Ryan Sayre Patrico

Imagine: One day a police officer knocks on your door. Standing next to him is your son Johnny, who has a look on his face that tells you he’s either done something incredibly dumb and illegal, or he just ate an entire box of Moon Pies. You cross your arms and wait for the officer to tell you . . . . Continue Reading »

Have you ever read the Hippocratic Oath? (It’s a subject not too unfamiliar to the pages of First Things ). But if you’ve read it: Which one? While I was sitting in the doctor’s office yesterday, I noticed the Oath on the wall and decided to give it a quick read. It turns out that . . . . Continue Reading »

Archbishop Chaput has been a very busy man of late. He’s just come out with a new book from Doubleday entitled Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life . There is also his recent article on real hope and change here at First Things . And sometime . . . . Continue Reading »

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve turned into quite the Olympics junkie. I just can’t get enough of the stuff. This morning I wrote about the Brit who won a gold medal in sailing by purposefully delaying his closest competitor. Last week, we heard the story of Oksana Chusovitina, who . . . . Continue Reading »

Last night, Britain’s Paul Goodison took home a gold medal in men’s sailing. At least on paper, there can be no doubt that he deserved to win. As the Wall Street Journal reports , however, his strategy in the final race could hardly be described as Olympian: Brit Paul Goodison entered . . . . Continue Reading »

Walking in the underground tunnel between Times Square and Port Authority, I overheard a conversation between a father and his young son as they passed a man handing out literature on the “hard facts” of heaven and hell: Son: Daddy, what’s hell? Father: Well, it’s a place . . . . Continue Reading »

Speaking of the train , Stefan, I’m new to the city, which means there are a lot of things I need to learn before I can start getting from here to there without scratching my head a few times. Of course, one of the first hurdles I’ve had to overcome was navigating the sprawling MTA . . . . Continue Reading »

Song For Our Lady’s Assumption As the tower of David art thou, O Mary, And in thee there is no flaw, How beautiful and lovely art thou in the adorning, And the odor of thy ointments Is like the fragarance of Libanus, Above all perfume . . . . Like a dove brooding over swelling waters, Like . . . . Continue Reading »

Earlier today, Keith Pavlischek passed along news that the Democratic Party has dropped its “safe, legal, and rare” platform on abortion. Ironically, the dropping of the word “rare” seems eerily appropriate, as Crain’s reports that 72 abortions occur for every 100 live . . . . Continue Reading »

Jody recently sent me an article from the science blog Gene Expression entitled ” Historical Dynamics and contingent conditions of religion.” Basically, what the piece argues is that the same types of mathematical formulas that Peter Turchin uses to explain the rise and fall of states . . . . Continue Reading »