A Gardening Piece at The University Bookman

My dad received The University Bookman while I was growing up, so I was especially pleased to see one of my pieces appear here today.

The Everyday Problem That is the Left Hemisphere

The left hemisphere of your brain is a miserable little tyrant, a penny-ante dictator strutting around in the gray matter. Don’t believe me? Look at the everyday modern life that the left hemisphere has given us. It’s one big prick-fest, a carnival of impatience and irritation where every

Why I Don't Stay Informed

I'm glad the Establishment didn't succeed in destroying JRE during COVID. It’s pretty much the only way I stay informed to the extent I want to be informed. I agree with Nassim Taleb’s observation that there’s no reason to read the daily news,

The Stud that Was H.L. Mencken

Every so often, I plunge headlong into a Mencken spree, a vice I’ve nursed since the early 1990s when I first stumbled into Ann Arbor’s Dawn Treader Bookstore and smelled those old books (that odd but pleasing scent, I’m told, comes from vanilla releasing from the aging

The Battle of the Hemispheres

So, fear’s the new punk squatting in the pantheon of mortal sins. That oozing narcissism, born from the left hemisphere’s tyrannical stranglehold on our skulls, lights up our amygdalas like a cheap firecracker every time our little empire of self gets a scratch. It’s a meltdown, a

Why Weak Fools Can Dominate

Exploring the fool in Christ and the fool in Antichrist. Ivan the Terrible v. Nicholas of Pskov. Nietzsche v. Everyone

Four Reformers

I had a chance last month to booze it up at Sloppy Joe’s in Key West, but by the time I came across it, I’d already guzzled enough gin to fill a Prohibition-era bathtub, so I skipped it. Bad on me. Sloppy Joe’s was Hemingway’s haunt

I Want My Son to Visit Vegas

Vegas is Sin City, where what happens stays, except the clap. But that shouldn’t spook a lad with a shred of Catholic spine.

AI's Little Victories Add Up to Huge Defeat

A malign pincer grips our weary souls as I peck out these words in the bleak dawn of early 2025. You feel it too. That dull ache in your ribcage ain't a cardiac event. It's the life force being throttled out of you by a twin-pronged

Why We Need to Meditate

So, you want to meditate? Here’s the raw deal, stripped down to the studs: 1. Plunk yourself in a chair—or on the floor if you’re one of those types—and shut your eyes. 2. Zero in on the air moving through your nose. Feel it, don’t