Steyn: Civilization and a Matter of Urgency

In general, our leaders are urgent about nothing that matters and not in the least bit urgent about things that matter very much.

Read all of Mark Steyn's address to Hillsdale College's National Leadership Seminar.

Find Something Beautiful Today

[Photo by REVOLT at Unsplash]

First Paragraph

It seemed, as I tossed and turned far into the night, maddened by a dripping tap I was too irresolute to fix, that I owed too many people too many things.

- From The Egg Shaped Thing by Christopher Hodder-Williams

Cal Newport and Social Media

 

How Can the Malls Be Saved?

Many once-thriving shopping malls are now deserted.

If you were hired to re-vitalize shopping malls, what would you do?

[Photo by Irving Trejo at Unsplash]

The Sound of Our Lives

The crow of a rooster. Two carpenters talking at their work in another room. The tick-tock of a clock on the wall. The rumble of your own stomach. Each sound can be thought of as meaning something, if it is meaning you want. After some years of living with roosters, I know that their crow does not mean that the sun is coming up because they crow off and on all day long with their silly, fierce heads thrown back and the barnyard breeze in their tail feathers. Maybe it means that they are remembering the last time it came up or thinking ahead to the next time. Maybe it means only that they are roosters being roosters. The voices and hammering in the other room mean that not everybody in the world sits around mooning over the past, but that the real business of life goes on and somewhere the job is getting done; means, too, that life is a mystery. What are they talking about? What are they making? The ticking of the clock is death's patter song and means that time passes and passes and passes, whatever time is. The rumbling stomach means hunger and lunch. But meaning in that sense is not the point, or at least not my point. My point is that all those sounds together, or others like them, are the sound of our lives.

- From The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days by Frederick Buechner

Interesting Websites: A Series

The websites for:

• Muse
• American Road
• Hiconsumption
• Men's Gear
• Uncommon Goods
• Mark & Graham

Paul Miller's Year Away from the Internet

 

Count Like a Babylonian

Political Calculations has Alex Bellos showing how to count in cuneiform.

Reprise: Because We Need Some Tom Wolfe