The Catholic Bishops Circular—a Vatican publication—is generally read by clergy members and no one else. But last month, one particular letter published in the church circular drew much attention. The Lettera sul pane e il vino per l’Eucaristia addressed the tricky question of gluten-free communion wafers, a point of contention.
I, Ephrat Livni, being of sound mind and memory, do hereby declare this to be my last will and testament. Following in the footsteps of Franz Kafka and Edward Albee, I direct the executor of this Will to destroy my writing.
In the beginning, there was the word. Now, there’s a deluge of language. On average, Americans consume 34 gigabytes of content and encounter 100,000 written words from various sources in a single day (pdf).
US Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts is the highest judge in the land. His job is to be a wise man, and it’s apparently a quality that extends beyond the bench.
French president Emmanuel Macron upends expectations even when it comes to citations. This week, he flummoxed the French with an unexpected reference that reveals his philosophical roots.
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld and the city of Paris held a mutual appreciation ceremony on July 4. The city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, awarded Lagerheld its highest honor and he put on a fall 2017 Chanel couture fashion show that was Parisian from set to stitch.
Determining the truth in news reports has rarely been easy.
Pyrotechnics may not seem like the stuff of philosophical discussion, given that they are loud and bright and designed to delight in spectacularly simple ways. But the dramatic fireworks demonstrations we use to mark celebrations—and their less friendly counterparts, rocket weaponry—were invented by ancient philosophers. They offer a profound lesson you can apply to hone your thinking skills.
Amelia Earhart was ahead of her time, and not just because she was a pioneering female pilot in the early 20th century. Her life was decidedly postmodern—the lady had more gigs than a millennial and reinvented herself as often as a Gen-Xer. She tried and failed and succeeded a lot for someone who lived only 40 years.
Nicolas Cage (domestic terrorist Castor Troy) lies on a hospital bed, in a medically induced coma. John Travolta (FBI agent Sean Archer) stands nearby, contemplating something few people have: Should I put Nicolas Cage’s face… on my face?
It would be unseemly to discuss waste at the table. Still, the stuff—specifically agricultural runoff—will affect your dining this summer if you’re a seafood lover. So let’s do this now.
A dark day is coming this summer. On August 21, the moon will obscure the sun’s light and night will seem to fall suddenly and briefly in parts of the world Around the globe, 500 million people will experience a solar eclipse and for many it will be total.
Updated June 4 at 10:30am ET: The Supreme Court decided 7-2 in favor of the Masterpiece Cakeshop owners. You can read the majority opinion here.
Child’s play got very serious indeed at the US Supreme Court today (June 26). The justices decided a major case about separation of church and state arising from a dispute over playground funding in Missouri—with implications for all US taxpayers.
The most famous female pilot of all time is likely Amelia Earhart. In July 1937, she flew around the world with navigator Fred Noonan and almost completed the journey. But she didn’t. Her plane went down, and her remains were never found, despite extensive searches for her in the Pacific. She is now believed to have landed on an uninhabited island 1,000 miles north of Fiji.
It’s time to rewrite the record on dogs with jobs. We all know humans have long bred canines into all sizes and shapes to do our bidding—even if that’s just sitting in a queen’s sleeve or a celebrity’s purse. But we didn’t know for how long we’d been doing it.
Federal agencies must use plain language. It’s the law. Yet the new 2017 US Government Website Clarity Index (pdf), put together by the content analysis company Visible Thread, shows that many sites defy the Plain Writing Act with puzzling prose.
In the American legal tradition, there’s no duty to rescue a person in danger—except if you’re the one who creates the danger, putting someone in peril. Say you see a kid drowning in a pool. You don’t have to do anything. But if you deliberately or otherwise pushed the child in, you must act.
Public space in the digital age has no shape and no physical place. But the US Supreme Court is now sorting out what that means for free-speech rights. Today (June 19), the justices unanimously held that states can’t broadly limit access to social media because cyberspace “is one of the most important places to exchange views.”
Everyone relies on the sun to survive so it makes sense that we still celebrate an ancient solar holiday. The summer solstice is spiritually and scientifically significant, and it has been throughout human history, around the world.
Drug dealers expect to deal with law enforcement scrutiny and take calculated risks that they may end up in court for pushing illegal product on the streets. Less so, prescription pain-pill makers. But now, some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are getting a taste of the medicine street dealers deal with every day.
The Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York, is one of the most contaminated places in America, with stink and filth that emanate in all kinds of weather. The US Environmental Protection Agency declared it a Superfund site in 2010. The cleanup has been slow-going.
Gerard and Roger Moline have a lively take on death. The brothers from Barcelona who created Bios, an ecologically friendly cremains transformation company, make products that turn loss into gain and pain into growth. Their biodegradable urns and futuristic incubators sprout pines, redwoods, maples, oaks, and more.
The justices of the US Supreme Court are accustomed to being cordial in the face of conflict. Still, junior justice Neil Gorsuch’s investiture ceremony tomorrow (June 15) could be awkward.
