A Thinking Reed

  • Wishy washy atheism

    Why the neo-atheists fall short of their illustrious predecessors (via Marvin).

  • Compassionate eating and care of creation

    I’d be surprised if I haven’t already linked to this at some point.

  • Note from Berlin

    I’m blogging from my pal Patrick’s “flat” (as they say) in Prenzlauer Berg, a rather bohemian (but now rapidly gentrifying) part of old East Berlin. Lots of traipsing around over the last two days, mostly confined to the eastern part of the city so far. One personal highlight so far was visiting Zion church, where…

  • Friday metal – flying to Berlin edition

    Your humble scribe is between jobs and thus taking a (well-deserved, IMO) week’s vacation by flying to Germany to see an old college chum. So, what better way to mark the occasion than with a little German metal, specifically the seminal Scorpions fall of the Berlin Wall tune, “Winds of Change”? Posting will be light…

  • The good war

    Good article by Matthew Yglesias on what Kosovo hath wrought.

  • Protest the Hero’s Fortress – early contender for best metal album of ’08?

    I agree with pretty much every word of this review of Protest the Hero’s new album Fortress. I’ve been listeining to it more or less nonstop since it came out. Listen here.

  • The “green consumer” revisited

    Via Russell Arben Fox comes a terrific post by Laura McKenna taking a shot at trendy “green consumerism.” Rusell adds his thoughts here. I blogged a bit about this phenomenon here. It’s interesting (and maybe significant) how much conventional political wisdom is frequently at odds with common-sense (and traditional) wisdom. For instance: the idea that…

  • In defense of C.S. Lewis

    Via Catholic blogger Mark Shea I came across this article arguing that J.R.R. Tolkien’s lukewarm response to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series is rooted in something deeper than aesthetic preference. The author, Eric Seddon, contends that Tolkien’s intense dislike of Lewis’ Letters to Malcolm (which Tolkien called “a distressing and in parts horrifying work”) indicates deeper…

  • Factory farming: bad for animals, bad for people

    See here for the story on the meat recall. Here for the Humane Society’s statement on their investigations into the ways sick animals are dealt with on the slaughterhouse floor. This seems like a fairly direct result of treating animals as units of production rather than living beings. (But I would say that, wouldn’t I?)

  • How green is McCain? (the continuing series)

    Grist‘s David Roberts has some thoughts.