The South may be the one part of the country where ‘evangelicals’ actually have some cultural dominance. But ‘evangelicalism’ has had its power centers all around the country. This is especially so in the Philadelphia-Princeton belt, the halo around Lake […]
During the mid-20th century the image of the cigar was a rather tacky one. Its high class image flourished in the First Gilded Age, 1865-1917, and again in the Second Gilded Age, approximately 1975 to the present day. In the […]
A difficult feature of the current – and most popular method – of romanizing Japanese makes it difficult to pronounce properly or understand some words. Would you prefer a Nô play, a Noh play, a Nou play, or a Noo […]
The ‘mean center of population’ gets a lot of publicity. But it is misleading, and it even misled me for 70 years. There is a less publicized ‘median center of population’ that is more useful for some purposes, like where […]
I don’t have any problem with legislating morality. Would that all our laws were moral instead of about advantages for privileged and powerful groups! But rereading C. S. Lewis, I was reminded that the problem isn’t legislating morality. It’s legislating […]
Author’s note: I have not written in a while. Sorry for those of you who missed me. But now that the recent election is over, I will be doing some posts about it. The results of the 2024 election should […]
There is a parallel between sports and democracy. Both depend on the ability to say, “You whipped me fair and square this round; just wait till next round.” And both, as we know them today, were English inventions. I have […]
From 1405 to 1433, the Ming rulers of China sent ‘treasure fleets’ to Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, and as far as Mozambique. And then in 1434 the Portuguese reached Western Sahara, after which they went farther south every […]
Joseph Henrich argues that the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic world got its uniqueness from family codes imposed by the Church in the Early Middle Ages. The key parts of these codes were not restrictions on same-sex marriage or […]
Those who want to fight against ‘CRT’ and ‘wokeness’ are doing a good thing. But it should not be an excuse for going back and whitewashing our history [pun sort of intended]. I admire the efforts of those on the […]