Joseph Bottum

There are times when you want to watch your metaphors, regardless of how stock they have become. Speaking of the press pool’s access to an event next week, the official White House schedule reads: Tuesday, June 17. 9:45 am EDT. THE PRESIDENT is briefed on Midwest Flooding. Roosevelt Room, The . . . . Continue Reading »

In a review in Reason magazine, Ronald Bailey trashes Ben Stein’s anti-Darwinist documentary, Expelled —and, by all accounts, with some justification. I haven’t seen the film, but it doesn’t sound persuasive. Still, this passage from Bailey caught my eye: In the film, the . . . . Continue Reading »

Our friend, the law professor Stephen Bainbridge, posts a note about having an article accepted—and then rejected—by a law-review journal. He ends with an observation that it sure looks like he had a contract with the journal—and, lawyers being lawyers, the legal commentators on the . . . . Continue Reading »

This morning, a two-page advertisement against same-sex marriage appeared in the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , and the Washington Times . Purchased by an organization called “Tradition, Family, Property,” the ad is text heavy, putting an argument about the orgins and results . . . . Continue Reading »

On a blog nicely named Blog and Mablog , the blogger (and mablogger?) Douglas Wilson writes of the exchange in the new issue of First Things between Bishop N.T. Wright and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. It’s an interesting comment from Wilson, but what caught our eye was the opening sentence, . . . . Continue Reading »

Kristen West McGuire, the founder of a newsletter called Secretum Meum Mihi , sends an interesting note. It’s too short for one of our daily articles , so I thought we might post it here for our readers: Pregnancy is caused by sexual intercourse. I thought most people knew that. But . . . . Continue Reading »

“In the description and narration of such events,” Alan Jacobs writes of Martin Amis’ recent book about the attacks of September 11, “great literary skills can actually impede the proper response, as many of us learned when Updike reported his view of the towers’ . . . . Continue Reading »

I’ve gotten some early responses to my attempt to describe words that sound true of themselves , and I thought I’d pass them along. A linguistics professor at Swarthmore points out that Russian linguists have a term for these words, obrazopodrazhatel’no , which means, literally, . . . . Continue Reading »

Over at the Weekly Standard ‘s website, they’ve posted online my column , from this week’s issue, about agenbites —the term I suggest we use for words that sound true of themselves. ” Verbose has always struck me as a strangely verbose word,” I note. ” Peppy . . . . Continue Reading »

In a CNN money report today, there’s a list of the ten real-estate markets expected to post the biggest declines over the next year. Among them: #1) Miami, Fla., 12-month forecast: -24.9% #2) Fort Lauderdale, Fla., 12-month forecast: -22.2% #3) Orlando, Fla., 12-month forecast: -21% #6) West . . . . Continue Reading »