Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2691

Ben Sherwood Lives!

I'm still struck by how big a wave my little profile of more than twenty years ago still makes. If you're wondering who Ben Sherwood, he was, by all accounts, the biggest asshole among Rhodes Scholars in recent history. And I failed to stop his relentless career.
















Ben Sherwood - United States - Minnesota - Zac Efron - Metro Areas

Last Days

Earlier this week Atul Gawande hosted a live-chat on his article about hospice care:

The fundamental issue I found ... was not the percentage ofpeople at the margin who really do want to spend their last days on aventilator with a feed tube and dialysis machine, or getting knockeddown by a fourth round of chemotherapy with a minuscule chance ofhelping. Perhaps there ARE more of these folks in America thanelsewhere. But the crucial problem is that for most people, this ismisery. They don't...

Wright vs George

Natural law - morality, religion and politics. Bob Wright has a chat with Robby George:

Natural law - Religion - Politics - Law - Legal Theory

Going To Church In Africa

William Easterly attends an Anglican church in Bolgatanga, Ghana:

You need to understand how [other people:] see themselves. A good guess is thatthe people in the congregation this morning, in one of the poorestregions of Ghana, do NOT see themselves primarily as "poor" or"developing", they see themselves as Christians. Another guess is thatsimilar feelings about religious faith would apply to other Ghanaiansin other religious services, like Muslims, Catholics, traditionalreligions, etc....

The View From Your Window

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 7.32 pm

Pennsylvania - United States - Programming - Travel and Tourism - Search

Talking Though Her Nose

Ed Yong describes a device that allows severely paralyzed individuals to write via sniffing. The gadget's first user is referred to as "LI1":

LI1 is one of the quickest users and she only manages around threeletters per minute, with one mistake with every six letters. That's mayseem frustrating but the freedom of expression more than makes up forit. As Plotkin and Sela write, "The speed of this self-expression isless important to individuals who, put bluntly, have no other options."When LI1...

When The Economy Falters, The Pews Fill

Lisa Miller notes that church attendance goes up during recessions and down during good times. She speaks with economist Daniel Hungerman, who keeps a graph comparing GDP and church attendance above his desk:

Hungerman's best guess explanation for the wide spaces and tight spotsin his graph has nothing to do with God and self-interest ("if I prayin church, I will get a job") but with something grander: a sense ofglobal interconnectedness. "Maybe when the economy turns sour, nomatter how...

Living Wills And Living Deaths

Susan Jacoby has an elderly mother who wishes that "no extraordinary medical measures — including artificial feeding — be used to prolong her life if there is no hope of recovery." Jacoby imagines her mother in a Catholic hospital:

The bishops' most recent health-care directives,issued near the end of 2009, make it clear that they consider it theduty of Catholic health-care providers to impose artificial nutritionand hydration on patients in persistent vegetative states. My brotherand I...

The Best Magazine Articles Ever

A list. As We May Think by Vannevar Bush from the July 1945 issue of the Atlantic is the first candidate. An excerpt:

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort ofmechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin oneat random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individualstores all his books, records, and communications, and which ismechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed andflexibility. It is an enlarged intimate...

Face Of The Day

The latest and greatest iteration of the "Sad Keanu" meme.

Keanu Reeves - Vojvodina - Serbia - Sad Keanu - Sociobiology