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Happy New Year

To all the readers of SHS, a wonderful, safe, healthy, and happy New Year. And remember, in the end we all destined to be yesterday’s news—as the above photograph I took in Rome symbolizes. (You will, no doubt, notice that there isn’t a photo. Blame Blogger: It won’t upload. . . . . Continue Reading »

Putting Privacy Over Patient Safety

The government’s federal regulations about health care are rigidly pro-privacy. That is generally to be applauded, although I have heard (perhaps Apocryphal) stories of staffers not being able to tell a spouse that their beloved is in the hospital.On the other hand, sometimes bureaucrats can . . . . Continue Reading »

A Not So Tiny Wit

Robert Benchley was an American original. An original what, I have no idea. Some say humorist. But he was more than that. He was also a first-rate pedagogue. Consider his Academy Award-winning short film How to Sleep . Thought you could sleep before? You fool . . . I started picking through my worn . . . . Continue Reading »

Pro Hospice Article Cause for Concern

You would think that I would be delighted by this compassionate, well meaning, and finely written column by a hospice doctor named Michele Ferguson. She does an excellent job of describing the kind of benefits that hospice provides dying patients:In my work, I am reminded every day that when . . . . Continue Reading »

Humilitas

Alan Jacobs, who has written often for First Things , always with wit and wisdom , has written this for Christianity Today . For those of us outside the Anglican Communion, it’s all too easy to wax snide about the, well, you know. Everyone knows. And that seems to be Jacobs’ point. What . . . . Continue Reading »

Notes on Charlie Wilson’s War

? If Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks had wanted to make a screwball comedy about modern American covert operations that was also a not-so-covert commentary on the current war in Iraq, Charlie Wilson’s War would have been it. ? Yes, sir—killing Russians has never been such a gas. And to . . . . Continue Reading »

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