A dear college friend died
yesterday while serving as a correspondent in Syria, reporting on
the rebellion against the Syrian president. He was 43.
The world knows Anthony as a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for
International Reporting, whose stories painted a broader picture of
the beauty and terror in war-torn countries in the Middle
East. He reported on war and conflicts in lands that now hold
vital interest for the world. Through Anthony’s reporting, we
came to learn about the struggles of people—an on-the-ground view.
His work involved risk and danger. He was successful, because
he was a decent man; success in that line of work can only occur if
trust is built, especially among people increasingly wary about
journalists. It is reported that he died of an asthma attack—the
second he suffered that week. Anthony was one of my closest college
friends. We attended the ...
Read More
Secular-baiting has become something of an
art form in high GOP circles ever since Newt Gingrich began his
pioneering explorations of the genre back in the 1990s. A
milestone in the evolution of this rhetoric occurred in 2007 when
Mitt Romney
likened Secularism to radical Jihadism in a memorable speech.
Those were impressive accomplishments, for sure. But let me say
that no one, but no one, can demonize, Talibanize, or Stalinize
Secularism like Rick Santorum. On occasion he has done so, I would
admit, with a fair degree of intellectual seriousness, as in
this
2010 speech. Though for the most part his pronouncements on the
subject amount to rank and preposterous name-calling. Back in
2003 he lamented:
“I want to remind people of the societies that have been secular in
nature. Starting with the French Revolution, moving onto the
fascists, and the Nazis and the communists and the...
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Hi there! I thought I'd introduce myself. You probably weren't
expecting me--so few do--and yet since I've been so often on your
tongue in "Brainstorm" these past few days, I thought I'd just pop
in. I’m not a mystery once you get to know me--and I certainly hope
you will. Why am I here? I like a good time. When I know people are
relaxing, having intimate conversations, really enjoying themselves
both cheerfully and intensely, you'll find that I'm drawn to the
moment. I don't need a big party, a lot of decorations, too much to
drink, or a whole lot of fuss; I don't need a red carpet, so to
speak, because I carry my own with me, all rolled up and tucked
into place. I don't need a big limo, either, or a Hummer. If I need
to, I can walk and get to where I'm going. Despite what you may
have heard from someone who's never known me personally, I'm not
all about making a scene. You might ...
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Like Laurie Fendrich, I have been obsessing a bit about the
Catholic bishops and their stand against birth control. Since I
have thought quite a bit about this stuff, I would like to chip in.
I should say that I look upon Laurie as the moral conscience of
Brainstorm, and what I have to say is intended as
complementary and not as contradictory. The bishops are arguing in
the context of the Catholic doctrine of natural law, something that
goes back to Aquinas who in turn, as always, was hugely indebted to
Aristotle. I see natural law theory as an attempt to answer the
Euthyphro Problem, something expressed in the Platonic dialogue of
that name. The question is asked “Why should we be good?” and the
answer is given “Because it is the Will of God.” To which, another
question is asked. “If doing the good is doing the Will of God,
does this mean that God could simply make up...
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The guilt is overwhelming. Here we have Laurie Essig getting all
depressed about Valentine’s Day. Laurie Fendrich is beating up the
Catholic bishops for their views on birth control, and expectedly
getting a host of critics who are probably bishops writing under
noms-de-plume. And dear old David Barash is working himself up into
a tizzy about the female orgasm. Face up to it David. You are never
going to have one, so you might as well get over it now. Why don’t
you offer your services to the bishops? They could use a bit of
biology that post-dates Thomas Aquinas. And me! I am sitting on my
behind in an apartment in Paris, eating breakfast – a chunk of
freshly baked bread, slathered in butter and with lots of jam.
(What is it about French fathers and husbands? They love to spend
those long August vacations wandering through the hills picking
wild berries, which they turn into...
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to testify at a U.S.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee hearing on
innovations in higher education affordability. You can watch the
video here. It was an interesting morning marred by a
long discussion of an essentially bogus idea: that college keeps
getting more expensive because of onerous federal regulations.
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) was the first to raise this notion,
and she returned to it several times. She said it was an
opportunity for bipartisan agreement on the committee given that
Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) had cited it frequently during past
debates. The idea, in a nutshell, is that the federal government
imposes various regulatory burdens on colleges, and that colleges
have to spend money to comply with these regulations, leaving them
with no choice but to pass the costs on to students in the form
of...
