“…how he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know,” quipped Groucho in Animal Crackers.* Curiously, I was once invited to shoot an elephant but did not take up the offer (nor went to work with anti-communist guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi in Angola, the required first step). I am glad, and rather hope that “my” elephant [...]
In a recent essay here, I discussed modern scientific discoveries, which suggest that a feeling for the past enhances creativity and imagination. Two helpful comments advanced the topic. Cat, a young mother, looks forward to introducing her two-year-old to “myth, mystery and creativity.” Meanwhile one of this journal’s best authors, the Vienna-based Miss Marcia Christoff-Kurapovna, [...]
Pope Francis, recently referring to horrific slaughter of Armenians a century ago, set off a diplomatic incident with Turkey when he used the word genocide.* Considering that the Vatican lobbies the Turkish Government for better treatment of its small Christian minority, this is a brave and perhaps costly decision. The controversy holds an unexpected lesson [...]
Recently reprinted on these pages, a Notre Dame professor wrote a reasoned and well-crafted response to a controversial essay, in which a Harvard student wished to replace academic freedom with “academic justice,” or censorship silencing conservative views at odds with what she termed her “university community.” After discussing the recent history of academic freedom, chiefly [...]
It will hardly surprise readers of this journal, the members of our Imaginative Conservative parish, but scientists are cottoning onto the fact that creativity is heightened by awareness of the past. The Times newspaper reported findings in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, that: “Psychologists at the University of Southampton split 175 Irish undergraduates into [...]
Never has the stock market soared higher nor the supply of affordable books been cheaper. Lucky or cursed, let us examine the latter—about which T.S. Eliot asks a great question but falls short in his reply. I confess, I adore them. I thrill to their touch; my heart is aroused by their scent. If old [...]
How often can writers pretend to discover some well-known thing for “the first time ever?” With poor Adam Smith it has happened again, but commercial promotion inadvertently raises an important matter that only begins with the great First Economist’s religion… or lack thereof. A prominent newspaper starts its book review by insulting its audience: “As [...]
The proverb “seeing is believing” implies truth but merely describes one justification for belief, however shaky. Want to see me pull a rabbit from my hat? A short, fascinating article reports controversy surrounding the painting Old Man in an Armchair, created in 1652 by Rembrandt—or not. Besides a fascinating glimpse into the scholarship of art, and [...]
I love Humanity in all Its misery and need; I love those suffering in thrall, Resenting others’ greed; I love the spiritual link, Uniting all who breathe and think, Together standing on the brink, Until I give the call. I love the Populace throughout Its genders and its races; I love Diversity about In safely [...]
Those of our readers, with the good sense to follow Al-Arabiya News, will not have missed their story from the United Arab Emirates, in which a court granted divorce to a man whose wife was possessed by a djinn (a genie).* His wife refused to have sex with him, and he discussed it patiently. She [...]
Who would true valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be, Come wind, come weather; There’s no discouragement Shall make him once relent His first avowed intent To be a pilgrim. — Anglican hymn by John Bunyan, 1684 Fifty years ago, on the 28th of January, 1965, a hymn by the [...]
Sure, you love them, but people love their pet hamsters. This is not to guarantee that your offspring are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging simians—determining that, beyond reasonable doubt, requires their face-to-face meeting with trained experts, lasting for at least two minutes. However, you can get a start right here. Remember that this is a cumulative test; it depends [...]
You see one every day on the streets of Kathmandu, what a friend calls D3 meaning the Daily Dead Dog. Stiller and flatter than before, sometimes the canine corpses are hauled away by the city, at other times unceremoniously chucked off the road into a ditch or the bushes. Then Nepal’s kites—handsome, eaglesque, carrion-eating birds—do [...]
That socialism is, you see, A foolish ideology; While gilded creeds of every miser Leave us, frankly, none the wiser; Thronging after what is new And slick is not the best to do; To feast on gadgets or repasts; Is to ignore the Joy that lasts, And that disposability Kills unborn, but also we; The [...]