Liturgy · Laughter · Camaraderie · Contemplation
I just finished watching Hamilton. And it was fine. Better than fine, actually, it was remarkably well done. From the acting to the singing and from the costumes to the set, Hamilton ticks all the right boxes and its Tonys, I’m sure, are well-deserved. But I’m not interested in Hamilton per se, but in the […]
According to Baltimore’s most sage and snarky journalist, the “martyr complex” is a real thing: “The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and […]
There was a time during the early twentieth century when Albert Einstein was a virtual celebrity. His work created buzz, his public appearances were characterized by mobs of adoring fans — he was like a rock star before rock stars were even a thing. Those days have seen something of a resurgence. Neil deGrasse Tyson […]
There once was a time in this country when “political correctness” was something that only people on the Right complained about: “Why do the Redskins have to change their team’s name?”; “Wait, ‘colored’ is all of a sudden off limits?”; “So now we can’t say ‘midget’ anymore?” No, you can’t. And you’d better not opt for […]
(And so are you.) Here’s what I mean: Agnosticism refers to what we can claim to “know” (gnosis being the Greek word for “knowledge”). An agnostic, then, is simply someone who doesn’t know something about a particular subject. The Latin equivalent of agnosticism is “ignorance” — if someone asks you whether you agree with the […]
I am sick and tired of hearing about the supposed “objectivity” of science and scientific inquiry. The claim goes like this: Belief systems, whether religious or secular, deal in supernatural issues like the afterlife, morality, and the state of the soul. Science, on the other hand, deals in brute facts, and therefore needs to be […]