My pals over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians are having an interesting conversation about the best justificatory foundation for their brand of classical liberalism. Kevin Vallier argues, correctly in my view, […]
Search Results
You searched for: beauty
What is that “Presidential” look? Consciously or subconsciously, American voters ask themselves that question every four years on the way to the ballot box. Is it the Mount Rushmore-ready chin, […]
Brain imaging studies show that every time we learn a new task, we’re changing our brain by expanding our neural network.
South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was recently portrayed with his penis hanging out, by the very talented satirical artist Brett Murray. The piece, entitled The Spear, features President Zuma standing […]
News that Helen Frankenthalerdied yesterday at the age of 83 after a long illness is making a lot of people recall just how important a figure the self-described “saddle-shoed girl […]
Displaying a surprising lack of self-awareness, Franzen represents his (and other book lovers’) aesthetic preference for the physical book as a universal point of morality . . .
Today the Friends of Yemen met in Riyadh. One of the key issues, as it often is at these meetings, is that of foreign aid. Several days ago a group […]
It has been a bad week for Mitt Romney. He did win both the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll and the Maine Caucus over the weekend. But neither of […]
Why travel all the way to Italy when you can visit a place much closer by that is shaped like Italy? That is the alluring ruse proposed by this poster, […]
I’m still not sure what Pinterest is for [1], but scrolling a recommended collection of maps on the site, I couldn’t help but notice that the number of cartographic tattoos […]
Many thoughtful, sensitive people are mature enough to have pierced the romantic illusion and seen through its “promise of perfection” for themselves. The question is, are we spiritually mature enough yet to accept the implications of what we have already seen?
1n 1947, Ukranian refugee Ihor Ševčenko wrote to England and persuaded George Orwell to authorize a Ukranian translation of Animal Farm. Over six decades later, writer Andrea Chalupa tracked down the story of this extraordinary man.
The real world has never been more real, with the latest proof being the release of the much-hyped Retina Display on the new iPad from Apple. This new tablet screen, […]
When I was in high school in the USA in the late 1980s, the big Asian language that many of my peers wanted to learn was Japanese. A half-decade later, […]
The latest climate change catastrophe scenario is now out: rising sea levels over the next century could flood 3.7 million people in over 500 U.S. cities, including New York, New Orleans and […]
It’s a wonderful oddity—I hesitate to say “coincidence”—that the best erotic poem in literary history should appear smack dab in the middle of the Bible. The Song of Songs (known […]
“The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist—that it’s a godlike thing,” performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson says in […]
Following the news stories of Maurizio Seracini’s search for The Battle of Anghiari, a “lost” 1505 fresco by Leonardo da Vinci that Seracini believes is hidden behind Giorgio Vasari’s 1563 […]
In November, I wrote about Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, the Egyptian student and atheist who posted nude photos of herself as a protest against Islamist suppression of women’s bodies and voices. […]
Does it ever seem that you enjoy the world through your smartphone these days? Documenting every event can be bad for your mind and always being connected stunts creative solutions.
A recent report from Birmingham, England, announced that millions of British children were “culture starved.” Their proof of starvation came in the form of a survey of 2,000 parents from […]
A few years ago I gave a sermon at my (very liberal) church asking the question: “What determines the limit to our tolerance?” After the service, one member of the […]
Images of tone, skinny bodies and ideal beauty stare us down everywhere—from web sites to TV shows, in magazines and advertisements. Men are not immune from the pressure.
A tsunami of words has been unleashed this week in response to the violent death of Trayvon Martin. Grown men with tears in their eyes have choked up as they […]
Increasing demand for year-round, out-of-season organic food has shifted production to Mexico where large farms produce monocultures, depleting local soil and water resources.
Rick Santorum beat Mitt Romney in all three Republican contests on Tuesday. Santorum won by sizable margins in both Missouri and Minnesota—where Romney came in third behind Ron Paul—although Missouri […]
In an aside to his contribution to our recent discussion of same-sex marriage (my contribution is here), Big Think’s Peter Lawler wrote that Darwinists agree with many religiously observant people […]
It’s a Monday afternoon in Washington, DC. Do you know what your spouse is doing? I hate to break it to you, but 30 of them are sitting in their […]
Thanks to everyone who read, commented on, and shared my first column, “The Beautiful Optimism of Libertarianism,” last week. The responses were thoughtful and varied significantly; I hope to address […]
Short of inventing a time machine and travelling back to the 16th century, we’ll most likely never know what Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa looked like when it was first […]