I realized only this week that last year was the centennial of the birth of Jane Jacobs, who was born in 1916 and died in 2006.  Now some or all of my readers might not recognize the name, but among city planners, architectural scholars, urban historians, urban economists and political scientists of an urban bent, […]

Baby Driver, written and directed by Edgar Wright, is a cinematic marvel. Though ostensibly a heist film from the wheel man’s perspective, it is really a soundtrack with a movie layered on top. Gunshots punctuate the percussion. Disembarkations are done in musical time as precisely as a ballerina’s twirl. Music is not a background element, […]

I don’t pretend to know what is going on in the Russia/Trump imbroglio, but we ought to have a bit of discussion on this, since its all the media will cover in the headlines.  First, I will say that I think there is a lot of room for Christians to disagree on the seriousness of the […]

The Pew Research Center has released a study that shows Americans, especially more conservative Americans, are realizing that colleges and universities are, as the study states the most common answer, “have a negative effect on the country.” (see http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views-of-national-institutions/)  While overall 55% of respondents still believe institutions are higher education are valuable, the percentage has […]

Henry Hazlitt said: The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists of tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. The drumbeat gets louder daily about Amazon crushing retailers, and it is […]

I just returned from a visit with my mother in my (and her) home city, Huntington, West Virginia.  We drove by way of Portsmouth, Ohio.  Both cities are in “flyover country” and both have suffered from the heavy (and likely irreversible) loss of manufacturing jobs.  To give you an idea of the losses, Huntington has […]

… it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they […]

The issue seems paltry at first glance. A preschool/daycare affiliated with a church applies for state funding to help with some playground improvements. The goal of the Missouri program is to put recycled tires to good use. Trinity Lutheran Church Child Learning Center’s application for the funding was judged to be fifth out of forty-four […]

As all our readers know, a deranged gunman opened fire on a group of Republicans in Alexandria, VA this morning. The partisans were preparing for a charity baseball game. As of now, five people were shot, including U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), and the gunman was killed by Capitol Hill Police officers. Nothing I’m about […]

It has been reported that today (June 19m 2017) has been set aside for protests around the nation against Sharia law, the legal system used in most Muslim countries to a greater or lesser extent.  The principles for Sharia are derived from both the Quran and Hadith, the alleged sayings of Muhammed and have been […]