A Better Place to Watch a Game
Only an idiot would really miss the old Durham Athletic Park - or, if not an idiot, then only someone who hadn’t actually spent...
Saving Life on Mars, and in Appalachia
Recently, I watched as the people of Earth came together to bring The Martian home. Interstellar, Gravity, and Wall-E all tell the “lost in...
Whatever Happened to Communitarianism?
Twenty years ago, the concept and label "communitarianism" was riding high, or at least as high as any broadly applicable yet intellectually coherent ideological...
The Good City and the Good Citizen
Plato wasn’t the first to recognize the connection that exists between morality and community, though he was the first to give it philosophical expression....
From the Distant Liberal Consensus, a Defiant Conservative Yelp
As I write this review, I keep hearing about Jeb Bush, campaigning for president, talking about how the invasion of Iraq and the removal...
What Ronda Rousey Knows About Caitlyn Jenner
Hidden Springs Lane. Two of the biggest sports-related stories of this year include the dominance of UFC fighter Ronda Rousey and the introduction of...
Visit to a Small Planet
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY -- As New Horizons races past Pluto this week, I offer this blast from the recent past, a tribute to the...
Comedians in Togas
The Greeks were funny. We don’t usually think of them that way; we think of them as marbled patriarchs in togas, Really Important Men...
On Commencement Addresses
Holland, MI
It is graduation season. On campuses across the country graduates will be subject to the last compulsory and least remarkable rite of passage:...