David Mills

This one from the New York Times : A Career Sustained by Unwavering Faith , about Florida Marlins’ manager Jack McKeon. He goes to daily Mass, whether he’s home or away. Mornings at church “give me energy,” he said. “You’re free. You feel good.” His daily ritual . . . . Continue Reading »

While we’re talking about baseball ( A Word for Roger Maris, and About Baseball ), here is something on the subject of the fascinating book Moneyball , Billy Beane, the manager of the Oakland A’s who used sabremetric insights to win World Series though he didn’t have nearly as . . . . Continue Reading »

In response to Chasing Babe Ruth: 6 Myths About 1961’s Home Run Race , my friend Mark Barrett wrote me: Maris’s record never did have the asterisk but was recorded along with Ruth’s 1927 season in the record books. So many variables that changed from 1927 to 1961 that to focus on . . . . Continue Reading »

A young woman I know sent me the link to an article that I admit comes from an unusual source for “First Thoughts,” but one that amused me:  Favorite Books of the Secretly Jerky . If you can’t (always) tell a book by its cover, you can often tell a man by his reading, and the . . . . Continue Reading »

Earlier today I wrote about The Emerging Church’s Reinvented Wheel . Readers interested in the subject of the “emerging church” and related movements that claim to be engaging postmodernity will enjoy our friend Matthew Milliner’s 9.5 Theses . (Through the creative use of . . . . Continue Reading »

Islamist factions jockey for power, vow religious rule , reports Betsy Hiel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review , reporting from Egypt, where she had to don a headcovering to interview members of the Salafist movement. They follow no centralized hierarchy; their religious philosophy can vary, as can . . . . Continue Reading »

As an outsider to American Evangelicalism, though a sympathetic one, I admit to being bemused by the movement’s taste for what seems to me reinventing the wheel. To be clear, this is true of its hipper elements, though not of people like my friends Russell Moore, Peter Leithart, and Darryl . . . . Continue Reading »

An addition to yesterday’s item on Michael O’Brien’s reaction to the Harry Potter stories: an alternative, and I think wiser, analysis of how the Christian ought to approach the stories by my friend Steven Hutchens: The Helpful Discovery of Dirt in Potter’s Field and  . . . . Continue Reading »

Leroy Huizenga, who wrote one of yesterday’s “On the Square” articles , sends the link to an interview on teaching, media ecology, and related matters with a former colleague, Wheaton’s Read Suchardt . Among the questions and answers: What makes a good teacher today? How do . . . . Continue Reading »

A brilliant article by The Atlantic ‘s Jonathan Rauch: Caring for Your Introvert . Here, for example, is just one of his insights: Are introverts arrogant?  Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more . . . . Continue Reading »