I’ve heard many people claim that “research” proves that praying for sick people helps them heal, even if the sick people don’t know they’re being prayed for. This claim bugs me because (a) no one seems to have any information about the supposed research, and (b) I don’t believe prayer works like that—if it [...]

Jim Hightower visited the Society last Sunday, agitating for universal health care. (I liked his reminder that in a washing machine the “agitator” is what gets the dirt out.) He’s a fun speaker and we appreciate that he hung around afterward so people could chat with him in person. His website, for [...]

Thinking about money reminds me to recommend my favorite books on financial security and independence: Your Money or Your Life and David Bach’s books (there are a bunch of them and they all have the same basic information). I like these books both because they emphasize bringing your spending in line with your [...]

Last Sunday in my address on eco-friendly choices I mentioned a book by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The title is The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices. For more good practical information on the environment and how to help protect it without losing your mind, check out their website here. And [...]

I am sad and horrified.
A recent newstory, http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/418676.html , reported the death of a child by a parent who read information from a book on Christian parenting regarding how to apply corporal punishment to her children in order to make them behave. Apparently, some evangelical Christians are supportive of corporal [...]

At some point in my life, swimming became a task. I’m not sure quite when it happened, but I remember being a kid and spending hours in the water, doing summersaults and standing on my hands, playing tag, throwing things into the water and chasing after them, pretending I was an otter . . [...]

” ‘It’s over,’ said Emily Swenson, 15, . . . ‘We can’t do anything about it. We just have to obey.’ ”
This quote is from an article about the recent banning of Arthur Miller’s classic play The Crucible in a Fulton, Mo, high school. The irony is that The Crucible was written precisely to [...]

Last week I participated in an interfaith panel that was part in an all-day conference on domestic violence sponsored by Lydia’s House, an organization the Society is proud to support. Now, these interfaith panels are usually (in my experience) a bit of a showcase: a series of speakers earnestly explaining why their traditions [...]

Spring update:
It’s here. On my walk to work today I saw that ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ is waving little green and yellow and red flags at the tips of the bushes and fruit trees. And it smells gloriously fecund out there.
What I’ve got out of the library [...]