A Thinking Reed

  • Fair warning

    I’m considering a post – perhaps a series! – on the greatness of my long-beloved Beverly Hills 90210. My wife and I have been watching the just-released DVD of season 4. So great.

  • One of these things is not like the others

    Rod Dreher writes: I think the most common, and superficially common-sensical, questions that comes up in discussions of this issue is, “How does Jill and Jane’s marriage hurt Jack and Diane’s?” The idea is that unless you can demonstrate that a gay marriage directly harms traditional marriage, there is no rational objection to gay marriage.…

  • The sanctimonious carnivore

    I really don’t want to turn this into the all vegetarianism all the time blog. For one thing, I do have other interests. For another, I can only assume most readers don’t like being hectored about their dietary choices all the time. Plus, I’ve never been the proselityzing type. But for whatever reason there seems…

  • Book meme redux

    Marvin also tagged me for this book meme, which I’m pretty sure I did a while back, but maybe it’d be interesting to do it again without looking at my old answers. Here goes: 1. One book that changed your life: Miracles, by C.S. Lewis. Reading this book as an undergrad was the occasion for…

  • (Eco)culture wars

    Via Jeremy, a smart post from Patrick Deneen on the way Left vs. Right thinking is driving a lot of people’s reactions to environmental and resource challenges. I continue to be somewhat amazed at the glib dismissal of global warming and other environmental problems on the part of many conservatives. There is almost no attempt…

  • The Lutheran Song

    I’d be a bad Lutheran if I didn’t link to this (well, I might be a bad Lutheran anyway). (I don’t think Adam Sandler has much to worry about, incidentally.)

  • Movie memery

    This one comes by way of Marvin. 1. One movie that made you laugh The Princess Bride 2. One movie that made you cry Big Fish 3. One movie you loved when you were a child Back to the Future 4. One movie you’ve seen more than once Ghostbusters (many, many times) 5. One movie…

  • Big questions

    ATR favorite Keith Ward also has a new book out – The Big Questions in Science and Religion. You can read a lenghty excerpt here (I haven’t read the book or the excerpt yet). I’m guessing it will cover a lot of the same ground as his recent Pascal’s Fire, though it looks like this…

  • Northcott’s A Moral Climate

    Michael Northcott, a Scottish theologian, has a new book out on theological ethics and climate change. Northcott previously wrote a good book on the environment and Christian ethics, and this new one got a glowing write up in the Christian Century by Duke University chaplain Sam Wells. I’ve already ordered the book; it looks like…

  • The value of abstaining

    One objection you sometimes get to vegetarianism is that there’s no point in bothering because a single person giving up meat isn’t going to make a dent in the meat industry and, in all likelihood, isn’t going to save any animals. While this question might rest on some dubious premises (are we sure that no…