Click here to listen to this week’s episode of The Mockingcast, which features an interview with author/theologian John Newton. 1. Let’s start with this weird and beautiful story from The Washington Post: “The key to these ancient riddles may lie in a father’s love for his dead son.” For a hundred years, archaeologists have been trying […]
The Difference Between Christmas and Easter
A few paragraphs from James Martin’s remarkable article in this past Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, “The Challenge of Easter”: The Christmas story is largely nonthreatening to nonbelievers: Jesus in the manger, surrounded by Mary and Joseph and the adoring shepherds, is easy to take. As the Gospels of Matthew and Luke recount, there was no […]
Another Week Ends: Inner Machiavellians, Lutheran Insults, Whisky Priests, Monkees, Mets, Parenthood, Veep, Viola Davis and Frankenweenie
1. I’ll admit it: I’ve been trying to lay off the David Brooks, at least in the Weekend columns. As insightful as he frequently is, there are plenty of fish in the digital sea, are there not? Well, to paraphrase a Pacino, every time I think I’m out, he pulls me back in. That is […]
Another Week Ends: Joseph Mills, Commitment Devices, Anxiety Rights, Bible Rescue, Imposter Syndrome, Hitch on Chesterton, Elmer Bernstein and Liz Lemon
1. One of the many things to adore about David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again is the cover (of the US edition). The collage manages to capture the torrential intellect at the heart of that wonderful collection without losing the humor. But it wasn’t until this past week that I […]
We (Don’t) Need To Talk About Pierre: The Benefits of French Parenting?
Judging from the amount of forwards to my inbox, Pamela Druckerman’s “Why French Parents Are Superior” has some relevant things to say. The article is another in a line of Wall Street Journal humdingers about parenting, and also the first time I’ve come across the brilliant new term, ‘kindergarchy.’ The gist of Druckerman’s argument is […]
Another Week Ends: Immortal Smartphones, Jefferson Bethke, Adolescent Rewards, Profound Comedy, Therapeutic Irony, more George Lucas, Pixar and Hunger Games
1. In last weekend’s NY Times Magazine, Carina Chocano explained “The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg” – AKA what our current obsession with “data” has to say about our humanity – dropping her usual allotment of insight bombs along the way. Not only does she point out the increasingly prevailing illusion that if something wasn’t […]
Unaccompanied Minors and the War Against the Goonies
A fitting follow-up to the recent post on the tragic decline of unstructured play in the lives of children, not to mention yesterday’s one on insomnia, this time in a Wall Street Journal editorial by Lenore Skenazy, “The War on Childhood.” She uses Amtrak’s recent decision to bump their unaccompanied minor age from 8 to […]
Another Week Ends: Zombied Church, The Hill and Wood, Full Eyes, Soda Bans, (The Paradox of) Dysfunctional Families, Joe Pa and Scandal Love
1) Something’s in the water at The Atlantic lately, because inspired after inspired article seems to be finding its way into the proverbial stream, including an intriguing article about tv show The Walking Dead‘s “Come-to-Jesus Moment.” As the review is aware (and mind you, if you’re not caught up on the show, spoilers), it’s certainly […]