Joe Carter

Last summer I wrote in a post titled, Marriage Minus Monagamy , that, One of the unspoken assumptions in the debate over gay marriage is that monogamy is equally valued by both gay and straight couples. While far too many heterosexuals opt for a form of serial monogamy—marriage, divorce, . . . . Continue Reading »

From the Austrian Times : It’s pre-school childcare - Chinese style. Dad Chen Chuanliu has told how he chains his two-year-old son to a tree while he’s working because he can’t afford a nursery place for him. The rickshaw cyclist, from the Chinese capital Beijing, decided to put . . . . Continue Reading »

First Things senior editor David Goldman will be on CNBC’s Larry Kudlow show tonight at 7 p.m. EST. . . . . Continue Reading »

Harry Knox, who serves on President Barack Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, is standing by a statement he made last March that Pope Benedict XVI is “hurting people in the name of Jesus.” Not exactly breaking news, but I missed the story the first . . . . Continue Reading »

Last week, Awadh Binhazim, a Vanderbilt University Muslim chaplain, publicly acknowledged that Islamic law requires the death penalty for homosexuals. Binhazim is caught in a tough situation. As he says, “I don’t have a choice as a Muslim to accept or reject teachings.” But then he . . . . Continue Reading »

Last November I wrote that when future generations judge our era, one of the areas where they’ll likely be aghast is our treatment of those who we regard as lacking consciousness. That future may come sooner than I had ever imagined. A recent study published in the New England Journal of . . . . Continue Reading »

When Sotheby’s put Swiss sculpter Alberto Giacometti’s “Walking Man I” up for auction, it was expected to bring between $19.2 million and $28.8 million. Instead, the piece was sold to an unidentified buyer for a record-setting total of $104.3 million. The sale broke the . . . . Continue Reading »

Take a noun that can be misconstrued as a verb (or vice versa), mix it into an ambiguous headline, and you have yourself a recipe for a crash blossom : In their quest for concision, writers of newspaper headlines are, like Robert Browning, inveterate sweepers away of little words, and the dust they . . . . Continue Reading »

Dwight Gardner reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , a new nonfiction book that explores the curious and disturbing intersection of race, poverty, bioethics, and medical progress: The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia . . . . Continue Reading »

For those who don’t speak the languages of texting and leet speak, the headline can be translated as “Thirty Percent of “Elite” Students Entering College Cannot Use Proper Punctuation and Grammar—a Finding That Must Be Considered With Wry Bemusement, Lest We Fall Into . . . . Continue Reading »