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...

Read some stuff.  These are all pandemic related.  Maybe they'll provoke some thoughts.  Then, if you can, go on a walk.  A long quiet walk.  Be alone with your thoughts.  Again--if you can.  

Agnes Callard is one of the more thoughtful philosophers in American philosophy these days, and also one of those willing to write to a non-professional audience in an interesting and provocative way.  In...

After a few days of sunny and warm weather, now it's turned blustery.  Actually I like this--wind is good for the soul.  Hope you are snug wherever you are.

Has Nefertiti’s tomb been found, after all, hidden behind Tutankhamun’s tomb?  Maybe so.  This article makes that case; maybe something will come of it, this time ...

Links for a Holy Saturday.  This one, in fact.

Cool conversation at my UVA from last year, on “Race in the decade since Obama’s inauguration”, still worth listening to, esp in another election year.

Can I recognize winning when it happens?  That's the question behind this post, really.  

Some background:

Since before 2016, I've been having an argument with friends and colleagues over whether identity or economic issues are more powerful political motivators for people in our current situation.  In fact many of us, around the world, are having this argument.  It's an old argument--it goes back to Marxist analyses, in fact, which people like me see as too-ruthlessly reductionistic.  Our opponents mostly disagree, and think that identity...