Reading Time: 7 minutes My heart is a touch heavy this birthday of mine. Don’t get me wrong: all birthdays are fantastic, so long as you’re on the right side of the green. (And even if I weren’t, I wouldn’t be in any position to complain, now would I?) Moreover, I’m publishing my first novel today, which is a […]
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Posted inReligion
In the War on Christmas, the heathens are still winning
Reading Time: 10 minutes In the past few decades, Christians’ attempted stranglehold on Christmas has receded further with each bit of dominance lost by their tribe. Now, finally, people are embracing the real reasons for the season.
Posted inReligion
Did Krakatoa’s eruption turn Indonesia Muslim?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Starting at 11:05 p.m. on October 11, 2002, three terrorist bombs detonated in quick succession on the picturesque Indonesian island of Bali, killing 202 people, mostly Western tourists, in the teeming bar district. Historians said it had been a very long time coming—119 years, by some estimates. One precursor to the 2002 massacre was the […]
Posted inHistory
On the brink: How yesterday’s fears can help us move through today’s war
Reading Time: 9 minutes In 1919, a poet started drafting what would eventually become one of our most oft-quoted poems, especially in times of struggle and disaster. In its earlier forms, it referenced tensions on the Russian border, before being scrubbed of precise details and left with a more all-encompassing sense of dread. As the poet was writing it, […]
Posted inReligion
Yet more Bible reboots
Reading Time: 5 minutes Consider some more reboots: After Adam, Noah, and Abraham, we get Moses and then Jesus. And maybe the story continues to reboot.
Posted inMeaning & Purpose
On ‘tomorrow sorrow’: How we grieve the future today
Reading Time: 7 minutes I was six years old when Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired one of its most beloved episodes, “The Inner Light.” In it, Captain Jean-Luc Picard wakes to a life not his own. He lives in a small village, where he works as an iron weaver, and everyone explains that he is recovering from […]
Posted inHistory
The 2,500 days of Mikhail Gorbachev
Reading Time: 9 minutes On March 10, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev ascended to the premiership of the Soviet Union. By the time he resigned in December 1991, roughly 2,500 days later, the geopolitical map of the world had been redrawn, including a reunified Germany and a wave of democracy in Eastern Europe. The Soviets’ longest conventional war ended; a 45-year unconventional conflict that brought the world to the brink of annihilation wound down peacefully; and his own nation lay in pieces around his feet.
Posted inSpace
For all of humanity’s failings, we’ve never stopped wondering about the stars
Reading Time: 8 minutes It was an atypically dry English spring when a man in Bath scanned the skies with a 7-inch reflecting telescope he’d designed and built by hand, through painstaking refinements to Isaac Newton’s principles of optics. William Herschel was studying stellar parallax, the phenomenon that makes a nearby star look like it has moved in relation […]
Posted inCulture
Jesus was ‘woke’: Historical figures who have moved humanity forward
Reading Time: 4 minutes When we use the word “woke,” we’re suggesting a sense of wakefulness, alertness, vigilance, and watchfulness. It’s a metaphor of self-designation for those who possess a certain kind of moral acuity. Those on the political Right who oppose what they call “The Woke Left” might embrace numerous other metaphors to signify their own ethical perception, for instance: The Somnolent […]
Posted inHistory
Book burning as ancient practice and modern menace
Reading Time: 7 minutes Since ancient times, people from almost all religions and societies have been burning books. As one scholar put it: “The goals of the book burners have been to extirpate history, to intimidate and stamp out opposition, to create solidarity, and to cleanse society of controversial ideas.” Not surprisingly, the act of book burning has […]