A Thinking Reed

  • Against threat inflation

    Stephen Walt and Matthew Yglesias both have smart posts on looking at climate change through a national security lens. Possibly one of the worst outcomes of our failure to address climate change (and other attendant issues like peak oil) would be to lock ourselves into a zero-sum, conflict-based position with the rest of the world.…

  • Genius physicist for socialized medicine

    Just sayin’.

  • Acknowledging disagreement is not relativism

    The website of Lutheran Forum has become, for better or worse, all ELCA sex talk all the time. In this post, Sarah Wilson distinguishes two kinds of arguments that proponents of changing existing policy are making: One argument is simply this: homosexual activity is not a sin. That is, as long as it follows other…

  • Green beer – and it’s not even St. Paddy’s day

    Top 8 Green U.S. Breweries I haven’t even tried most of these, though I am a fan of Brooklyn Brewery. (link via my buddy Chris)

  • Summer movie critic

    Maybe it’s the delayed summer heat forcing us indoors, but my wife and I have recently seen two first-run movies right after they opened, a rarity for us. I enjoyed Judd Apatow’s Funny People more than I thought I would and more than his other two flicks. Yes, it’s big, sprawling and doesn’t entirely hang…

  • Health care info you can use

    Given the ratio of noise to light in the current health care debate (“death panels”!), it’s become rare to see a sober look at what’s actually being proposed. Lynn offers some helpful links on making sense of the various health-care reform plans currently under consideration. The FCNL’s side-by-side comparison of the plans is particularly good,…

  • A WaPo reporter investigates the mystery of grindcore

    There was a very entertaining article in this Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine about the grindcore band Pig Destroyer and one man’s attempt to understand the appeal of the death metal genre. The profiles of the band members are very interesting too: these aren’t guys with delusions of becoming rock stars. They hold down day jobs,…

  • The real Friday metal

    The mighty Meshuggah:

  • Bp. Chilstrom’s letter

    Herbert Chilstrom was the first presiding bishop of the ELCA, from its inception until 1995. Here he responds to an open letter from the group Lutheran CORE, which was signed by a number of theological heavyweights (Braaten, Jenson, etc.), opposing the proposed changes to the church’s policy on same-sex relationships.

  • Friday metal ’80s pop: John Hughes edition