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Guns, Glee, and Down Syndrome

Last week, Glee aired a “ripped from the headlines” episode meant to capitalize on the debate over gun control. According to the Washington Post, the program featured “long, unsettling stretches of students sitting in the darkness, hiding under tables and desks and sobbing, while leaving devastating video messages for their loved ones … Continue Reading »

The Benefits, and Costs, of Globalization

The U.N.’s recently released 2013 Human Development Report summarizes strikingly good news about the decline in global poverty over the last two decades (whereas once 43 percent of humans lived in extreme poverty, that figure has now fallen to 21 percent) and predicted the rise of a global middle class… . Continue Reading »

Christian Principles for Immigration Reform

Today, the “Gang of 8” offers a comprehensive immigration reform plan intended to address the contemporary realities of immigration. To prepare for that conversation, I’d like to offer some points of importance for Christians to consider on this issue. Pope Pius XII said that Americans are stewards of natural resources that could support a large population… . Continue Reading »

Tom Konchalski’s Quiet Witness

For almost forty years, Tom Konchalski has scoured high school gymnasiums across the East Coast”and sometimes beyond”assessing up-and-coming athletes for his newsletter, High School Basketball Illustrated. Appearing sixteen times a year, it’s read by many of the nation’s top college basketball coaches… . Continue Reading »

“Knot Yet”: Marriage and Other Choices

In the final scene of A&E’s Pride and Prejudice the camera pans a double wedding tableau: Elizabeth and Darcy and Jane and Bingley, both couples surrounded by family and community. Misunderstanding, pride, and prejudice complicated these courtships, but honesty, self-evaluation, and chastity accompanied them too. Continue Reading »

Science Beyond Materialism

Rupert Sheldrake is a heretic, and he has the second-degree burns to prove it. On January 13, Sheldrake, a research biochemist trained at Cambridge, gave a TEDx talk at Whitechapel where he proposed to turn what he calls the “ten core beliefs” of science from assumed dogmas into questions… . Continue Reading »

Great Lines: “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”

That one of the most striking lines of poetry on beauty’s impermanence was written by a priest-killer and a thief is among literary history’s many seeming incongruencies. “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” (“Mais où sont les neiges d’anten?” in the original medieval French) appears in a ballade in the middle of François Villon’s TestamentContinue Reading »

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