The 1984 film Pulp Fiction features Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolfe, a fixer and cleaner. A fixer is a person who disposes of bodies; one who “cleans up” physical evidence of crime is also more specifically called a cleaner. America has a…
Georgia convention finally sells its ‘Taj Mahal’ at a 50% loss
The Georgia Baptist Mission Board, once the largest Southern Baptist state convention east of the Mississippi River, has sold its headquarters building for half its original $42.3 million cost. The state convention announced the sale on Jan. 4 without disclosing…
What happened at Harvard is bigger than Harvard
The president of Harvard was forced to resign due to overwhelming public pressure. Being an enthusiastic teacher, an experienced scholar, an efficient administrator and a proven fund raiser was not enough. Declaring the president’s actions to be a violation of…
Guns turned in at buybacks often end up back on the street
Concerned about rising gun violence, St. David’s Episcopal Church outside Detroit hosted a gun buyback in December so residents could trade firearms for gift cards. “We’re trying to help build a safer community,” explained Chris Yaw, the church’s rector. “Guns…
Can Pope Francis help rescue us from Christian nationalism?
Conservative Catholics and their political evangelical allies in the United States have a “Pope Francis problem.” Outbursts of severe criticism of Pope Francis increase regularly from Catholics and evangelicals alike, such as Joseph Edward Strickland, a recently fired bishop in…
Petrostates, tedious regulations and fossil fuel lobbyists doomed COP28 to fail
The United Nations held its annual climate change conference, COP28, late last year but produced little to show for its efforts. The U.N.’s Conference on Parties — meaning “all parties in the world” — met for the 28th straight year,…
What Bob Menendez, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and immigration have to do with Cuba’s troubling times
“Bob, I gotta to talk to you about Cuba,” President Biden said to Sen. Bob Menéndez (D-N.J.), then chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, following the chief executive’s State of the Union address last February. “I’m serious.” The remarks, caught…
AI ‘deep fakes’ are creating a new way of violating women’s privacy on the internet
Most people know of AI as a tool that will write papers, complete assignments or generate streams of content at the click of a button, like ChatGPT. Debates about the pros and cons of AI have been in conversation for…
Things fall apart. Is democracy one of them?
It feels like 1971. That was a bad year for libraries. Bad year for America. Hippies burning library cards. Abbie Hoffman telling everybody to steal books. And smirking funny boy Jerry Seinfeld checking out a book from the New York…