Hallie Erminie Rives, Smoking Flax. I’m reading this for some ongoing research on lynching, crime, and the Southern economy. It’s a defense of lynching in the form of a short novel featuring predictably one-dimensional characters and racist tropes. It’s a quick read and a useful foray into the rhetoric of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century […]
To The Mom Or Dad With The Crazy Kids
Dear Mom or Dad with the Crazy Kids acting up in public: I’m not judging you, I doubt anyone else nearby is judging you, and anyone who is judging you probably doesn’t have an opinion that matters. I’ve been there. Kids are crazy, sometimes borderline psychotic, sometimes actually psychotic. Sometimes they’re upset about what’s for […]
Improve Your Bible Reading With This One Simple Trick
Reading the Bible is harder than you think, even with e-readers and the Holy Bible app. It’s just a whole lot easier to scroll mindlessly (and soullessly) through Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit which offer compact snippets of the world in the form of cat pictures, inspiring quotes, and political rants filled with grammatical atrocities. The […]
Peace on Earth? A Handful Of Readings On God And Country
A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace― Brian Zahnd “In short the problem is this: far too few who believe in the risen Christ actually believe in his revolutionary ideas. There is a sense in which we create religion as a category to keep Jesus from meddling with […]
A Few Thoughts On “Fake News”
1. People are very tribal, and the more I’ve read scholars like Robin Hanson and Jonathan Haidt, the more I’ve become convinced that a lot of what we do is about showing which team we’re on rather than pursuing truth or effecting change. Given that this is the most likely motivation for action, people are […]
Hayek On Truth
“If truth is no longer discovered by observation, reasoning, and argument, but by uncovering hidden causes which, unknown to the thinker, have determined his conclusions, if whether a statement is true or false is no longer decided by logical argument and empirical tests, but by examining the social position of the person who made it, […]
Thoughts on the Passing Scene: Season 2 of “Fear the Walking Dead”
SPOILERS BELOW Against my better judgment, I gritted my teeth and stayed up late one night to finish watching Season 2 of Fear the Walking Dead. It does at times seem like filler between seasons of The Walking Dead. The characters aren’t particularly compelling, even after two seasons of development. The show doesn’t really have […]
Elections and the Sovereignty of God
Just before the election, I signed the “Economists Against Trump” open letter. Trump’s rejection of globalization is based on fallacies, and while I hope there is less domestic regulation in a Trump presidency I fear that on net, the rejection of globalism and the potential erosion of reasonably robust political institutions in the West will […]