I was bullied on occasion up through my freshman year in high school, but never, as far as I could tell, by the most popular kids. In elementary school the one bully that I encountered was overweight and socially more […]
Culture
Little Europe?
The coastal strip west of the Cascades, including the large cities of Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland, has a very similar climate to that of Western Europe away from the Mediterranean. The area is much smaller; a drive from Seattle to […]
Portland Public Loos Are The Best
Here’s an article from The Atlantic Cities explaining why Portland, Oregon’s, public loos are the best. In response to: “Why Portland’s Public Toilets Succeeded Where Others Failed” by John Metcalfe at The Atlantic Cities
How Much Does Immigration Change Character?
I am opposed to immigrant bashing. But we all bring ourselves and our deficiencies with us wherever we go. The Latinos are not the first immigrants to flock to California only to find they had brought their old selves along […]
The New Spirituality of ‘Connectedness’
Most of us nowadays can probably recognize what this spaghetti of wires that I have photographed here is. Without it, my laptop, my iPad, and my phone will be useless pieces of metal in a day or two, though my […]
Melinda’s Choice Crusade for Women: Breaking the Planned Parenthood Monopoly?
I read here that Melinda Gates has decided that ‘birth control’ and ‘family planning’ are important. On the one hand, I have a lot of concern about the ‘contraceptive culture’ and the impact of separating the way we make babies […]
The Rise of Redneck Stand-up Paddleboarding
[Props to my co-parishioner Miles Stoudenmire for coming up with these pictures.] It appears, from the evidence of these pictures, that the SUP culture can harmonize with the huntin’ and fishin’ culture of the rednecks and their northern counterparts. [The […]
Global Warming Not a Bad Thing
Robert Zubrin, in this article from National Review, takes a different approach from most conservatives on global warming, and to my view the most sensible approach. Instead of denying that global warming is happening, or insisting that human activity has […]
SLAP ‘EM AND WALK HOME – A way of promoting abstinence in our culture
I must start with a word of explanation. Lysistrata was a comic play by Aristophanes in classical Greece, in which the women, in order to stop a war they thought senseless, agreed to not sleep with their men until the […]
Marijuana In Public Spaces
While I find the odor of marijuana a little less offensive than that of tobacco, a lot of people don’t, and I think the same standard should be applied to marijuana in public spaces as to tobacco. Related: “Marijuana dropped […]