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Rod Dreher

Reader Conor sends a report about how the extensive use of the weedkiller Roundup has resulted in the emergence of Roundup-resistant weeds. Excerpt: Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.…

Via Andrew Sullivan, I find a rather helpful list of suggestions from Will Saletan about how to avoid epistemic closure. The broader Internet discussion started as an inquiry into whether or not conservatives today can be described as closed to ideas they don’t already agree with, but in my discussion of the topic, I’ve tried…

I was pleased to see the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing a large cross built on public land in California to stay in place. I don’t understand why some people freak out over things like this, as if any sign of religion in public were some sort of egregious affront. It seems to me that…

My wife was straightening up in the bedroom this morning, and said to me, “You can tell a lot about someone’s character by the books on their bedside table. With her permission, I photographed her bedside table: Henry James, nuns, chickens: that’s Julie. Here are the books at my bedside table. It would be hard…

Ross Douthat calls him “the man who saved American Catholicism,” and in this inspiring story, you can see why David R. Spotanski, a middle-aged Catholic father of three from the Midwest, may well have earned that accolade. Spotanski, a layman, was chancellor of the Diocese of Belleville, Ill., whose bishop, Wilton Gregory, was head of…

At the risk of beating a dead horse (but when has that ever stopped me?), I want to bring the epistemic closure discussion to bear on what Cardinal Ratzinger knew, or should have known, about the Maciel scandal, and related scandals. How we know what we know — epistemology — is something that has occupied…

Reader Brett R. improves America by sending in this priceless commercial for an Alabama used mobile home dealer. It’s a real commercial, but apparently it was made by Rhett and Link, two guys who specialize in making funny commercials for small-town businesses. This is safe for work, by the way:Robert Lee is my new hero,…

David Brooks writes about a favorite theme of mine: This is not to say that policy choices are meaningless. But we should be realistic about them. The influence of politics and policy is usually swamped by the influence of culture, ethnicity, psychology and a dozen other factors. More: When you try to account for life…

A friend the other day mentioned a fellow of her acquaintance who likes a good story so much that he frequently embellishes — and then tells the story so many times that he starts to believe the embellishment. He should meet neuroscientist Karim Nader, who had a clear memory of a 9/11 event he couldn’t…

I don’t have cable TV, so I haven’t seen “The Pacific.” But I did read one of the books upon which it’s based, E.B. Sledge’s “With the Old Breed,” and I am glad to read in this appreciative Atlantic essay that “The Pacific” is not another one of those overly reverent takes on World War…
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