— 1 — This week’s theme, beautiful, beautifully made things. And we’re starting with a sports article. Grantland’s Zach Lowe walks us through the problems with the current NBA draft system (it incentivizes teams to tank seasons to snag a draft pick) and explains an alternate proposal. Grantland obtained a copy of the proposal, which would eliminate the draft lottery and replace it with a system in which each of the 30 teams would pick in a specific first-round draft... Read more
Over at AmCon today, I’ve got a piece up “Starving for Communal Spaces” and here’s how it opens: A man walks into a business establishment and pays a small sum of money for the use of their premises. He’s slightly furtive about it, and the proprietor would probably deny the nature of the service provided, but the gentleman is seeking companionship, and doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I’m not describing the kind of tawdry hotel that rents its rooms by... Read more
The Rolling Stone cover story on Pope Francis is frustrating. A big, researched feature piece should be better fact checked than to repeat misconceptions about the Pope’s “near absolute” power and to imply that the Pope is frequently infallible or, worse, all knowing. The author is a bit distant from Pope Francis himself, mostly using him as a cudgel to beat Pope Benedict, Cardinal Dolan, Opus Dei, and others. The profile makes Francis, and his alleged antagonists both bigger and smaller... Read more
Today is the feast day of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and, over at the Domincana blog, Br. Philip Neri has a lovely reflection on the Angelic Doctor: Here, too, Aquinas excelled. His verbal reserve earned him the nickname “the mute ox,” and when he did speak, he did so in unpretentious, everyday language (his examples always came from mundane things like rocks, fires, and the “whiteness” of his Dominican habit-inhabiting brethren). Our straightforward friar would never have called himself “abdominous,” just fat. That... 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. I’m reading this book one chapter at a time, so I keep being surprised every week to find out that the latest chapter is still on joy. This chapter is grounded in his own experience as a priest, and the opportunities to welcome or reject... Read more
I really enjoyed the article in Jacobin Magazine on the hidden (and harmful) assumption of the exhortation to Do What You Love, and I’ve expanded a little on their analysis for AmCon. You also may get a sense of one way I was ill-suited to San Francisco culture (aside from not enjoying being relaxed). Here’s a teaser from my essay: “Don’t Love Your Job. Love People” Instead of going out into the world and building the rest of their lives, employees are... Read more
— 1 — This weeks links are all about love and storytelling (as if there’s a difference). First up, a story I found charming about a geek who decided to datamine his way to OkCupid success: OkCupid’s algorithms use only the questions that both potential matches decide to answer, and the match questions McKinlay had chosen—more or less at random—had proven unpopular. When he scrolled through his matches, fewer than 100 women would appear above the 90 percent compatibility mark. And... Read more
In this week’s installment of the Pope Francis bookclub, the then-Archbishop talked about “missionary joy” that invites people in to learn the source. I was reminded of a nun who recently gave a talk in D.C. on Spe Salvi. In her talk. she mentioned being asked on the street, “What is the reason for your joy?” When people ask a habited nun this question, they’ve got a reasonable guess as to what kind of answer they’re going to get. I’m... Read more
Meanwhile. over at AmCon, I have a piece on the botched execution in Ohio, where the error not have been inflicting pain, but in failing to hide that suffering from the spectators. Here’s a teaser: There’s no mystery as to why Ohio found itself running low on the traditional three-drug lethal injections. Many of the components of the cocktail are manufactured outside the United States and several international companies have refused to allow their drugs to be shipped to the United States if they will... 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 (except this week, because of MLK Day), 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 opened his book with joy, and he returns to it again in only the third chapter. The word that came to mind, reading this section, was epousios. Epousios is the word in the Our Father... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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