Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, which providentially turned out to be the day my friends and I are holding our debate on the Brendan Eich donnybrook. But, since both faith and works are both required to save us, I’ve also thrown together the NYT Best Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe, so that we can all break bread (or better than bread) together. But, while I’m occupied with my gavel and the oven mitts, I think I do have an appropriate story... Read more
In two of my recent posts for The American Conservative, I got to review Megan McArdle’s The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success and to take a crack at improving a not quite fubar’d health insurance survey. I’m also still pleased that my editor let me get away with using the roller derby image above as the featured image for the McArdle. I can still remember, from the one time I went to a roller... Read more
— 1 — Everyone’s still talking about the data journalism sites Vox, FiveThirtyEight, and the Upshot, but the most adorable statistics reporting I’ve seen turned up on FlowingData, in an article putting together statistics and graphs on his six-month old son. Below is the graph of how far he strayed from his house, before and after his baby’s birth, and there are plenty more fun graphs at the link. — 2 — Speaking of the power of statistics, I totally... Read more
Today, I’m over at First Things to talk about prisons, communities, and cell phones. Until cellphones made it trivial for a well-connected prisoner to reach the outside world, jailhouse policy has usually been more focused on information flowing the opposite direction. Texas is one among many states to have lengthy lists of books banned from prison libraries—Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Jenna Bush are among the many authors whose works have been proscribed. Jailhouse librarians and review boards assumed that, by carefully culling... Read more
To celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday, here’s a sonnet that’s particularly on point for this blog. Sonnet 94 They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow; They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces And husband nature’s riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer’s flower is... Read more
When it comes to the problem of how to get some of the dust off of your mirror, recently, I’ve been thinking about logismoi. During Holy Week, I picked up Kyriacos C. Markides’s The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality, which is where I first encountered the word. At one point, recounting a conversation with a monk from Mount Athos, he writes: “Logismoi are much more intense than simple thoughts. They penetrate into the very depths of a human being. They have... 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. Pope Francis narrates the presentation of Christ at the temple, and the prophesies and joy of Simeon and Anna. And then he says: There is radiance in the temple because the Light is entering into it: “a light for revelation to the Gentiles... Read more
This weekend, my DC friends and I will meet to hold a debate on the Brendan Eich debacle. In order to assure civility, there will be cookies (to break bread together) and a gavel (for the enforcement of Robert’s Rules and the potential breaking of kneecaps). We’ve been trying to pick a resolution for the debate (though, at some point in the afternoon, I’ll stop asking for affs and negs and call for speeches “on or about the topic”). Of... Read more
From a very old Holy Saturday sermon: What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled. Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he... Read more
In Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter’s The Light of Other Days, a scientist invents little wormholes that function as peepholes. You can peer back from the present to any point in time before now, or in the present, and society struggles to cope with its sudden transparency. People peer at each other or watch the original productions of Shakespeare, but something very odd happens when the viewers in the novel try to look back at the Crucifixion, the day we... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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