Leah Libresco's Blog, page 39

7QT: Beautifully Built Things

— 1 — I always take pleasure in thinking about made things, so I especially enjoyed this article from the Kickstarter team on why so many Kickstarter projects have been focused on making a better wallet.  Apparently, they’re a common starter project — if you can manage to produce and ship wallets, you probably have the skills [Read More...]

“I like to ask: What is my opponent in love with?”

Back when I was in Ireland, giving a talk on ways to have better fights about religion, I did a short interview with a local news outlet, and I’ve just found the video.  In our conversation, I talk a little about my own conversion, and why my approach to argument resembles Ender’s empathetic approach to [Read More...]

Trapped by Torture in Enmity with the World

Reading over more details about the Torture Report, I was reminded of a passage I’d just read in Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character, in which Jonathan Shay tries to put his finger on just what it is that makes torture an abomination, rather than ordinary roughness or ill use: American soldiers [Read More...]

Torture Report Details Wounds to Prisoners and Guards

The torture report (well, the unclassified executive summary) came out today, and the news is grim and gruesome.  The Daily Beast has aggregated some initial lowlights: In Nov. 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia. This case appears similar to the that of Gul Rahman, [Read More...]

The Last 5 Years is totally our next Symposium topic

Eeeeee!  EEEEEEEE! Eeeeee! For folks who aren’t familiar with Jason Robert Brown’s The Last 5 Years, it’s a musical that covers the five year relationship between Cathy and Jamie, from the moment they meet, through their engagement and marriage, till the morning after Jamie leaves. The two leads alternate numbers, which respectively tell the story of [Read More...]

Is Your Christianity Ever Mistaken for Criminality? [Pope Francis Bookclub]

In 2014, I’m reading and blogging through Pope Francis/Cardinal Bergoglio’s Open Mind, Faithful Heart: Reflections on Following Jesus.  Every Monday, I’ll be writing about the next meditation in the book, so you’re welcome to peruse them all and/or read along. In this week’s reading, Pope Francis points out that Christ was stripped of more than his clothes when [Read More...]

My 10 Best Books of 2014

Every year, I like to make a list of my favorite books I read for the first time in that year.  Thus, my ten best books of the year aren’t limited to those that came out in this year.  In chronological order of when I read them, these are my favorites. Oh, and if you’d like [Read More...]

Paying Penalties to Keep a Prayer Rule

Today, I’m over at the Beeminder Blog, with a guest post on ways to use Beeminder to help organize my spiritual life… without ending up with a weirdly corporate or Pharisaical vibe.  Beeminder is a service that makes it easier to do in the short term what you mean to do in the long term, by letting you [Read More...]

So, where should a gal go to meet some saints?

A new month has begun, so I’ve popped over to Jen Fulwiler’s saint generator and spun up my final randomly chosen saint for 2014. But, before I do this again in 2015, I’d like to rejigger my approach, and I’d appreciate any advice, O Readers. The nice thing about using a random saint generator is [Read More...]

Avoiding Glib Grace-Notes in Advent

Yesterday I talked about trying to find an Advent discipline that wasn’t just hard-for-the-sake-of-hard, but that would form my conscience in some way. Here’s my attempt: I’m trying to undertake a conversational fast this Advent season.  I want to avoid using any one-liners or other kinds of glancing, meant-to-be funny comments in conversation. It’s not that [Read More...]