorite part of the curriculum of the... Read more

7QT: Brutalism and Book Covers

Last updated on: September 12, 2014 at 7:38 am By Leah Libresco

— 1 — This Grantland profile of water parks is (as far as I can remember) the most exhilarating thing I’ve read this summer. Lots of fun mechanical details about how slides and rides are built, both in terms of literal mechanics and in terms of the way they shape a park experience. Plus, the people profiled are, well, a bunch of characters. At first glance, George Millay was an unlikely man to invent a slacker’s paradise. He was ex-Navy, a staunch conservative,... Read more

Nice Guys, Conjoined Twins, and Starving for Love

Last updated on: September 11, 2014 at 1:07 pm By Leah Libresco

I want to return to one specific point made in the Ben Conroy piece on Nice Guys’s frustration that I linked to yesterday. Many of the things that can be appreciated in a romantic partner can also be appreciated in a friend. In fact, I submit that if you truly love someone, the idea of being their friend should be, in itself, pretty appealing. I completely understand the complicating factors! (Believe me, I do). I understand the sadness, the frustration,... Read more

More Reasons to Encourage Casual Dating

Last updated on: September 10, 2014 at 1:45 pm By Leah Libresco

Ben Conroy (who recently joined the Patheos Catholic channel at Shadows on the Road) has another critique to throw at Nice Guy Syndrome. In “‘Nice Guys’ — How Deep is Your Love?” Conroy writes: I sometimes wonder if these Nice Guys are actually in love at all. What about the specific woman actually stole their heart? And why would whatever that is vanish because she’s not romantically interested in them? […] [W]hen we’re dealing with an “ineffable spark” but you don’t... Read more

Endless War without a Proving Peace

Last updated on: September 9, 2014 at 11:43 am By Leah Libresco

My parish here in DC is very lucky because, now that the summer’s over, we get to have Adult Sunday School after the 9am Mass with two of the Dominican friars from the House of Studies. The new semester started this past Sunday, and the first topic was just war theory. The Dominican who presented melded encyclicals, excerpts from the Catechism, Ecclesiastes, as well as the writings of Aquinas and Augustine. He cited this passage from chapter 12 of my... Read more