Joseph Bottum

As Terry Pratchett once remarked (thinking of the unwashed Desert Fathers), cleanliness is not often next to godliness, except in an extremely abridged dictionary.Comes, however, the Fredrikson Stallard Brush #1 to make it true:Because Christians get dirty floors, too.Rating: 0.05 out of . . . . Continue Reading »

An interesting column in the New Scientist begins: At a recent dinner at the University of Oxford, a senior researcher in atmospheric physics was telling me about his coming holiday in Thailand. I asked him whether he was concerned that his trip would make a contribution to climate change—we . . . . Continue Reading »

I know it’s off topic, but browsing on the Sports Illustrated website, I came across these two photos of pitchers in motion: Dwight Gooden in 1985, and Randy Johnson in 1996. The human arm isn’t supposed to do that, is it? Not the thousands of times a professional pitcher throws toward . . . . Continue Reading »

Citizen testimony at the Santa Cruz City Council: This is the way the world ends . . . whimper. . . . . Continue Reading »

Both Instapundit and National Review point today to a column in the Times of London—a column by Antonia Senior that identifies the religious character of environmentalism. True enough, but Senior’s analysis is a little odd, and it is proof, in its way, of how little religious thinking is . . . . Continue Reading »

The Daily News this morning devoted five pages, including its cover, to the arrest of forty-four Jewish religious leaders and New Jersey politicians, together with a body-part trafficker, in the Garden State corruption scandal—all under the banner of “Rabbis & Mayors, Kidneys & . . . . Continue Reading »

You’ve all read What Truths We Hold , haven’t you? An important piece by Fr. Bernard J. Coughlin, S.J., the former president and current chancellor of Gonzaga University in Spokane: The president says: “We must find a way to live together.” All the while, the infant in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Which Church Father am I, you ask, Sally?Justin Martyr, of course. How could you think . . . . Continue Reading »

It’s not the ugliest church in the world, Saints Peter and Paul in Pierre, South Dakota:which we saw this weekend, while visiting my grandmother in Pierre.Then again, it’s not the prettiest church, either, and every time we drive by, my wife asks how come only St. Peter gets a statue . . . . Continue Reading »

We left our South Dakota refuge in the Black Hills to venture out on the prairie, driving across to Pierre this weekend to visit my grandmother. The rain has been good this year, and the plains have a kind of austere beauty that tugs a little at my memories: But then I remember how hard life is on . . . . Continue Reading »