Joe Carter

[Note: Every Friday on First Thoughts we host a discussion about some aspect of pop culture. Today’s theme is movies that should have won the Academy Award’s Best Picture. Have a suggestion for a topic? Send them to me at jcarter@firstthings.com ] Next Tuesday the Academy of Motion . . . . Continue Reading »

First Things doesn’t endorse candidates but we appreciate when candidates endorse our views. For example, as advocates of adventuresome space travel we naturally get excited about Congressional candidates who advance that agenda. But Kesha Rogers, the new Democratic nominee for Texas’ . . . . Continue Reading »

Go hug your favorite grammarian—it’s officially National Grammar Day . Language is something to be celebrated, and March 4 is the perfect day to do it. It’s not only a date, it’s an imperative: March forth on March 4 to speak well, write well, and help others do the same! . . . . Continue Reading »

Stephen Barr on science, reason, and Catholic faith : There is hardly any subject about which there is more widespread ignorance and misinformation than the relationship between the Catholic faith and science. This ignorance extends to all sectors of society, from the “man on the street” . . . . Continue Reading »

There are so many gems of wisdom in William Deresiewicz’s lecture on ” Solitude and Leadership “—delivered to a plebe class at West Point—that it’s difficult to find a single point to excerpt. But his section on introspection and solitude is especially insightful and . . . . Continue Reading »

Charles Rice, a professor emeritus at Notre Dame Law School, writes a regular column that appears in the Notre Dame student newspaper, The Observer . Recently, Rice submitted a column on the Catholic Church’s teaching regarding homosexuality that was rejected by the paper’s new editor . . . . Continue Reading »

First Things junior fellow Kevin Staley-Joyce examines how JFK secularized the Catholic conscience : Perhaps the most cognitively dissonant trend that Kennedy set in motion was his self-styled dualism, a vice of mind now ubiquitous among Catholic politicians. The personal–private gap can . . . . Continue Reading »

A new study finds that sedentary, obese rats and mice used in biomedical research are skewing human studies : Failure to recognize that many laboratory animals live unhealthy lives may be leading researchers to misinterpret their findings, potentially misdirecting efforts to develop therapeutic . . . . Continue Reading »

Three years ago, the U.S. Army instituted stringent new regulations for online communications to prevent violations of operations security (OPSEC). As the Army regulation explained, “the OPSEC process identifies the critical information of military plans, operations, and supporting activities . . . . Continue Reading »

Imagine if art historians could determine the authenticity of a work by asking a painting whether it was real or fake? While paintings can’t answer directly, two new techniques for discovering forgeries act as “lie detectors” for works of art. The first, developed by a team of . . . . Continue Reading »