Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
The Daily Beast correctly notes the achievement of Southwest pilot Tammy Jo Shults but with the usual caveat: Just how masterfully Tammie Jo Shults, the pilot of the badly crippled Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, handled the problem of an engine exploding at 30,000 feet is winning admiration from thousands of her fellow pilots—and should finally …
Continue reading "The Matter of Women Pilots Should Have Been Settled in the 1930’s"
It took long enough: President Donald Trump is poised to pardon Scooter J. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with the president’s thinking. The president has already signed off on the pardon, which is something he has been considering for several months, sources told ABC News. …
Continue reading "At Last, the Best Solution for Scooter Libby"
The history of the Twentieth Century is one written in blood. Between two world wars, the procession of genocides from Armenia to Stalin to the Holocaust, China and the Killing Fields, millions seemed to vanish for causes that are better hated than understood. Is there one conflict that we can look at than encapsulates the …
Continue reading "Why the Spanish Civil War is Still Important"
I've taken flak for saying this in other contexts, but this comment on a frustrated history PhD's failure to land a tenure-track position hits the nail on the head: my own experience has been very similar although now i’m glad that i left the humanities and i believe that the humanities themselves should be completely …
Continue reading "The Core Problem With Liberal Arts Curricula/Degrees"
Ross Douthat's idea to ban porn is entirely sensible: In this weekend’s New York Times Magazine there is a long profile of a new kind of pedagogy unique to our particular stage of civilization. It’s called “porn literacy,” and it involves explaining to young people whose sexual coming-of-age is being mediated by watching online gangbangs that actually …
While most Americans were bracing themselves for Donald Trump's first State of the Union Address (which turned out reasonably,) I got myself into a Facebook argument with the most bilious person I know about immigration policy. During that dialogue I stated my preference for a Canadian (the Aussies use a similar system) immigration system which …
Continue reading "Is Going to a Canadian Style Immigration System That Bad?"
There's a well-known Anglican "divine" (to use the old term) in this country who's engaged in a Facebook campaign/rant (take your pick) about African faith declarations and the popularity of prosperity teaching. It's gone on for some time, and the fact that he's Reformed only adds to the persistence. (Maybe he's also trying to prove …
Continue reading "The Real Problem with Prosperity Teaching Isn’t Theological (Well, not entirely…)"
Yesterday I received the following in my inbox from Twitter: As part of our recent work to understand Russian-linked activities on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we identified and suspended a number of accounts that were potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency. …
Continue reading "My Response to Twitter’s Paranoia About the Russians"
Buried in all the other excitement this week was the announcement that Chelsea Manning, the transgendered Wikileaker, is running for the Senate in Maryland as a Democrat. This announcement has gotten a great deal of adverse press from the right, but I think we need to stop and look at this in more detail. First, …
It's almost like the Illinois Family Association overlooked the most important detail in their lament over the course of at least one Evangelical Covenant Church: There’s something rotten in the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). It’s rotting from the inside due to the presence of wolves in sheep’s clothing like Peter Hawkinson, pastor of Winnetka Covenant …
Continue reading "Drift, Like Real Estate, Is All About Location"
