A Thinking Reed

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

Media

  • Friday Links

    –Ludwig von Mises versus Christianity. –20-plus years of Willie Nelson’s political endorsements. –The media has stopped covering the unemployement crisis. –The Stockholm Syndrome theory of long novels. –An interview with Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City. –Why universal salvation is an evangelical option. –A debate over Intelligent Design ensares an academic journal of Read more

  • Depressing column of the week (month? year?)

    Bob Herbert is leaving the NYT and goes out with a tour de force: So here we are pouring shiploads of cash into yet another war, this time in Libya, while simultaneously demolishing school budgets, closing libraries, laying off teachers and police officers, and generally letting the bottom fall out of the quality of life Read more

  • Friday Links

    –Today is the Feast of the Annunciation; here are some thoughts on that. BLS also has one of her outstanding musical offerings for the day. –John Piper, theological nihilist? –Catholics are “more supportive of legal recognitions of same-sex relationships than members of any other Christian tradition and Americans overall.” –How to live without a mobile Read more

  • Bittman’s agenda

    Speaking of food politics, Mark Bittman has retired his long-running “Minimalist” cooking column in the New York Times dining section and is moving over to the opinion pages, as well as writing for the Times Magazine. In addition to teaching people how to cook for themselves, Bittman has criticized the standard American diet and even Read more

  • Where’s the Left?

    Apparently there’s been a dust-up recently about the supposed lack of genuinely left-wing bloggers in the professional blogosphere. (See here for the run-down.) The charge, in a nutshell, is that many of the most prominent bloggers are so-called neoliberals: people with liberal policy goals but who embrace the deregulation/free-trade/globalization model that has been in vogue Read more

  • Priorities

    So, making it impossible to challenge secret government kidnappings (and possible torture) seems like it might be a way bigger deal than whether some nutjobs in Florida want to burn a Koran. Naturally, it’s gotten about 1/1000th the media coverage. Do check out this post at Lawyers, Guns & Money for some good analysis, though. Read more

  • Attention must be paid

    There have been a couple of articles recently on the “slow reading” movement, one in Newsweek and one in the Guardain. Actually, “movement” may be a bit strong; it seems to be more of an impulse, or a reaction against our 24-7 ultra-connected, multitasking, information-saturated lives. (Where “we” are a relatively small minority of affluent Read more

  • Balance!

    Today’s WaPo offers a review of a spate of new political books under the headline “Flame-throwing political books from the Right and the Left.” In judicious Post fashion, it finds the Left and the Right about equally guilty of partisan extremism. “If you believe the liberals,” we’re told “we have Republicans going insane after their Read more

  • Why I don’t watch cable news

    Well, not the only reason. But this article on the frequency with which “independent analysts” on cable news double as lobbyists or PR flacks is pretty damning. Read more

  • Things I learned today while listening to NPR

    Sonia Sotomayor is–get this–the first Hispanic person to be appointed to the Supreme Court! And only the third woman! Also, Republicans, it seems, are worried that she will rule as a liberal “judicial activist.” Democrats, on the other hand, insist that she will merely “apply the law” in the most mechanical fashion imaginable and never, Read more