I’ve had a little ongoing dialogue with commenter “DNW” on this previous thread about eastern Europe vs. western Europe and the “migrants.” You can find the start of our back-and-forth here; just start reading and scroll down if you want … Continue reading →
A church in Indianapolis has mounted the following protest: An Indianapolis church has placed statues of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in a cage of fencing topped with barbed wired to protest the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy. … Continue reading →
…but it’s a narrow ruling: The verdict criticized the [Colorado’s] treatment of [baker] Jack Phillips’ religious objections to gay marriage, ruling that a civil rights commission was biased against him. As a result, the decision did not resolve whether other … Continue reading →
[NOTE: Today’s news is so depressing and appalling that I wanted a respite from it by going big. This is about as big as it gets.] Maria Popova writes: In our recent On Being conversation, NASA astrophysicist and exoplanet researcher … Continue reading →
Together again.
Continue reading →One of the better s***hole essays is this one by Roger Kimball, which explores a slightly different territory than most: But sometimes, outrage is but a patina of indignation whose chief motive is incontinent delight. Which is it for the … Continue reading →
There’s been a terrible terrorist attack in Egypt: Egyptian state news agency MENA is reporting that the death toll from an attack on a mosque in the volatile northern Sinai Peninsula has risen to 235 people killed. The attack appeared … Continue reading →
I was a strange child. When I was about ten or eleven years old I got hold of a book catalog for some mail-order house, right before Christmas. I’d never seen one before (this was way way before the internet … Continue reading →
In today’s previous post, I began to tackle the question of whether the parishioners in the Texas church where yesterday’s mass murder took place were banned from carrying guns. In it I quoted the following rules in Texas: Churches in … Continue reading →
Of interest: The NYPD had suspected New Jersey’s Masjid Omar Mosque, where jihadist Sayfullo Saipov reportedly worshipped, of having radical ties for over 10 years, allegedly keeping all its worshippers under watch. Moreover, the FBI, which claims it had nothing … Continue reading →
A little non-political item from the NY Post: The universe shouldn’t technically exist, according to top scientists who have spent their careers trying to figure out how the beginning of everything didn’t immediately destroy itself. I believe they actually mean … Continue reading →
Leah Libresco, who used to write for the statistics site FiveThirtyEight (headed by Nate Silver), describes how the more she studied—in the mathematical, statistical sense—about gun-inflicted deaths and gun control, the more she changed her mind on the subject: Before … Continue reading →