COMMENTARY

Clapham Institute Blog

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Chew On This

Take and eat. Kissing ought to be more than swapping spit and sex more than exchanging bodily fluids. Similarly, food and eating ought to be about more than stuffing our faces. Like what? According to the Judeo-Christian faith, the phrase take and eat provides a hint. It describes food and eating as pointing toward something….

Full Of It

Stuffed. Engineering firms report increasing difficulty designing airtight respirators to protect American factory workers and firefighters. The culprit? The changing shape of our faces. While 60% of Americans are overweight and 30% are obese, 87% of all firefighters, 73% of American healthcare workers and 91% of those in law enforcement are overweight or obese.1 What’s…

Unending Horror?

Worldview and way of life. Today is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre of 1999. Now the Virginia Tech slaughter dwarfs it as the worst massacre in U.S. history. Today also marks the anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler in 1899. Hitler, Columbine and Virginia Tech share a common ancestor – Friedrich Nietzsche. But…

Thin…and unfit

Wobbly waifs. This past fall, the Madrid fashion show banned overly thin models, saying unnatural thinness sends a terrible message. Organizers said models had to be within a healthy weight range. This image of waiflike women wobbling down runways is one way to better understand Islamist rage against America. Muslim fury is not against thin…

Frankenstein and Easter

For years, the haunting specter of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster disturbed readers’ sleep and terrorized moviegoers. Then director Mel Brooks and actor Peter Boyle turned him into a lovable yet clumsy klutz in Young Frankenstein. I’m not sure that Mary Shelley would have been entirely pleased. She wasn’t writing comedy. Shelley was instead imagining whether a…

Cosmic Code

New glasses. G. Clotaire Rapaille makes a great deal of money providing a service that the ancient church used to offer. No, he’s not drilling wells for water – although that’s imminently worthwhile. Rapaille travels the globe for corporate clients like Chrysler, Procter & Gamble, Boeing and DuPont explaining what makes a country and its…

Design and Default

A double standard? Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson seems to have a special talent for knocking down straw men. Earlier this year he castigated conservative Episcopalians for rejecting the ordination of a homosexual bishop and the sanctioning of same sex relationships. Meyerson’s spin on the story reminds me of the philandering husband who takes up…

Spring Broke

Boring. College and high school students are gearing up for getting away. They’re tired, bored and “need a break.” Yet the catatonic condition so common on campus is exactly what our modern system of schooling is designed to produce. The problem is not that students are overburdened, they’re bored.

Homodesageer

Character assassination. Ex-NBA journeyman John Amaechi recently announced he is homosexual. The media was quick to pick up the story, fishing for those who agree with Amaechi and ferreting out those who oppose homosexuality. As we all know, it’s pretty much a minefield if someone tries to put forth reasonable arguments against homosexuality. They are…

…and the opposite is…???

Binary opposite? A trio of appellate judges, including former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, is reviewing a lower court’s decision that Prison Fellowship’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative violates the separation of church and state. Inmates at the Newton Correctional Facility in Iowa receive instruction that states: “criminal behavior is a manifestation of an alienation between…