A Thinking Reed

  • Just doesn’t apply himself

    Report Card on the War on Terror via Balkinization

  • Wednesday metal – In Flames, “Crawl Through Knives”

    I know it’s Wednesday, but with the holiday coming up, I can’t promise there’ll be much blogging over the next couple of days. And I know I posted an In Flames video a couple of weeks back, but this is an insanely catchy song and I’ve had it stuck in my head all week. The…

  • As we go marching or It’s the war, stupid!

    Ross Douthat offers the logical response to this Jonah Goldberg column wondering why mainstream Republicans and conservatives are down on Ron Paul (who, after all, believes most of the things conservatives are supposed to stand for) and not Mike Huckabee, who exhibits many more deviations from conservative ideology: [T]he reason Paul has been treated differently…

  • All theology is animal theology

    Christopher: Considering animals in relationship to God is not something extra or foreign to Christianity. In my opinion, a serious doctrine of Creation cannot ignore the rest of the living world and the Creation as a whole and finally be Christian. Even rocks glorify God. And frankly, neither can a complete doctrine of Redemption or…

  • Nature is awesome

    Three words: giant prehistoric scorpion.

  • An end to the stem cell wars?

    If this holds up it’s surely good news since, in addition to whatever medical advances result, it means that the controversy over ESCR should evaporate.

  • The political Christian

    American Christians tend to be a bit schizophrenic about politics. They swing from utopian optimism (“Christianizing the social order,” “restoring America as a Christian nation”) to extreme pessimism when the inevitable disillusion sets in about the limits of what politics can accomplish. This recent post at the Christian Century blog by David Heim offers a…

  • Fatigue

    I was thinking this weekend as I was skimming the Sunday paper how tired I am of all the Presidential race coverage. And then the awful truth hit me with renewed clarity: the actual election is still almost a full year away. Good grief. I’ll be under a rock for the next 11 months if…

  • Friday metal – über-Anthrax edition

    Of the “big four” thrash bands of the 80s (Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth), Anthrax never seemed to quite find their niche. The mainstream success of Metallica eluded them, but they were never content to remain firmly in the underground like Slayer. They were one of the few metal bands to take rap seriously (and humorously!),…

  • Carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade

    I missed this when it first came out, but this is a good article explaining the debate over the best way to reduce carbon emissions. It’s also heartening to see Reason of all places running articles that take the reality of climate change as a given. I’m not suggesting that some measure of skepticism can’t…