A Thinking Reed

  • Friday metal – As I Lay Dying, “Nothing Left”

    A while back I posted a link to a video from this band along with a few other “Christian metal” acts. This past weekend we made a pilgrimage to Target in Alexandria – the first time we’d been there since moving in back in July, so lots of household items to stock up on –…

  • Transcript of Rowan Williams talk on the new atheism

    If you’re interested but don’t want to sit through the video of Rowan Williams’ talk on Dawkins and the new atheism that I linked to last week, you can read a transcript here.

  • Pete Stark learned to love Big Brother

    Via Jim Henley I see that my former congressman Pete Stark (D-CA) has gotten himself into a heap of trouble on account of some intemperate remarks he made during the S-CHIP debate: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) filed to censure Stark in order to express his disgust with comments the lawmaker made last week…

  • Meet the new boss…

    “[W]hen it comes to shaping future foreign policy for either party, hawks and internationalists are in, doves and realists are out.”

  • The church’s one foundation

    Christopher and Derek both have strong postings about the need for the church to remain grounded in the gospel first and foremost. You’d think this would go without saying but alas it ain’t necessarily so. They both emphatically affirm that the church should be involved in works of mercy and social justice, but if it…

  • Economics as master narrative

    Did you know that economists can tell us how much we should care about future generations or how risk averse we ought to be? Yeah, me neither! I’ve recently found myself increasingly irritated at the way economics (or, worse, a popularized version of it) has begun to function as a kind of master narrative among…

  • Subversive slowness

    Here’s a lovely essay by Rebecca Solnit on “slowness [as] an act of resistance” to the cult of efficiency, speed, innovation, and techno-mastery. (Via James Poulos @ the American Scene)

  • Edwards on confinement farming

    The former North Carolina senator told audiences that he would push for a national moratorium on building or expanding livestock confinement facilities. He also said he would push for tougher federal environmental regulations and for rigorous enforcement of current manure disposal laws. One of the oft-neglected aspects of factory farming is the environmental degradation it…

  • Immigration, wildlife and the wall

    This article at Grist examines the reasons that environmental groups have been slow to criticize the proposed border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, which will likely have extremely destructive consequences for the wildlife in the area. The reason, writes Glenn Hurowitz, is that they don’t want to invite the kind of bitter controversy over…

  • Not your typical Mormons

    Via Reason’s Hit and Run blog, this has to be the most interesting link of the day: The Mormon Worker, which appears to be just what it sounds like – a Mormon version of Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker, “devoted to promoting Mormonism, Anarchism, and Pacifism”! Maybe we can get Russell Arben Fox to comment on…