Steveawiggins

LATEST ARTICLES ( 4576 )

• Commandments by Committee

  

  Something about the holiday season seems to bring out atheistic activism, or at least media interest in atheism. Now that we’re safely in 2015, I suspect... Read more

  Posted on 06 January 2015 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Biggest Buy

  

  It isn’t really that much of a specialty item. You see, we live in an older apartment and three-pronged outlets were mostly reserved for kitchens the last time... Read more

  Posted on 05 January 2015 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Grin and Bear It

  

  The dentist’s chair is about the last place I’d like to spend my Saturdays, but given my work schedule there are few alternatives. Read more

  Posted on 04 January 2015 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Like a Virgin

  

  Having more than two days in a row when I could be both home and awake, led to some premature spring cleaning over the last few days. Read more

  Posted on 03 January 2015 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Land’s End

  

  Although not due for release for another two years, the internet is already buzzing about Pirates of the Caribbean 5. Thing is, once a studio finds a... Read more

  Posted on 02 January 2015 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• 2015

  

  New Year’s Day seemed to me, as a child, an odd choice for a holiday. We’d just had Christmas a week before. Of course, at the time I did not realize that the... Read more

  Posted on 01 January 2015 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Book Ends

  

  It’s the end of another year of reading. Since Goodreads keeps track of my booklist, I see by their accounting I finished 95 books in 2014. Read more

  Posted on 31 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Pope for the Planet

  

  According to The Guardian, Pope Francis is about to weigh in on the faux question of global warming. Faux because there really is no question—we know it is... Read more

  Posted on 30 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Bible Stories

  

  Say what you will about it, but the Bible has some great stories. Based on classical measures of what makes a good tale, the Bible ranks up there with Greek... Read more

  Posted on 29 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• A Lot of Salem

  

  Vampires may seem out of place late in December, but they never really go out of season. That will be my excuse, anyway, for writing about Stephen King’s... Read more

  Posted on 28 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Mother’s Night

  

  It wouldn’t be Christmas, in the Christian tradition, without Mary. Still, apart from her later enhanced role in Roman Catholicism, Mary’s part beyond... Read more

  Posted on 27 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Are You Fey?

  

  ‘Tis is the time of year that one might make inquiry into elves and the wee folk without being thought too strange. Santa has his cadre of mythic diminutive... Read more

  Posted on 26 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Lords a’Leaping

  

  As I’m writing a not insubstantial check for the rent, as I do every 25th, I am participating in a Christmas ritual. Having grown up with trees, presents,... Read more

  Posted on 25 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Angels We Have Seen on High

  

  Humans have always ascribed significance to what they see in the sky. Evolution, I suspect, has a great deal to do with it, but so does religion. Read more

  Posted on 24 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Weather for the Birds

  

  As Christmas nears so does a warm front, dashing hopes of a white Christmas in New Jersey. Well, at least there are no tornadoes coming. The weather, as my... Read more

  Posted on 23 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• X-mas Time

  

  As predictable as crocuses in early spring are the controversies that crop up around holiday billboards. Even living in the quite blue state of New Jersey, I se... Read more

  Posted on 22 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• When Darkness Reigns

  

  I recently read an article about the Druids. The fact is, historically speaking, we know little of them. They are mysterious and silent and irrevocably linked i... Read more

  Posted on 21 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• M Is for Mary

  

  While pre-celebrating Christmas with some friends recently, the topic of cats came up. This really isn’t surprising since two of the families present had been... Read more

  Posted on 20 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Moral Animals

  

  For all of my life that I can remember, I have felt an affinity with animals. Even when I was relentlessly taught that evolution was wrong—Satanic even—I still... Read more

  Posted on 19 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY

• Foundation and Empire

  

  In a childhood full of science fiction I’m sure I read much material that was too sophisticated for me. After all, I grew up in a working-class family where... Read more

  Posted on 18 December 2014 POLITICS, RELIGION, SOCIETY