When He Had Opened The Book, He Found the Place Where It Was Written

by Joseph Bottum

Now this looks nice, a bookmark from the Met in New York:[Rating: 89 out of . . . . Continue Reading »

1 Aug 2009

Plain, Ordinary, and Decent Things

by Joseph Bottum

I didn’t know about John C. Wright till, this winter, the science-fiction writer and reviewer Robert Chase sent me a note suggesting I read Wright’s Golden Age series. You gotta love Wright, though, for this recent response to a reviewer (noted over at the always-interesting Postmodern . . . . Continue Reading »

29 Jul 2009

Dept. of “You’re in Over Your Head”

by Will Wilson

Sci-Fi Author John C. Wright takes down a belligerent reviewer in style : The thrilling conclusion: An interviewer once asked me if my Christianity or my political philosophy would offend readers, by which he meant readers to the Left of Center. I answered that since such readers get offended at . . . . Continue Reading »

27 Jul 2009

Mary Mary

by Sally Thomas

This past Wednesday, July 22, of course was the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene. In honor of the day, The Anchoress wrote an insightful meditation on tradition’s identifying her with the woman caught in adultery, to which many commenters, including me, responded spiritedly. I have been interested . . . . Continue Reading »

25 Jul 2009

More Little Ironies (Warning: Non-Religious Cultural Content)

by Sally Thomas

So here we are at my mother’s house, where we’ve been visiting with very great pleasure for the last ten days. We don’t have a television at home, so whenever we’re here, the children spend a lot of time catching up on all the PBS Kids programming they miss the rest of the . . . . Continue Reading »

23 Jul 2009

Generation Hobbes

by James Poulos

One drawback of Leviathan is that Hobbes, the great theorist of the individual, doesn’t theorize the kind of individual that emerges in real life in the wake of, say, Napoleon. (This is a kind of individual different yet from the one we associate with the Revolution itself.) Already within . . . . Continue Reading »

21 Jul 2009

eBaywatch: Something That Actually Looks Useful

by Sally Thomas

Check this out. Bidding closes today, so hurry. Al says we can’t tell how good this really is without trying it ourselves; on the other hand, it’s not a Sacred Heart tongue stud. [Rating: 90 out of . . . . Continue Reading »

18 Jul 2009

Summer Reading Redux

by Sally Thomas

Well, that was June. This is July.Read-aloud for the 5- and 6-year-olds: Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, in a volume with all the stories.The 11-year-old: Is currently rereading, for the zillionth time, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, in a cheesy-looking (photos from the films on the . . . . Continue Reading »

9 Jul 2009

On My Summer Vacation, I . . .

by Sally Thomas

. . . did not go to the beach. Instead, I googled the phrase religious beach, and here are some of the things the search turned up: Dollar-Stretching Luau Deals like this inflatable beach ball. They didn’t have a picture of the un-inflatable kind. Information regarding religious beaches in Tel . . . . Continue Reading »

7 Jul 2009

Talking Shop

by James Poulos

Here’s the clip from Matthew B. Crawford’s guest appearance on Colbert: . . . . Continue Reading »

27 Jun 2009