Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4658 )

• Up, Up and Away

  

  Intellectuals often have difficulty, it seems, taking popular culture seriously. I remember feeling slightly guilty taking a class on Science Fiction in... Read more

  Posted on 20 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Auld Reekie

  

  Those of us who once tried to storm the walls of academe from humble beginnings soon learn our lesson. This is a guild meant only for those whose parents knew... Read more

  Posted on 19 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Minding Souls

  The mind, despite nay-sayers, is real. It isn’t an illusion. Emergent phenomena are often larger than the sum of their parts. One of the problems with the... Read more

  Posted on 18 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Holy Oak

  

  It was already ancient when first discovered by the early European colonists of New Jersey. The Basking Ridge oak is a well-known and time-honored New Jersey... Read more

  Posted on 17 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Sense of Place

  

  Visiting the Holocaust Museum was one of the most wrenching activities of my life. I was in Washington DC for a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature... Read more

  Posted on 16 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Biblical Literature

  

  It must be difficult to write a Very Short Introduction. Although the series is published by Oxford University Press, I’m not being a shill. Read more

  Posted on 15 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• For the Dogs

  

  You know that feeling of being dropped into a very strange place? Sure, it’s disorienting for a while, but once you get used to it, you start to enjoy your... Read more

  Posted on 14 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Ham’s Ark

  

  Noah and his ark have been in the news quite a bit over the past several months. A friend recently shared a story on American News X about Ken Ham’s Ark... Read more

  Posted on 13 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Camping Season

  

  Summer is the time for camp. I’m not into extreme sports, like sleeping outdoors in the snow, so in my mind, summer is the time for camp. Read more

  Posted on 12 July 2016 POLITICS

• Nazi Religion

  

  As a lifelong pacifist, I’ve never been a fan of war books. Indeed, war seems to be to an utterly useless waste of life and a source of herculean suffering. Read more

  Posted on 11 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Words for Play

  

  Maybe you’ve seen it too.  Corporate-style psychobabble.  Memos land on your desk, whether real or virtual, jostling with neologisms, indicating the trendy new... Read more

  Posted on 10 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Joban Vampires

  

  The first vampire novel I ever read, I remember correctly, was one of the Dark Shadows series written by Marilyn Ross. I don’t recall which one, since I had to... Read more

  Posted on 09 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Holy Girdles

  

  Religions, it seems, come in belts. Or at least elements of religions do. Although we may not all agree on what constitutes the “Bible Belt” we all have a prett... Read more

  Posted on 08 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Buying Intangibles

  

  Perhaps it seems that I’m writing quite a bit about music these days. Being a theoretical and practical failure in the practice of music, it may seem... Read more

  Posted on 07 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Two Unrelated Stories

  

  Harvard University’s been in the news. Well, Harvard makes the news, so that not news. The first story that has appeared is that Harvard, like me, is giving it... Read more

  Posted on 06 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Simon Says

  

  Music preserves your youth. When my wife was studying music therapy, one of the pieces of information she received is that those whose brains have begun to... Read more

  Posted on 05 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Things Remembered

  

  Freedom. Independence Day is our celebration of liberty. Yesterday I happened to find myself at Bethel Woods, the out-of-the-way location in New York where... Read more

  Posted on 04 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Kidnapped by Religion

  

  The title is, unfortunately, not mine. My wife sent me a story on NPR entitled “Humility Is Embedded In Doing Science, But What About Spirituality?” by Barbara... Read more

  Posted on 03 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Summer of Frankenstein

  

  Two centuries can make an enormous difference. Just two-hundred years ago Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo was merely one year in the past. North America and... Read more

  Posted on 02 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Popular Eternity

  

  Popular culture, it seems to me, mediates reality. The media of various descriptions teach us what to think, and even if there is a religiously “orthodox” answe... Read more

  Posted on 01 July 2016 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY