With Both Hands

Sign in Subscribe

Latest

The Long View 2005-01-01: Things to Keep in Mind in 2005

Why does nothing ever change? I'm half-kidding, but in the beginning of 2005, the Democratic Party was going through major soul-searching from an electoral loss, and the biggest issues were terrorism, how expensive healthcare is, and immigration. Also, here is a prediction that didn't turn out

The Long View: God or Goddess?

Another book review written more than twenty years ago that couldn't be improved upon much by subsequent events. However, it does bring to mind Pope Francis' suggestion in May of 2016 that he would setup a commission to study women deacons in the early Church. Then, in

The Long View: New Spelling

New Spelling This is the first paragraph of the short story, "The Star," by H. G. Wells. It was first issued in New Spelling in 1942, with the author's permission. This slightly modified version is taken from the Simplified Spelling Society's pamphlet No. 12,

The Long View 2004-12-28: Disasters, Natural and Otherwise

The final death toll of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami came in somewhere around 250,000. Requiescat in pace. This finishes up the year 2004 of the Long View, John J. Reilly's blog. I have been at this since February of 2014, and I intend to

The Long View: Cut Speling

Cut Spelng This poem is taken from my recollection of the entry under Weather in Ambrose Bierce's "The Devil's Dictionary": Once I lookd into th futur, far as anyone cud se, And I saw th chief forcastr, ded as anyone cud be. Ded and

The Long View: Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

The kind of thing that John Reilly laments in this book review is alive and well. If you want a taste of it, check out New Real Peer Review on Twitter, which simply reprints abstracts of actual, peer-reviewed articles. A favorite genre is the autoethnography. Go look for yourself, no

The Long View 2004-12-20: Iraq Counterfactuals; Hero & Empire; Iceland

The First Emperor of China was assumed to be mythical for a long time. Then the archeological finds started piling up. The remarkable unity of the Chinese state over the millennia is in part due to this man. Iraq Counterfactuals; Hero & Empire; Iceland You have to wonder why the