You likely heard recently that former hedge fund manager-turned-entreperneur Martin Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, bought the patent to a drug treating toxoplasmosis, a potentially deadly parasite disease, increasing the per pill cost from $13.50 to $750. (Before being sold several…
Moving into the future confidently
In his address to the U.S. Congress several weeks ago, Pope Francis noted that young people do not have a positive outlook for the future. “We live in a culture,” he said, “which pressures young people not to start a…
What’s wrong with political solutions in this country
It’s that season again. I don’t mean crisp mornings and changing leaves, but the season of presidential politics. But thinking of the fall, in sequence with politics, made me think theology. (It’s a hazard of the job.) This stream-of-consciousness led…
Stop talking about gentrification
My beloved neighborhood in west Charlotte is on the brink of big changes. Neighbors are trying to figure out what those changes will be and how to have a voice in them, and we keep coming back to one term…
What’s the matter with Florida?
To channel Thomas Frank who famously asked “What’s the matter with Kansas?” — I have the same question for the Sunshine State. What’s the matter with Florida? Or, more specifically, what’s the matter with the (almost) entire Florida Congressional Delegation…
The vibrant religious life of Silicon Valley, and why it’s killing the economy
Samuel Loncar on Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns the Future? He even looks like a prophet. Well, how a prophet might look like in the digital age. Jaron Lanier, technologist and computer scientist, cannot be mistaken for a small man in…
The culture of poverty
The term “culture of poverty” was introduced by Oscar Lewis in his seminal 1959 book Five Families: Mexican Case Studies in the Culture of Poverty. (If you don’t know about Lewis, 1914-1970, as I didn’t until very recently, he was…
Destroying our own neighborhoods
The recent uprising in Baltimore has occupied our screens and dominated our conversations for more than a week now. Protestors there pricked the consciences of the nation in their cries for justice for Freddie Gray. At some point, a small…
Taxation: Theft or support of the public welfare?
It has been ten days now since Tax Day 2015, but I am still thinking about taxation because of what I saw/heard in the media in the days following April 15. While driving around town on the 17 th, I…