Joe Carter

In his Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce defined a novel as “a short story padded.” This is an all too apt description. The inability to prune a story to its essential story is an unfortunate quality shared by many modern writers and the primary reason that bookshelves are filled with . . . . Continue Reading »

The American posted this interesting graph that examines the prior private sector experience of the cabinet officials since 1900. It includes secretaries of State, Commerce, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Labor, Transportation, Energy, and Housing & Urban Development, and excludes Postmaster . . . . Continue Reading »

The Jewish people have no distinct racial or biological identity—and they came from the Caucasus, not Palestine. So says Tel Aviv University professor Shlomo Sand, who admits that he wrote The Invention of the Jewish People in order “to undercut the Jews’ claims to the land of . . . . Continue Reading »

Louisiana’s Angola Prison—known as “The Farm”—is the largest maximum-security prison in America. All of the prisoners are murderers, rapists, armed robbers, or habitual felons. The average sentence is 88 years, with 3,200 people in one place serving life sentences; . . . . Continue Reading »

Kristin Parker, an archivist for Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, recently shared this snippet of a letter Gardner received from novelist F. Marion Crawford on August 23, 1896: The old fashioned novel is really dead, and nothing can revive it nor make anybody care for it again. What . . . . Continue Reading »

Kudos to our geeky President for delivering this clever line while presenting his ” Educate to Innovate ” campaign, which aims to promote the development of student inventors: As President, I believe that robotics can inspire young people to pursue science and engineering. And I want to . . . . Continue Reading »

In the year 3000, music historians are still talking about the four lads from Linverton—John Lennon, Paul MacKenzie, Greg Hutchinson, and Scottie Pippen. (I sometimes wonder if our views about the other Fab Four (Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Plato) aren’t similar skewed by the . . . . Continue Reading »

Edward Skidelsky in Prospect Magazine writes about words that think for us : No words are more typical of our moral culture than “inappropriate” and “unacceptable.” They seem bland, gentle even, yet they carry the full force of official power. When you hear them, you feel that . . . . Continue Reading »

For the past two weeks I’ve been pondering what to say in response to Shane Claiborne’s essay in Esquire magazine, “What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff?” I met Shane a few months ago and was very impressed by him, so I was excited then to see that Esquire chose him as the . . . . Continue Reading »

Forget about SUVs, if we’re really serious about reducing pollution, let’s focus on the superships : As ships get bigger, the pollution is getting worse. The most staggering statistic of all is that just 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur . . . . Continue Reading »