Tristyn K. Bloom

Monument to Tsiolkovsky in Borovsk, Russia. Nearly all monuments to him depict him looking to the heavens. Here’s one for all the folks who think scientific progress and mysticism are at war with one another: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of the Russian space program, was a . . . . Continue Reading »

Archaeologists in Turkey are uncovering well-preserved remains of Myra, home of the beloved St. Nicholas in the third and fourth centuries. From the New York Times : Archaeologists first detected the ancient city in 2009 using ground-penetrating radar that revealed anomalies whose shape and size . . . . Continue Reading »

TNT magazine reports : Yesterday saw the first ‘service’ of The Sunday Assembly, London’s first atheist church. Priding itself on its tagline ‘live better, help often, wonder more,’ The Sunday Assembly is the brainchild of Sanderson Jones and musical comedian Pippa Evans, . . . . Continue Reading »

As we mentioned way back in September, readers in the New York area might be interested to attend this year’s Annual Father Alexander Schmemann lecture on January 18th at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, where Peter Brown, noted scholar of late antiquity, will . . . . Continue Reading »

The American Bar Association Journal reports : Star litigators in Chicago are preparing to retry a controversial 2,400-year-old free speech case that famously resulted in the death of Socrates, now considered the father of Greek philosophy, when he drank a cup of poisonous hemlock. Dan Webb of . . . . Continue Reading »

[caption id=”” align=”aligncenter” width=”510”] Christmas eve at the cowboy church [/caption] The New York Times reports : Steve Gilbertson, 52, has been a preacher for about 30 years. Four months ago, he started a church of his own. At his last job, he had led . . . . Continue Reading »

German Family Minister Kristina Schröder, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, has upset fellow party members by suggesting that God go gender-neutral: In an interview with the weekly newspaper  Die Zeit  in which she discussed gender roles in . . . . Continue Reading »

A new policy collapsing low-ranked universities into more favorably rated institutions has sparked protest in Moscow. The Moscow Times reports: Students and faculty of the Russian State University of Trade and Economics who last week vowed an indefinite strike over . . . . Continue Reading »

Iconographer Lynette Hull, speaking at TEDxCape May in Cape May, New Jersey, offers a unique perspective on our design-obsessed age: In this brief lecture, Hull explains that by moving from command lines to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) Steve Jobs took “a giant step backwards” toward . . . . Continue Reading »

Though of course President Putin canceled the apocalypse yesterday, some Russians have nevertheless taken sensible precautions: Entrepreneurs at the company Paritel, whose tag line is “confidence in every day,” are selling tickets to spend Friday in a 65-meter-deep bunker near . . . . Continue Reading »