Read More
Driving to work yesterday, I
was feeling that Valentine's Day depression that is wont to come
upon me on February 14. It's not just the cliche storyline of boy
meets girl, boy buys girl stuff, boy and girl eat dinner, and so it
is that love becomes incorporated into the market that gets me
down. It is the sinking sense that there is no way to ever escape
this story. So it was that I drove by the church with the billboard
that said "Jesus is God's Valentine to You" and smirked with the
ironic distance of my truly analytical feminist brain. But that
smirk was quickly wiped off my face as I listened in on a local
radio station's Valentine's Day special: a real live wedding. Of
course it was incredibly predetermined in its presentation—the
young high-school friends who were meant to be together but went
their separate ways, reunited on Facebook, now marrying live on the
radio. Of course...
Read More
You’re right, I don’t know much about basketball. Even so, I’m
caught up in “Linsanity”—infatuation with the story of Jeremy Lin,
the super-great Knicks point guard who’s the first Chinese American
to make it big in the NBA. He’s helped (understatement) the Knicks
by winning the last six games in a row, making for the longest
running streak in their season. It’d be hard for me not to
be part of Linsanity. First, this is happening in New York, the
city where people come to make it, but most often fail. If you make
it here, it’s a world story. Second, I’m married to
basketball-watching freaks. My husband, who way back in the day
played guard in high school, loves the game so much he’ll watch
reruns of games from two decades ago. Plus I’ve got a daughter
who’s a passionate Knicks fan. Lin is all the two of them talk
about lately. Although the MSG/Time Warner...
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A couple of days after
I wrote a post on the HHS ruling concerning birth control, health
insurance, and religious-affiliated institutions, and the
outrage by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and others that
followed, President Obama offered a compromise. The Catholic Health
Association of the United States approved the President’s new plan,
saying, “the framework developed has responded to the issues we
identified that needed to be fixed.” Not so the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops, which
remains opposed to any compromise. I will not rehearse the many
reasons why many like me think Catholic-affiliated institutions,
such as hospitals and universities accepting federal tax dollars,
should not be exempt from federal rulings regarding birth control
for employees. Instead, I’d like to turn to a consideration of the
concept of natural law. This, after all, is the basis for ...
Read More
Here and for the next few posts, I initiate an extended Valentines
Day card to all Brainstorm readers, but especially the women. What
better topic, à propos romance, than female orgasm? I am
much taken with scientific mysteries, evolutionary ones most
especially: those phenomena that we cannot (yet) explain, but
someday presumably will. I’ve written earlier about some of these,
notably the mystery of why women, alone among mammals, possess
extensive breast tissue even when not nursing, as well as why
ovulation is concealed in our species. The next mystery is simply
this: Why does female orgasm exist? There is a Spanish expression,
“Hay que gozar mucho para desquitarse de la vida” ("You
need to have a lot of fun to get even with life"). Life throws us a
lot of curve balls, making it tempting to conclude that some of the
good stuff, like orgasms, are simply there to make up for it...
Read More
directs the program in history and philosophy of science at
Florida State University. His forthcoming book is Science and
Spirituality: Making Room for Faith in the Age of Science.
A dear college friend died
yesterday while serving as a correspondent in Syria, reporting on
the rebellion against the Syrian president. He was 43.
The world knows Anthony as a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for
International Reporting, whose stories painted a broader picture of
the beauty and terror in war-torn countries in the Middle
East. He reported on war and conflicts in lands that now hold
vital interest for the world. Through Anthony’s reporting, we
came to learn about the struggles of people—an on-the-ground view.
His work involved risk and danger. He was successful, because
he was a decent man; success in that line of work can only occur if
trust is built, especially among people increasingly wary about
journalists. It is reported that he died of an asthma attack—the
second he suffered that week. Anthony was one of my closest college
friends. We attended the ...
Read More
Driving to work yesterday, I
was feeling that Valentine's Day depression that is wont to come
upon me on February 14. It's not just the cliche storyline of boy
meets girl, boy buys girl stuff, boy and girl eat dinner, and so it
is that love becomes incorporated into the market that gets me
down. It is the sinking sense that there is no way to ever escape
this story. So it was that I drove by the church with the billboard
that said "Jesus is God's Valentine to You" and smirked with the
ironic distance of my truly analytical feminist brain. But that
smirk was quickly wiped off my face as I listened in on a local
radio station's Valentine's Day special: a real live wedding. Of
course it was incredibly predetermined in its presentation—the
young high-school friends who were meant to be together but went
their separate ways, reunited on Facebook, now marrying live on the
radio. Of course...
Read More
Brainstorm, The Chronicle Review's blog on ideas, culture, and the arts, features some of the best minds in academic and policy circles.
