Recent Blog Posts

  • Too far from food

    What my brain does when it hears the word “steak” Beatrice Marovich has a fascinating essay at Religion Dispatches called “Eat, Pray, Kill: The Basic  Brutality of Eating,” in which she writes about the ethical quandaries of food in the context of secular morality and religious traditions. It’s fascinating to me both because of the sheer number…

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  • From the wayback machine

    Other bloggers occasionally like to dig up something they wrote years ago and share it again, either for nostalgia’s sake or because it has become relevant again, or both. I’m going to do that today, only I’m going super old school on you. High school, that is. Apologies for the fuzziness– I need a real scanner.…

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  • The squeaky wheel will never be trusted…or something

    I do not like Psychology Today. I’ll say that up front. That’s primarily because “fluff” would be a gracious term to apply to most of its articles, and they have the annoying habit of presenting whatever trend or subject being discussed as a brand new phenomenon, accompanied by the inevitable cover advertising the preeminent story of the…

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  • Weekend web readin’ (late)

    From the hairpin, The Best Time I Took My Baby to the Emergency Room  Money quote: This is still a little too raw for me to really want to talk about it, but I got a bit of a guilt-nudge from yesterday’s post on criminalizing bad mothers. All parents do something stupid at some point, and…

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  • Religion is and isn’t special

    Passerotti, God the Father The primary reason, it seems, that people are now telling Dan Savage that he shouldn’t have apologized– even in as qualified and precise terms as he did– is because it gives the impression that one should not criticize religious beliefs. And if one does so, and it offends, the appropriate thing…

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  • “Bullshit.”

    Cross-posted from State of Formation. In today’s news, we hear that a group of high school students were offended and walked out of a talk because they were told that they are too moral to do things like stoning women for being non-virgins on their wedding night or owning slaves. The person giving this talk…

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