On What Basis Could The Rings of Power Completely Fail?

I first encountered The Lord of the Rings during the loneliest year of my childhood. My family had moved, my friends had been left behind, and I was lonely. The one friend I did make that year was an avid fan of the books and pleaded with me to read them. I did so and quickly got swept up into a world that transported me far beyond my problems. That was the first, though certainly not the last, time I …

How Much Television Do You Actually Watch? Way Too Much!

How much television do you think you watch? No, honestly, how much? And how much time do you give to other screens—your mobile phone, your tablet, and whatever it is you use to watch Netflix? A brand new study from Nielsen suggests that it is a lot. A heap. A ton. Way more than you would guess, I’m sure. Let me walk through some of the most interesting findings. First, this: Even while we hear so much about Netflix and …

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Glorying in Humiliation

Over the past few days I’ve been reading Girls Gone Mild, the new book by Wendy Shalit. Shalit’s first book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue was published seven years ago and caused quite a stir. Shalit, an orthodox Jew, made the audacious claim that the sexual revolution may not have been entirely beneficial for women. She decried the lack of modesty this revolution has brought about and, according to TIME defended “compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry, and sexual …

Codex

As you may have noticed, I am now offering a small amount of advertising space on this site. It may or may not be coincidence that I began offering advertising at the same time as I bought my first house and began facing mortgage payments for the first time. I am handling all advertising requests personally and attempting to ensure that I only run advertising that might benefit the readers of this site. I have no plans to run BlogAds, …

Advertising and Cable Television

Not too long ago I mentioned that my wife and I were ready to give up cable television. Perhaps strangely, our concern stemmed not only or even primarily from the content of television shows. After all, if we do not like the content of a show we can easily simply avoid watching it. Will and Grace is a show that glamorizes the homosexual lifestyle. We do not like the show and what it represents so we can easily avoid watching …