We enter a season in which the meaning of conservatism becomes the ping-pong ball du jour. With not only an election, but the meaning of the “movement” in itself in the contention, people of various beliefs and commitments seek to lay claim to the word and thereby to the direction . . . . Continue Reading »
So, a study shows that girls play less energetically than boys. Big whup and, as they say, vive la difference. But some find even this innocuous information a cause for hand wringing. From the story:Girls tend to play less energetically than boys, because they are more interested in chatting, a new . . . . Continue Reading »
A friend of mine spent New Year’s Eve at an Orthodox monastery where, as the year drew to a close, they sang a beautiful hymn of thanksgiving, the Akathist hymn ” Glory to God for All Things .” Here’s a sample: How glorious You are in the springtime, when every creature . . . . Continue Reading »
Things continue to go from the strange, to the surreal. The International Endocrine Society is advocating that drugs be given to children with gender identity questions to block puberty, which is already done in some places. From the story:Transsexual children as young as 12 should be given drugs to . . . . Continue Reading »
Two German kindergarteners who met on New Year’s Eve this year tried to run away to Africa to get married. They weren’t able to tie the knot, but they sure made one cute story : Two German children—aged five and six—have been stopped by police from eloping to Africa to tie the . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, Christmastide is quickly drawing to a close, and it looks like record numbers spent time this Christmas, not in church or with family, but on Facebook . . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Erasmus lecture ( featured in the current issue of First Things ), “Christianity Face to Face with Islam,” Robert Louis Wilken makes a generalization that seems unassailably true: Most of the territories that were Christian in the year 700 are now Muslim. Nothing similar has . . . . Continue Reading »
The next time you are tempted to scoff at folk with disabilities who worry that they many people think their lives are not worth living, remember this story. Two medical technicians from the UK have been arrested for allegedly deciding that the life of a man with disabilities wasn’t . . . . Continue Reading »
Assisted suicide is not really about a “safety valve” against intractable suffering—that is just an assertion intended to soften the political ground, a cynical tactic intended to panic the public into supporting killing as an acceptable answer to human suffering. Scotland is the . . . . Continue Reading »
Which event in bioethics/human exceptionalism is most likely to happen in 2009? ( . . . . Continue Reading »
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