Uncategorized 1157
Cheap Gratitude
Yesterday, The Atlantic ran a piece called, "'I've Never Thanked My Parents for Anything.'" The author--Deepak Singh--explains the differences between "thank you"s in the States, and expressions of gratitude from his…
Localist linkfest
Adam Gurri on persuasion and economics Henry George vs. Jane Jacobs The Upper East Side housewife: a pop-anthropological study With friends like these, the humanities don't need enemies: Enrollment in…
Scary Students
There's a piece at Vox by Edward Schlosser (a pseudonym) entitled "I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me." In the piece, the author confesses his own terror of…
The Philanthropic Revolution
Founding editor Jeremy Beer has just had his very important The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity published by UPenn Press. Walter McDougall called it "a synthetic masterpiece,"…
Double Feature
Two articles caught the attention of my Porcher sensibilities today. The first was a piece in the New York Times on urban gardening: Kerry Trueman and Matt Rosenberg began by growing tomatoes…
One Faithful Bee
“Some have affirmed that bees possess a share Of the divine mind and drink ethereal draughts; For God, they say, pervades the whole of creation." …
The Celebratory Layoff
The Atlantic ran a piece this morning on how a California-based company called HopeLab is trying to make layoffs and firings more enlivening: Chris Murchison, the company’s vice president of…
Localist Linkfest
From "Homeschooling and Christian Duty," by Sally Thomas, in First Things: The idea of sending a child daily into a hostile environment—if not actively hostile, as in bullying, then certainly philosophically…
High Salaries, Low Corruption?
I read a piece in The Week today, provocatively entitled "Pay politicians like movie stars!" The author, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, has taken aim against cronyism: But much of it, as you already…
Localist linkfest
Patrick Deneen in First Things, on Indiana's RFRA fight: This past spring, we saw something quite different and revealing and worrying. With the imprimatur of American elites, which was clearly given…
Hanging Out with, and Learning from, Some Thoroughly Material Benedictines
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A few weeks ago I was able to, once again, do something that I enjoy doing immensely--take a group of students out on a local…
For the Sake of the Children
“… but the soul of the hearer must be prepared by good habits to rejoice in the good and hate the evil, just as the soil must be well tilled…
The Trouble with Limits
Modern persons have a problem with limits, three in fact. They want every good thing to be unlimitedly available for their desires, and scarcity is taken for a cause of…
The Gentlemen from Indiana
Booth Tarkington and Jeremy Beer, that is. From The American Conservative. And what the hell, here's R. Dean Taylor (a Canadian) too.
Localist linkfest
Sarah Perry, who appeared in these pages this week, has another piece at Ribbonfarm on "weaponized sacredness": Preference falsification is a mechanism by which sacredness can operate. But sacredness is…
Silence of the Forest
“The treasures within the earth were long hidden, and trees and forests were thought of as her ultimate gift to mankind. … Even images of shining gold and ivory are…
Localist Linkfest
The John Jay Institute's symposium on home is online now. Go read it, lots of great stuff in there. The State Dept won't let an Iraqi nun in to testify…
TAC New Urbanism Panel in Dallas This Friday
The Congress for a New Urbanism is meeting in Dallas this weekend, and TAC's New Urbs will be there, hosting what looks to be an awesome panel tomorrow afternoon: Friday…
Religious Liberty Isn’t for Conservatives
My latest post over at The Mitrailleuse: If orthodox Christians, particularly Catholics, wonder why religious liberty no longer seems to apply to them, a large part of the answer is that…
2015 APL Conference
The annual conference of the Academy of Philosophy and Letters will once again be held in Baltimore this year at the BWI Doubletree. The dates are June 12-14. This year's…
Daddy, Where Do Seeds Come From?
Perhaps as our teachers sometimes tell us, there is no such thing as a bad question. That doesn’t mean that some questions aren’t better than others. It was some years…
Localist Linkfest
If Rush Limbaugh hates it, it's probably a good idea: When Dan Price said last week that he would cut his own pay and profits to make it possible to…
Localist Linkfest
Hillary Clinton's Chipotle order: Hillary Clinton, fighter of children A bizarre and perverse paragraph in the New York Times: Traveling this fascinating and contradictory land today, one must acknowledge a…
Once Again, the Opponents of Unsupervised Children are Revealed
The story is pretty much the same as before: you have children that are placed in a situation which many people would consider less than ideal, a situation which--as it…