Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
It just keeps going around and around, this time it's white women in the crosshairs: Torch-carrying neo-Nazis in Charlottesville were the face of white supremacy in 2017. Today it’s “Nice White Parents.” That’s the title of a new podcast distributed by the New York Times which argues that many black and brown children are not …
Continue reading "Today’s Front-Line Warriors for Justice are Tomorrow’s Demons"
The overwhelmingly white, anarchist activists who populate the ongoing protests in Portland, Oregon should not be underestimated for their strategic savvy. In seizing the mantle of “Black Lives Matter”, they’ve discovered a work-around to arrogate moral cover for whatever insurrectionary upheaval they would have been ideologically committed to fomenting anyway. The Left/liberal political and media… via …
Continue reading "How white radicals hijacked Portland’s protests — UnHerd"
Celebrated a 1928 BCP said (and social-distanced) mass using an antique chaplain portable altar. via First outdoor church-in-a-box, surrounded by redwoods — Ad Orientem
This interesting exchange between Danté Stewart and the well-known Episcopal theologian Fleming Rutledge appeared in my Twitter feed: It's not a simple subject to unpack but it's not as hard to understand as Rutledge thinks it is. First, no matter how you try to make it happen the New Testament doesn't really advocate changing, let …
Continue reading "The Answer, Fleming Rutledge, Is Blowing (in Part) in the Lectionary"
Including this now ex-Washingtonian: During the last night in my condo in DC, I had to walk my dog an extra lap around the block because a crazy person was outside screaming obscenities. I wasn’t afraid. I just didn’t feel like getting into it with him or having to listen to his story—his “Let me …
Continue reading "It’s Back to the 1960’s and 1970’s for Urban Decay, but Some Have Had Enough"
Wishful thinking from Foreign Affairs: Dollar hegemony isn’t foreordained. For years, analysts have warned that China and other powers might decide to abandon the dollar and diversify their currency reserves for economic or strategic reasons. To date, there is little reason to think that global demand for dollars is drying up. But there is another …
Continue reading "Dollar Hegemony Will End, But Not Voluntarily"
We all rely on the news to give us information about the world. That information lets us make decisions: whether it’s safe to fly to Spain, whether red wine causes cancer, whether we’re likely to lose our job for tweeting something. We use the media to help us understand the risks that surround us. The… via …
We are now approaching the two-month mark since the riots that erupted across the United States in late May and early June. There is a reasonable argument to be made that these riots were unprecedented in U.S. history — or at the very least, since the 1960s. Yet if one surveyed the national media today, …
Continue reading "Two months since the riots, and still no “National Conversation”"
Many jobs is our so-called capitalist economy aren't worth much: What’s going on? Surprisingly, one of the more convincing explanations comes from an anthropologist who has looked beyond narrow economic reasoning to examine the actual social or psychological functions served by many of the jobs in today’s service and knowledge economy. David Graeber of the …
Continue reading "A Lesson From the Middle East About Useless Jobs"
Prolegomena: A Defense of the Scholastic Method. By Jordan Cooper. A Contemporary Protestant Scholastic Theology. The Weidner Institute: A Division of Just and Sinner, 2020. 358 pp. $21.60 (paperback) Whether you realize it or not, a heated debate has been taking place in Protestant circles these past few decades, over the usefulness or even compatibility… via …
Positive Infinity 