So you’re a little kid, and every morning you walk out into this world full of wonder, a world so immense that it is beyond our comprehension and always will be. There is life continually springing from the earth, distant suns shining as stars flanked by their own planets, hard reality and deep mystery, and […]
Not all of Putin’s propagandists know they’re working for him… Right now, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine, a peaceful neighbor whom it attacked without provocation. The Russian military is targeting civilians, including children, with bombs and starvation in its effort to end the Ukrainians’ resistance to annexation by democidal kleptocrats. As […]
What would a Bible-believing nation do about aliens? … Living in the South, you hear a lot of folks say we need to abide by Biblical teaching. You also hear people complaining about non-Americans coming to live and work here. So, I thought to myself, “What does the Bible have to say about that? What […]
The curious history of an even curiouser phrase … It’s raining cats and dogs. A common enough phrase. Makes not the first lick of sense, though. So why do we say it? Well, there are several folk etymologies floating around, including these from the Library of Congress website: Odin, the Norse god of storms, was […]
Why neither liberals nor conservatives will allow reparations … In cities across the US — from Santa Monica, CA, to Athens, GA, to Evanston, IL — Americans who had their lives upended and their opportunities dashed by bigoted policies and actions by their own governments are receiving at least some measure of redress for their losses. But reparations […]
It’s not about men playing cards … Early in his career, Steve Earle was playing in a club called the Old Quarter in Galveston, Texas, to a “crowd” of about four people, when in walks his hero, Townes Van Zandt, who proceeds to sit directly in front of him. And in between every song, he […]
A man, his music, and his cars … Billy Joel started this. It was back in the early ’80s, around when Joel’s “Uptown Girl” video was rotating on MTV. I read this magazine interview, he was asked something about the path to there from Glass Houses and from Piano Man before that. Joel said he […]
Why the Kenosha shooting jury got it right … Before I proceed to tick off a lot of people I agree with politically while garnering attaboys from some folks I think are dead wrong about pretty much everything, there are three points I need to make clear. First, I’m a liberal. I’m not here cheering […]
I guess it could have been worse … I wish I’d bought the damn shoes. I had an extra fifty bucks on me because I couldn’t decide on some shoes before I had to get to work. This was in Madrid back in the 1980s. I’d take the train out to Móstoles, a suburb on […]
The “power of habit” works both ways, unfortunately … Years ago I heard of an experiment supposedly performed at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta. What they did, so the story goes, was to put a scaffold in the chimpanzees’ rec room with an enormous bunch of grapes perched on top. Apes, in case […]