A Thinking Reed

  • On Vilsack

    Jennifer asks what I think of Obama’s pick of Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture. Doesn’t she know that the question of who gives the invocation at the inauguration is much more pressing than our country’s food system? Sheesh! I only know what I’ve read, and the general impression I get is that Vilsack is…

  • 2008: The year in book blogging

    I’m not going to provide a best books of the year list, but here’s a sampling of those that got their hooks into me enough to generate some more or less in-depth blogging (needless to say, most of these weren’t published in 2008): Andrew Bacevich, The Limits of Power “Empire of dysfunction” Evelyn Pluhar, Beyond…

  • Empire of dysfunction

    If I could put one recent political book in the hands of conservatives trying to rebuild their movement and liberals irrationally exuberant about all the “change” that’s about to take place, it’d be Andrew Bacevich’s The Limits of Power. Heck, as long as I’m wishing, I’d like to get it in President-elect Obama’s hands too.…

  • Back from the land of Peyton

    I’m back from spending a very enjoyable Christmas with my in-laws in Indianapolis, where, if there’s a war on Christmas, it’s being waged on behalf of Colts fever; the amount of Colts gear and paraphernalia on display threatened to overwhelm anything Christmas-themed. Blogging to resume at its usual erratic pace shortly.

  • Pre-Christmas odds and ends

    The ATR household is off to visit family for the better part of the next week, so blogging will be light–well, even lighter than usual. Here’s a sampling of what I’ve been reading ’round the Web lately: Christopher has several posts on l’affaire Rick Warren that are, as usual, very much worth your time. (See…

  • November/December reading notes

    Also known as the lazy man’s book review, or capsule reflections on books I might not get around to posting on at greater length: Ecology at the Heart of Faith by Denis Edwards and Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology by H. Paul Santmire A Catholic (Edwards) and a Lutheran (Santmire)…

  • The dark side, indeed

    I had a vague recollection of this from my childhood, but Andrew Sullivan posted a link to this clip the other day and I was reminded how truly, truly awful 1978’s Star Wars Holiday Special (amazingly, featuring the majority of the film’s cast, not to mention the likes of Bea Arthur, Art Carney, and Harvey…

  • Blogs of Christmas past

    Since content will likely be light this coming week, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to offer up some representative posts from the previous four Decembers since I started blogging, as a kind of retrospective. (Note: some of these originally appeared on my first blog, “Verbum Ipsum,” but have been imported to WP;…

  • Of wolf and man

    Thanks to Jeremy for tipping me off to this review by John Gray of philosopher Mark Rowland’s new book The Philosopher and the Wolf. Rowlands lived with a wolf he adopted for many years and learned lessons from him about what it meant to be happy and to be human. He also makes the provocative…

  • Rick rolled

    Quick: name the people who gave the invocations at the last five presidential inaugurations. Four…? Three…? Anyone…? Bueller…? Bueller…? This is something that everyone will forget about on January 21st. Just because a lot of pundits and bloggers are talking about it doesn’t make it hugely important. That said, I don’t think it’ll come as…