Megan , who’s started a dialogue with Ellen Ruppel Shell (author of the new book Cheap ), has some ruminations on the infamous maker of shelves with short shelf lives. Lots to digest, including some deee-lightful ancedotes from the bad old days of furniture so durable you seemed to be stuck . . . . Continue Reading »
Noted Neuro-Buddhist Sam Harris has this to say about the President’s choice to head the NIH: Dr. Collins has written that “science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence” and that “the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly . . . . Continue Reading »
It’s official. Cultural libertarians have jumped the shark. Read this Reason.com article and marvel. That’s right, the author isn’t celebrating the fact that citizens have a right to be vulgar, but rather the fact that citizens are vulgar. James’ article on the ‘Sex . . . . Continue Reading »
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 »
Thanks to Alan Jacobs , I have read the latest excerpt from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs . “I will restore your sense of childlike wonder,” he vows. “There is nothing you can do to stop me.” Hold that thought. The excerpt in question reads thus: Did you know that now, . . . . Continue Reading »
Reihan has a nice two-post roundup of relatively sane commentary on the Gates imbroglio. We could have an interesting conversation about race, memory, and HONOR in America (as opposed to mere or simple dignity), roping ole Tocqueville back into it, or not; either way, it does seem right to conclude . . . . Continue Reading »
I don’t normally frequent the anarcho-syndicalist enclaves of the blogosphere, but my curiosity was piqued by the ongoing saga of the “Tarnac 9” , whose penchant for absurdism combined with neo-Benedictinism is at least somewhat endearing. As it happens, the now-released . . . . Continue Reading »
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 »
Patrick Appel has a long, introspective roundup of reader reax to some posts on atheism at the Dish. He closes with a personal take, acknowledging there is a connection between pantheism, agnosticism and atheism. [ . . . ] Most of the tension between the terms does revolve around “God” . . . . Continue Reading »
According to Tom Wolfe , our space program needs a philosophic justification to get the “godlike” adventure that gave us all that right stuff going again. Here are a few random thoughts in that direction. I’m not saying I agree with them or that I’m volunteering to be a . . . . Continue Reading »
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