an·ger (noun) a strong feeling of displeasure and belligerence aroused by a wrong; wrath; ire. Anger seems to be everywhere these days. Pick just about any national issue, from immigration to gay marriage to taxes, and nearly all the conversation … Continue reading
Having driven several hundred miles to attend a family reunion this past weekend, several of us were commiserating about the many highway construction projects that had slowed our trips. The conversation turned to how many of these projects featured prominent … Continue reading
There’s a type of values exploration exercise that involves telling a group of people a brief story in which characters’ behaviors contribute to certain bad outcomes and then asking the group to rank the characters with respect to how much … Continue reading
Recently I finished reading Stephen Prothero’s Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know About Religion — and Doesn’t and I have begun reading his follow-up book, God is Not One. Underlying both books is Prothero’s thesis that knowledge of the world’s … Continue reading
Earlier this month I had the good fortune to join the chorus in the music department’s production of Mendelssohn’s Elijah for the President’s Concert. (I was the bass hiding in the back row faking his way through the last chorus … Continue reading
For the past few years as my daughter has been learning Spanish it has been fun occasionally to test my own rusty knowledge of the language. Early on, when it was mostly vocabulary, I was surprised at how easily the … Continue reading
Tonight’s Missouri Lottery PowerBall jackpot is $115 million. With cuts to higher education appropriations looming, perhaps buying lottery tickets is now our best hope of getting more money from the state. I’ve never been much of a lottery player, though … Continue reading
I used to think heated seats in automobiles were frivolous extras shamelessly marketed to spoiled consumers. Then last summer I bought a used vehicle that just happened to have heated seats. I think you can see where this is going. Yesterday’s evening … Continue reading
Voltaire is quoted as having claimed that the perfect is the enemy of the good. Recently I heard someone assert, without any reference to Voltaire, that good is the enemy of best. While both adages firmly identify the combatants, each … Continue reading
To my son, a fourth-grader, the ultimate knowledge authority is “the Internet.” Anything he needs to know, he can find online. Any argument can be settled by looking the facts up on the Web. Eventually he will learn that there … Continue reading