The journal Psychosomatic Medicine has published a study that shows how intellectual work actually makes you hungry. A group of students was asked to complete a series of mental tests, after which they were presented with an all-you-can-eat buffet. On average, the group ate more after thinking than after simply sitting and relaxing:

Each session of intellectual work required the burning of only three more calories than relaxing did. But when the students hit the buffet table after the text summation, they took in an additional 203 calories. And after the memory and attention tests, the subjects consumed another 253 calories. Blood samples taken before, during and after the activities found that all that thinking causes big fluctuations in glucose and insulin levels. And because glucose fuels the neurons, a transitory low level in the brain may signal the stomach to get the hands to fill up the mouth, even though the energy actually spent has gone up just a hair. The researchers note that such “caloric overcompensation following intellectual work, combined with the fact that we are less physically active when doing intellectual tasks, could contribute to the obesity epidemic.”

Intellectual work makes you hungry–so that’s why I’m always ready to eat after reading the latest issue of First Things.

Or at least higher infidelity in 2006 than in 1991, says the New York Times. The noticeable shifts came in men and women over 60 and those under 35. One could say many things about the findings, but I was struck by the tone of a few sentences. One, in the print edition, summarized the article:

“More people are cheating, new studies find, and younger women appear to be catching up with men.”

Another did the same, but in the body of the piece:

“Notably, women appear to be closing the adultery gap: younger women appear to be cheating on their spouses nearly as often as men.”

Notice the language. It’s not that women are as unfaithful as men or that women’s infidelity is rising; it’s that women are “closing the adultery gap” and “catching up with men,” the same language you use when talking about women achieving parity with men in the classroom, workplace, etc.

Tara Parker-Pope, the author of the article, and the researchers taking these surveys make it clear that they do not support infidelity, and there’s no reason to think that they do. But her choice of phrasing makes me think of the feminists who want, for example, to create feminist pornography–the ones who, instead of proposing virtue for both sexes, seek to give women equal opportunity for vice.

Again, I don’t think that that’s the intended message of Parker-Pope or the researchers, but it is striking to see the facts of adultery described in terms of women finally catching up to men.

David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University. Writing in the magazine Prism, a publication of Evangelicals for Social Action, Prof. Gushee tells us about a “Holocaust travel course” he took this past summer and the lessons he took away from that trip:

This sobering visit to Berlin, Prague, Cracow, and Warsaw—and to such sites as the Nazi concentration camps Ravensbruck and Auschwitz—did more than deepen our understanding of the details of Nazi evil and Jewish suffering. It also clarified for me what matters most in Christian public engagement. However, the misuse of [just war theory], especially in the United States, is a common “worst practice” that contributes to war. It happened in the run up to the misbegotten Iraq War, and it happens in the run-up to just about every U.S. war. Partly because of the abuse of [just war theory], we are a church that can’t “just say no.” That is a violation of the teachings of Jesus and thus a failure of discipleship.

After reading Prof. Gushee’s article I’m not sure I see the connection between his visit to the Nazi concentration camps and his hostility to just war theory. In any case, I hope I am not being too churlish by suggesting that there is something unseemly about using a visit to the concentration camps as a means to score a few politically correct jabs against the Iraq war or the just war tradition.

Besides, a profoundly opposite lesson might well be taken away from such a trip. That lesson might be gleaned from a story told by James H. Toner, who until recently was professor of international relations and military ethics at the Air War College. Toner writes:

A number of years ago, while teaching at a university in Vermont, I was invited to join a public affairs panel to discuss just war issues. I soon discovered that I was the sole supporter of that notion, and I was getting much more than I was giving. Indeed, the audience seemed hostile, not only to the concept of just war, but also to me. An elderly man in the rear of the audience stood and said something to the effect that he wanted to support my views on just war; he added that he was a classical musician. I remember thinking to myself that there was one person in the room who agreed with me–and that he was probably a nut. “I want to tell you,” the man continued, “what is the sweetest music I have ever heard.” I was still mentally cringing. “Although I have heard wonderful music thousands of times, the most beautiful was the sound of U.S. Army tanks. You see, they were coming to [the death camp which then held him as a young man], and that sound meant that I would be able to grow up.” The audience and I had the grace to sit in silent reflection for a few moments, and I felt rather like Edward Everett must have at Gettysburg.

I wonder what this Holocaust survivor would think about Prof. Gushee’s rather contrary lesson. Not much, I would think.

From book twelve of Homer’s Odyssey:

Enough: in misery can words avail?
And what so tedious as a twice-told tale?

Zbigniew Janowski, reviewing Edith Hall’s new book The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey in the November issue of First Things, shows how these verses don’t apply to Homer’s own masterpiece:

Edith Hall’s The Return of Ulysses is a sweeping tour of almost all one could wish to demonstrate about the spell of Homer. A professor at the University of London, Hall takes the reader through literature, stage performances, musical works, and films—all showing the enduring impact of the Odyssey.

But don’t take my word for it. Subscribe to First Things and read the entire review online today.

Welcome to Halloween in West Hollywood.

The Collar
by George Herbert

I struck the board and cried, “No more;
        I will abroad!
  What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
  Loose as the wind, as large as store.
        Shall I be still in suit?
  Have I no harvest but a thorn
  To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
        Sure there was wine
  Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
  Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
                All wasted?
  Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
        And thou hast hands.
    Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
        Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
  Good cable, to enforce and draw,
        And be thy law,
  While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
        Away! take heed;
        I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s-head there; tie up thy fears.
        He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
        Deserves his load.”
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
        At every word,
  Methought I heard one calling, Child!
        And I replied, My Lord.