The Battle of Athens, Tennessee, remains a powerful reminder of what can happen when elected officials forget whom they serve. This is a true story about American veterans who returned home from…

In 1944 Los Alamos was focused on fluids and heat transfer, the same types of problems worked by Humble Oil and David Young in the following years. Stan Frankel became the first patient infected with…

Henry Ford was a socialist?

Most people think Frankenstein was a monster. In reality, Frankenstein was the scientist. While Mary Shelley's 1818 novel was fictional, the story was deeply influenced by real scientific…

Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own but only what he sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. — John 5:19 (NRSV) When…

(Joint with Nathan Lauster and cross-posted at HomeFreeSociology) .img_left { float: left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:-10px; width: 50%; min_width: 300px; } .img_right { float: right;…

One of my book clubs will be starting Milton's _Paradise Lost_ soon. Preparing for that reading, I learned that there are actually two different versions of _Paradise Lost_: the “original” 1667…

I first became interested in converting Muslims to Christianity through a fashion and lifestyle influencer I've been stalking on Instagram for about eight years. A six-foot-something, long-haired…

This week, I’ve been editing the final books of Chapter By Chapter, my guide to all 1,189 chapters of the Bible, and a question occurred to me: Why is Daniel a Major Prophet when it has only…

Borne out of the very first instance of corporate reputation-washing, the Standard Oil-produced 20-LP series "Our Nation's Heritage", a progressive history of America that never quite made those Big…

TL;DR How long does it take to learn Japanese? The US Foreign Service Institute estimates about 2,200 class hours for an English speaker to reach professional working proficiency. In my experience,…

There are secrets for privacy and silence; let them only be cultivated on the part of the hunted creature with even half the method with which the love of sport - or call it the historic sense - is…

efore you get to the bus station in Rotherham town centre you'll probably see a grand old stone built public house building called "The Bridge Inn" so called because it sits next to Chantry bridge…

To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, Romans 1:7. An astute reader recently contacted me as to why the…

I had some time and I’ve revisited John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, a major work in classical liberal political philosophy. Book II, Chapter V, “Of Property”, now that has caught…

I loooove the questions which starts with “whys”, and simply could not just pass by one. So, shit has already starting to hit the fan.…

Few lines of text have been memorized by as many human beings over as many centuries as this one: You don’t have to know the language to glean that it is verse. It consists of two pairs of…

In this week’s Torah portion, Noach (Gen. 6:9–11:32), God gives Noah permission to eat animals after the flood (Gen. 9:3). Many Christians interpret this passage to mean that Noah could eat any…

In this post, I’ll describe Andrew Pickering’s notion of “disciplinary agency” from his 1995 book The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. I’ll use the same…

Opus 6: The Taming of the Shrew

Literary critics have long discussed Shakespeare’s so-called “problem plays,” meaning the ones that fail to slot comfortably into one of the established genres of comedy, tragedy,…

The kingdom of heaven is like a wardrobe door. Its presence is simple, humble, and ignored. Once seen, once opened, it leads to unimaginable beauty and unexpected depth. There are temptations which…

Learning about Taiwan's history through period dramas.

So this is not really a funny post, but certainly is more light-hearted than what I have been posting about of late. This week Ancestry.com updated their analysis of my DNA and my origins. For…

[This is the second installment of my transcription and summary (with commentary) of the correspondence between my future parents over the course of 1945. If you haven’t read Part 1 , I urge you to…

The Math 1.0 and Math 2.0 transition in the terminology of Tao could also be seen as a distinction between a culture of “being” to to a culture of “having”. The dichotomy…

Translated from French (please notify us of errors) Milk, semolina, honey, nuts and dried fruit, pepper and sometimes even garum: the apothermum is often presented today as a typical dessert of…

Exploring the history of the Hetherington & Berner company of Indianapolis and looking for surviving pieces and reminders of the company's long history around the city.

Date: 16 October 1964 (3:00 PM China Standard Time) Code name: 596 Type: plutonium fission Yield: 22 thousand tons of TNT Location: Lop Nur, Xin Jiang, China

Ordinary responsibilities have a way of consuming the time we had hoped to spend differently. A quiet morning disappears into a problem that needs solving. An evening set aside for reading becomes an…

This book was a birthday present from site contributor Maddox von Ranke, our very own Dr Strangelove. I confess to having reservations about whether I would enjoy it: the intricacies of...

The year 1936. Ninety years ago. Nearly a century. A paper with a slightly inscrutable title that spoke an academic language, “On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”…

Bill Reel converted to the LDS Church at 17, became a bishop at 29, and started a podcast while still bishop to defend the faith. He was, by every measure the church uses, very good at his religion.…

Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations : "Consider that before long you will be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist which you now see, nor any of those who are now living. For all…

In the days after the SSPX consecrations of July 1 and subsequent excommunications, the ever-perceptive Gregory DiPippo of New Liturgical Movement offered an interesting observation on the actions of…

This should be in a museum!

Imagine a book arrives by post, packed in a cardboard box. Can you read the book without opening the box? Thanks to advanced technology, to AI and to the power of mathematics, the challenge can be…

Possible New Evidence for the Lion’s Share Box to be in North Carolina! (Join discussions on clues on the MW Discord, MW Forum, or MW Facebook Group page) In the 2026 Six Questions with Jon…

Read the full post at - Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicholson I picked up Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson on a lark at the library. It was during the PR hype for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and…

Inventing the Renaissance was my “big book” of the year, ⊕ [Note: Some other Big Books I enjoyed: “The Power Broker” (2015, before I was regularly writing about them), The…

If you met me during the last twelve years or so, I probably wouldn’t strike you as a religious person. I got a Master’s degree in a technical field, and I spent a few years as a PhD…

“Do what is in your heart. You choose. I’m right here with you whatever you decide” (1 Samuel 14:7). It’s a beautiful and courageous declaration made by… someone. We don’t...

The 1920s were an exhilarating time. At the beginning of the decade, women in the U.S. got the right to vote and prohibition went into effect. Women foresaw an era of expanded personal freedom and…

The Periplus of Hanno recounts a 5th-century B.C. Carthaginian maritime expedition to West Africa. It describes a landscape aflame and of a fiery mountain whose identity remains mysterious. It’s a…

At the rock houses When I first went to school we were taught that the very first human homes were in caves and that these were clearly damp, dark, unpleasant places to live, soon superseded by…

The heraldry section now has a complete transcription of Gerard Legh’s Accedence of Armorie , the 1597 edition, from the title page to the colophon. All 308 of its woodcut coats of arms are…

Between U.S. 183 and Interstate 10 on Texas State Highway 29 and U.S. Route 377 there are five historical markers. There are also wonderful kolaches and some decent antiquing.

One of the strangest features of the so-called ‘Passion Translation’ are the references in the endnotes (2014) or footnotes (2020) to ‘the Hebrew...

This is what Mongolia's capital looked like over a century ago.