Category: Posts
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Empathy in Action
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been an ongoing back-and-forth over in the comments at a recent post, which have forced me to explain more fully some earlier statements about empathy as a political virtue and skepticism as an intellectual habit. Joel, who has been patient enough to draw me out on these things, has…
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The Uses of Free Culture
Tonight I had the pleasure to attend one of Fred Benenson’s Creative Commons salons at the office of my old employer in the West Village. It was a treat of ingenuity, pizza, and beer, somehow paid for by “free culture.” The idea we’re supposed to take home with us is that great things can be…
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Fame, Sainthood, Personhood, Failure
I’ll begin with a commentary on a commentary on a commentator of texts. Last night over noodles in a food court in Flushing, Queens, a friend told me about an Egyptian poet who probed the connections between commentary and silence. In the September 29 New Yorker, Louis Menand has a piece on the literary critic…
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Times of Need
Tonight, quoth the president:”This is an extraordinary period for America’s economy.” Which you might think sounds good, until: We’ve seen triple-digit swings in the stock market. Major financial institutions have teetered on the edge of collapse, and some have failed. As uncertainty has grown, many banks have restricted lending, credit markets have frozen, and families…
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Hitchens in “Conversation”
Christopher Hitchens has made it his business to debate whomever will come forward. The first page of Google results lists a considerable roster: Al Sharpton, Dinesh D’Souza, Chris Hedges, Tariq Ali, Stephen Fry, Shmuley Boteach, Alistar McGrath, Marvin Olasky, and Douglas Wilson. As a rule, Hitchens wins every time. He argues with a proverbially acerbic…
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Soldiering for Obama
Today my dear friend Jake and I set out early from our politically-taken-for-granted New York City for Philadelphia, two hours away (well, three with our incompetent Greyhound driver). By late morning we arrived at a canvass-a-thon in south Philly hosted by Terry McAuliffe, a Democratic operative who ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The idea was to…
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A Clipping Service
Maybe you’ve noticed I’ve been playing around with The Row Boat’s Text Ticker the last few days. This little feature, which has been hiding on the sidebar for a few months now, is part of my way of finding the fine line that every blog strives for between self-indulgence and providing an honest service. In…
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Were Things Really Better Then?
Passing by a front porch sale in my neighborhood this afternoon, I turned around my bike, stopped, and picked up (for a quarter) a little book called The One Hundred and One Best Songs. It is a songbook from 1922 published by The Cable Company of Chicago, “makers of the famous Cable line of pianos…
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A Fascinating Letter
I’d like to share a wonderful thing someone sent me recently, in regard to my article, “What Happens to Religion When It Is Biologized,” in Search magazine: Hello Nathan: One piece of information which I did not notice in the discussion was the fact that this multi-verse is a virtual reality which is being displayed…
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My Contribution to the Palin Mess
I’ve done it and (on my father’s suggestion, actually) put my knowledge of evolution controversies to “use” and written something for a political website about Sarah Palin. It goes a little something like this: When John McCain announced his intention to make a freshman — and female — Alaska Governor the next vice president on…