In recent years there seems to have been a growing attention to the injuries of history.  We've seen it definitely with the very dramatic turn in the narration of American history vis-a-vis native genocide and especially slavery and anti-black racism; we're seeing it with arguments about British colonialism (and English abuse of Ireland).  We see it in many places.

This is, I think, a good thing, and a sign of moral strength, though it hurts.  In fact I would argue it's part of the wrenching reconceptualization of our present through reconceiving our past (...

To read if you want.  Better than arguing with people on Twitter or Facebook, anyway, where no one's a winner. 

How Oumuamua—the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, in 2017—might have been formed.  

“Long before Fabergé, ornate ostrich eggs were highly prized by the elites of Mediterranean civilisations during the Bronze...

Stuff to ponder, ruminate over, while taking your daily exercise, perhaps.  

This is neat:

“A team of retirees that scours the remote ravines and windswept plains of the Pacific Northwest for long-forgotten pioneer orchards has rediscovered 10 apple varieties that were believed to be extinct—the largest number ever unearthed in a...

Just to read, think about.

The political struggles we are engaged in today are rooted in the survival after the Civil War, of a racist and patriarchal vision of the self, society, and government, and its escape from the Old South to the Far West.  So the book...

Some links from hither and yon:

Earlier this year, I discussed a piece on George Steiner and what he did, and didn’t do.  Today I share a kind, if mercifully general, encomium for...

A mega-drought seems to have begun in the American Southwest, according to this study.  And this good news: 

The 20th century was the wettest century in the entire 1200-year record. It was during that time that population boomed, and that has continued. "The 20th century gave us an overly optimistic view of how much water is potentially available," said Cook. "It goes to show...

Just for you. 

Reparations for black America: this is a careful, lucid, and seriously detailed proposal.  Not just for why, but also for how to make it happen.  Worth reading. And for the Brookings Institution to publish this?  Times they are a-changing, when policy wonks and...

Modernity, we have been told, is an acid to tradition and blind faith.  Modernity is essentially a skeptical mindset.  Prove it; show me; where's the evidence: these are the imperatives we are told to affirm, as proper moderns.  The invisible legitimation of received authorities is as dubious as the passive voice which, we are assured, is the main device of their seduction of premoderns' assenting, supine minds.

There's something misguided about the over-oxygenated appeals to radical skepticism in that last paragraph.  Thinkers have...

As an 18th century book title would say, "wherein some larger themes concerning politics are discussed, and some small tips are communicated as well":

Much as Amartya Sen used to say about famine, the Coronavirus pandemic is looking more and more like it’s rooted in political failures—first of all in China, then in Europe, now also in...

Not yet ordinary time, in several senses.  But I hope you find something sacramental in your day.

Some thoughts about religion pieces in the news recently:

Anyone who wants to talk about the possibility of a "rise of the religious left" has to pay attention to reality.  It's the crucial thing that separates the left and the right these days...