Month: July 2018
community impact
When I was in college, I spent three summers living in Kenya and working in Kibera, an urban slum that is home to over a million people. It was there that I first felt called to long-term cross-cultural work, worked...
from indifference to sabotage
Jon Ward has written an insightful piece about America’s Supreme Court-centric culture war and what has been lost by what we have supposedly gained: But while it’s true that conservative positions on social issues are often portrayed, inaccurately, as reflecting...
flourishing and paid family leave
The Families Valued initiative of the Center for Public Justice has just released their new report on paid family leave, and I have some thoughts about it over on the main page. I think they make a pretty solid argument...
“the patient in the hospital bed is just the icon”
Abraham Verghese has a moving and pointed reflection about the ubiquity of technology in the hospital: When students arrive on the wards full time, white coats packed with the aforementioned instruments, measuring tape, tuning fork, flashlight and Snellen eye chart,...
transitional justice for Jim Crow
Decades after the Civil Rights Act and the end of Jim Crow, it’s clear that American attempts to reckon with racial injustices have been insufficient. But what could we have done — or do — differently? Anthony Bradley has a...
desire like dynamite
This op-ed from the New York Times about raising a child in a world facing environmental crisis is moving, even if you disagree with its premises: Living ethically means understanding that our actions have consequences, taking responsibility for how those...
poverty of imagination
I mentioned my Comment review of Jamil Jivani’s debut book Why Young Men? before, and he’s done a follow-up interview with the associated Convivium: One of the things I explore in the book – which is a pretty defining part of...
the elephant curve
Here’s a fun one from John Lancester at the London Review of Books: The economist who has done more in this field than anyone else, Branko Milanović, has a wonderful graph that illustrates the point about the relative outcomes for...
2 gilead 2 handle
I very much enjoyed reading this essay by Alissa Wilkinson about two fictional places called Gilead: the eponymous town in Marilynne Robinson’s book Gilead and the nation run by a pseudo-Christian cult in Margaret Atwood’s book The Handmaid’s Tale. The latter, recently...
“Let Me Stand”
This is a tremendous essay on one victim of the opioid crisis, as narrated by her brother: Several years ago, I felt convicted to ask Tricia for forgiveness. She was in jail at the time. By appearances, I was a...