For two summers, I was on staff at Boy Scout Camp Tula on Lake Greeson in western Arkansas. It was wonderfully rustic. We slept in tents and padded about in our hand-sewn moccasins, up and down the hilly trails on the fragrant pine needles. Dark was really dark, so we could pick out the constellations on most nights. Paw prints were all over the muddy stream banks. We’d stage Indian dances around bonfires and go skinny dipping to wash off the greasepaint after the guests had left. There was a … [Read more...]
Archives for April 2015
Of Gardens, Fields, and Good Friday
Carolyn Adams Roth reflects here on what likely was the plant from which the Roman soldiers plaited the crown of thorns for Jesus. Reading that got me thinking. On this Good Friday—marking the most horrific sin in all history, the murder of God—it is good to reflect on thorns and what they teach us. The Bible’s first mention of them comes in God’s proclamation of judgment on Adam in Genesis 3:17–18: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I … [Read more...]
Progressivism vs. Science
My new friend Michael Adeney, whom I met while speaking at Seattle Pacific University in late February, just recommended Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left, by Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell (New York: Public Affairs, 2012), a fascinating, sometimes funny, hard-hitting but fair book on the really serious problem of unscientific thinking in the contemporary Progressive movement. I began reading it today. Folks in the movement often accuse … [Read more...]
Campus Green Initiatives
College and university campuses are places to debate and experiment with new ideas. Unfortunately, a few of the “bright ideas” turn out not to be so practical, or ethical. Then we can be thankful that the consequences were limited to a campus and weren’t inflicted on society at large. One ivory-tower idea with less than ideal consequences is the popular “campus sustainability initiative.” The National Association of Scholars recently released a report showing that colleges trying to reduce … [Read more...]
Ongoing “April Fools” Trick Perpetrated By NOAA
“April Fools Day” seems precisely the right day to post news unveiling an ongoing “April Fools” trick—intentional or not—by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a trick in which climate alarmists have—again, intentionally or not—participated. AGW alarmists, perhaps frustrated by the failure of Earth’s atmosphere to warm as predicted (or projected, or simulated, or whatever you want to call it) by the global climate models, have in recent years turned increasingly to claims that … [Read more...]