Online now: My recent feature article for the Oct/Nov issue of Streaming Media Magazine, Whatever Happened to QuickTime? Those who’ve been devotees of Apple’s coolest software may like this.

Barfield Reconsidered (by accident)We’re pleasantly snowed in today, and during my morning coffee and reading, a footnote led me off to my attic bookcases and Owen Barfield. I was thumbing through The Rediscovery of Meaning, Barfield’s 1977 collection of essays, and landed on “The Coming Trauma of Materialism.” Barfield was an eloquent opponent of reductionism… Continue reading

Probably the best assessment of Dawkins I’ve read yet: The God Delusion cannot be understood as a work of scholarship or of effective engagement of a topic. It’s frequently idiotic, and engages in rhetorical misconduct that disqualifies it as a work of intellectual value. Understood as folk scholarship (we might call it folk theology or… Continue reading

Brendan Hodge takes a closer look at one of the Church’s more interesting encyclicals from the last century on social teaching (is capitalism an unfettered good?). In this sense, what I see as the correct conservative approach to social teaching does not have nearly the warm and comforting glow as the “progressive” approach. And yet,… Continue reading

Steve Matheson posts a lot less frequently than I would like–but when he does, he’s always excellent. From today’s post on gene duplication: First, take note that this article is another example of a sophisticated, hypothesis-driven experimental analysis of a central evolutionary concept. Research like this is reported almost daily, though you’d never learn this… Continue reading