Leah Libresco's Blog, page 32
March 13, 2015
7QT: Preachy Swords and Pricey Peanut Butter
— 1 — I’ve been recommending Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip hop musical for a while (tickets now on sale for Broadway!) and you can see a few nice clips in this CBS story, which also includes interviews with Miranda: — 2 — If you need any further persuading, take a look at how Miranda wrote the [Read More...]
March 12, 2015
Learning about Sainthood from Terry Pratchett #LittleAngelsReadUp
Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, passed away today. I’m encouraging other fans to celebrate his life and writing by giving a copy of one of his books to a friend and/or donating one to a school or library today. I’ve made an image and hashtag to share below, if you’d like to join [Read More...]
March 10, 2015
The Last 5 Years’s Primer on Loving Badly [Guest Post]
Monique Ocampo recently joined the Patheos Catholic channel and is also a big fan of The Last 5 Years. In the guest post below, she discusses what she learned from Cathy and Jamie’s relationship. Time is a big theme in “The Last Five Years.” The original stage production shows a large clock on the set. [Read More...]
March 7, 2015
Reaching Out through Retold Stories [Radio Readings]
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm I’ll update this post when the episode is available to download. This week, Rosamund Hodge’s Crimson Bound served as a jumping off point to talk about why I love reading retold stories. Every week, I put up [Read More...]
March 6, 2015
7QT: Moss Troll Ichor and Human Hearts
— 1 — This week, I had a lot of fun reading an observational study of the rituals we’ve built up around our interactions with technology–what they tell us about how we understand our relationship with our devices and what they portend for designs to come. I particularly enjoyed seeing one I frequently employ: The [Read More...]
March 5, 2015
Effective Altruism & Ethically Questionable Cookies
Earlier this week, I linked to the Yale Effective Altruists’ writeup of my visit (my radio program on Effective Altruism and Christian Charity is here). Today, Slate Star Codex has a post up that’s a nice encapsulation of my discomfort with the more totalizing part of EA. Peter Singer talks about widening circles of concern. [Read More...]
March 3, 2015
Life Lessons that Can’t be Taught at College’s Scale
In Ethika Politika, Margaret Blume explains why she’s preferred her studies at Notre Dame to her undergrad years at Yale, my own alma mater. Yale has distribution requirements (Writing, Science, Humanities, Quantitative Reasoning, etc), but no single course is required — your math credit can come from econ or astronomy or set theory. Blume found that [Read More...]
March 2, 2015
The Word Gap Needs More Than Individual Effort
I’m posting at Fare Forward today, talking about the word gap, and why solutions should include structural reform of work schedules, wages, and zoning — not just increased effort from individual parents: Poorer children start falling behind the richer children in their age cohort long before they toddle off to their first day of school or [Read More...]
February 28, 2015
Sad Stories of the Deaths of Kings (and Queens) [Radio Readings]
You can listen to “Fights in Good Faith,” my weekly radio program, streaming today at 5pm ET and tomorrow (Sun) at 1pm. The episode is now available to download and stream. In the past week, I’ve watched the entire BBC Hollow Crown cycle (Richard II, Henry IV pt 1, Henry IV pt 2, and Henry V), the Folger Theatre production of Mary [Read More...]
February 26, 2015
7QT: Stoicism Man, Semi-Imaginary Money, and Second Moons
— 1 — Did you know that Earth has a second moon? Because I sure as heck did not (I’m in the lucky 10,000!). Apparently, the astronomical body 3753 Cruithne is also in orbit around the Earth, but its orbit is bizarrely convoluted — to the point where it takes 800 years for it to make a full, [Read More...]
