Helen Andrews

I wrote this article in the fall of 2008, shortly after I graduated, when I was much preoccupied with the question of meritocracy and the proper role of schools like Yale. My editor at Culture 11 declined to publish this draft, then the site went under and the piece was abandoned. I think I posted . . . . Continue Reading »

I can’t decide whether I have a legitimate reason to be annoyed with the opening sentences of this post by Diane Ellis Scalisi over at Acculturated, or whether I’m just being a snob. My default assumption is the latter, but you be the judge. Let’s take it line by line. This past . . . . Continue Reading »

Most proper scientists regard publicity as something of an affliction. After years of specialized and outwardly incomprehensible labors, when it comes time to go public with their findings, their hard-won conclusions are always twisted by illiterate newsmen to fit the crass demands of . . . . Continue Reading »

The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Shkodra, in northern Albania, has declared  that it will excommunicate anyone found to be participating in blood feuds, which are a something of a national sport in Albania, except that they are responsible for hundreds of deaths every month, which most . . . . Continue Reading »

It is impossible to tell from this short news item the exact religious affiliation of the man who unsuccessfully sued the city of Berkeley over its outdoor smoking restrictions on the grounds that they violated his free exercise rights. His complaint uses the phrase “ indigenous faith, . . . . Continue Reading »

I love Nick Lowe, I really do. In my benighted age bracket, my love for him is probably second to none. But Jiminy Christmas, how many tribute albums can one man’s back catalogue support? First there was Labour of Love   in 2001, and that was fine—we didn’t know what was . . . . Continue Reading »

I need to confess something about my contribution to the American Spectator ’s young conservatives symposium . The two points I try to make are, first, that the Right should stop carping about relativism because practically no one on the Left is a relativist anymore, and second, that the . . . . Continue Reading »

Everyone tends to make fun of the young conservatives who dress like dandies, drink port, go high church, and profess to be monarchists. Not me. First of all, in those rare souls who can pull it off , the effect is sublime. More importantly, even the most callow, self-parodic monarchist phase . . . . Continue Reading »

“God,” I said, “like Alfred Hitchcock, vouchsafes us only glimpses of Himself. I have often thought of this. And also that we make a game of trying to spot Him in this scene and then that, till we’ve squandered the revelation of the whole instead of simply accepting and . . . . Continue Reading »

The murder of Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb has been the subject of more novels, plays, and movies than any other murder of the twentieth century, and there is a good reason for this. There is also a bad reason. The good reason is that most noteworthy murderers work alone, but . . . . Continue Reading »