The Assassin on the Porch
According to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, even six-month-old babies stress out when they see a spider or a snake.
Dispatches
An Award-Winning Documentary on Flannery O’Connor Premieres in St. Louis
Asked the overarching subject of her work, O’Connor replied, “The action of grace in territory held largely by the devil.” If the life and work are inseparable, her faith and her work are even tightly bound. Yet dogma never kept her from seeing things whole.
Sean Connery and Aging
Sean Connery, in a screenshot from ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.’
I can remember when a critic went coocoo-bananas that Sean Connery had supposedly started playing father/mentor roles. This was after the release of 1986’s Highlander, in which he played a “Spaniard” from ancient Egypt who trains…
Saturday in the Park
I share our dog’s affection for Lakeview Park, its wide, smooth path rising and falling alongside three small lakes edged with reeds, a weeping willow, a dock, a steep hill. One Saturday morning in early October, as soon as the sun slanted through cold mist, we set off happily.
By…
Voting as Firebreak
When I was a kid, Sinclair Oil Company used to hand out Apatosaurus toys and soap-on-a-rope as incentives, since their logo was “Dino” the dinosaur.
Word on the street with the banana-seat bunch was that oil came from dead dinosaurs.
Oil began, of course, as algae and plankton mixed…
How Caliphate Fell Apart—and What That Means for the Rest of Us
Both journalism and academe hinge on free and open research, questioning, exploration, yet at the highest levels, it is rare to hear, “Go dig around and see what you come up with” or “If you’re not sure about this, stay with it until you are.” Instead, you have to pretend confidence, because often, those with established power want their own world view reinforced, their plans bolstered, their agendas fulfilled, their budgets closed.
The Big Three Seventy-Five Years Ago
At the risk of sounding like a nun insisting that the children wear clean plaid uniforms because they will study harder, I find myself thinking that we are all somehow a little better when we know there are ways we should behave. Not in robotic conformity, but by acknowledging the needs of those around us and the gravity of our responsibility to them.
The Mysterious Case of the Grotto
Why the grotto will endure as a place to think, pray, worry about a diagnosis, ache for a loved one, savor their recovery, appreciate the healthcare workers’ sacrifices.
Women Save Borat
Maria Bakalova and Sacha Baron Cohen in the new Borat sequel.
The Borat sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, was released last night on Amazon Prime, a few hours earlier than announced, to coincide…
The Problematic Roller-Skaters of Geneva
I could not relax, walking the bike path today, among people blaring country music, the guy shouting at heaven, large unleashed dogs thinking heroic thoughts, and clouds of biting gnats in the sun. But what spiked my irritation was the group of five middle-aged guys on expensive…