A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Culture

  • The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society 3: The Christian revolution

    (See previous posts here and here.) In chapter 8 Jardine discusses what he calls the cosmological and anthropological revolution wrought by Christianity and why it holds the key to facing the dilemma of the technological society. That dilemma, recall, is that we human beings have found ourselves with the capacity to radically alter our environment Read more

  • Moderate drinking = longer life

    From MSNBC: Moderate drinking may lengthen your life, while too much may shorten it, researchers from Italy report. Their conclusion is based on pooled data from 34 large studies involving more than 1 million people and 94,000 deaths. According to the data, drinking a moderate amount of alcohol — up to four drinks per day Read more

  • Backpedaling

    I’m not usually a fan of this style of music (jangly-indie-folksy), but I bought my wife the Sufjan Stevens Christmas box set and I have to say it’s grown on me quite a bit (go here to stream it). Disc 2 is my current favorite. Read more

  • PETA priorities

    I’m at least somewhat sympathetic to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals; if nothing else, they raise issues that many, many people would just as soon never think about. But this case strikes me as a misallocation of what one can only assume are limited resources. Apparently they were chastising a pastor in Alaska Read more

  • Let us now praise Starbucks, Borders, Target…

    Speaking of the blessings of a consumer society, Virginia Postrel, who is basically the anti-Crunchy Con, has an article in defense of chain stores (link will decay). As someone who grew up in a small town, I have come to appreciate chain stores. The much ballyhooed “mom and pop” stores in my home town were Read more

  • Spare me

    I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see Borat, but this clinches it for me. Low-brow humor I can take, but pretentious and self-righterous low-brow humor – no thanks. Anyway, America has got to be among the least anti-Semitic countries in the world by any standard I can think of. I did watch a Read more

  • Guilty pleasure of the week

    The “Best of the Monkees” CD my parents sent me as an early birthday present. As it happens, my very first music cassette (yes, Virginia, there used to be these things called cassettes) was a Monkees collection from Rhino that I got sometime in middle school. I used to love the TV show which I Read more

  • The immortality diet

    This article about one writer’s attempt to practice the so-called Calorie Restriction Diet is very interesting. The CR diet, which essentially entails keeping one’s caloric intake to near-starvation levels has a fair bit of scientific evidence indicating that it may substantially increase one’s lifespan. Indeed, some of the practicioners seem to think it could provide Read more

  • Kauffmania

    The blog 2 Blowhards has been running a series of interviews with “reactionary radical” Bill Kauffman this week (see here, here, here, here, and here). Makes for interesting reading, full of Kauffman’s trademark excoriation of globalization, rootless politicians, imperial wars, and anonymous corporations, as well as his love of small towns, baseball, and Dorothy Day. Read more

  • Friday metal mayhem

    Read a review of the new Trivium album, Crusade in the Metro this morning. You can listen to it streaming on AOL here (don’t know how long that link will be good for). Sounds fantastic, especially if, like me, you’re a big fan of 80s thrash metal (early Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, etc.). And don’t tell Read more