Science Narrows in on Imagination

By |2015-04-04T10:52:34-05:00March 24th, 2015|Categories: Culture, Featured, Imagination, Science, Stephen Masty|

It will hardly surprise readers of this journal, the members of our Imaginative Conservative parish, but scientists are cottoning onto the fact that creativity is heightened by awareness of the past. The Times newspaper reported findings in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, that: “Psychologists at the University of Southampton split 175 Irish undergraduates into [...]

Nit-Picking “Blessed” Adam Smith

By |2022-07-16T21:39:45-05:00February 20th, 2015|Categories: Adam Smith, Books, Edmund Burke, Stephen Masty|

How often can writers pretend to discover some well-known thing for “the first time ever?” With poor Adam Smith it has happened again, but commercial promotion inadvertently raises an important matter that only begins with the great First Economist’s religion… or lack thereof. A prominent newspaper starts its book review by insulting its audience: “As [...]

Of Art, Forgery, & Misperception

By |2015-02-10T17:06:04-06:00February 10th, 2015|Categories: Art, Stephen Masty|

The proverb “seeing is believing” implies truth but merely describes one justification for belief, however shaky. Want to see me pull a rabbit from my hat? A short, fascinating article reports controversy surrounding the painting Old Man in an Armchair, created in 1652 by Rembrandt—or not. Besides a fascinating glimpse into the scholarship of art, and [...]

A Liberal Hymn

By |2015-01-30T12:01:12-06:00February 8th, 2015|Categories: Liberalism, Poetry, Stephen Masty|

I love Humanity in all Its misery and need; I love those suffering in thrall, Resenting others’ greed; I love the spiritual link, Uniting all who breathe and think, Together standing on the brink, Until I give the call. I love the Populace throughout Its genders and its races; I love Diversity about In safely [...]

Top 10 Reasons Why Your Kids May Be Idiots

By |2015-01-26T16:34:01-06:00January 26th, 2015|Categories: Conservatism, Stephen Masty|

Sure, you love them, but people love their pet hamsters. This is not to guarantee that your offspring are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging simians—determining that, beyond reasonable doubt, requires their face-to-face meeting with trained experts, lasting for at least two minutes. However, you can get a start right here. Remember that this is a cumulative test; it depends [...]

Nature’s Way to Cut Government Waste

By |2015-01-22T08:30:17-06:00January 22nd, 2015|Categories: Economics, Nature, Stephen Masty|

You see one every day on the streets of Kathmandu, what a friend calls D3 meaning the Daily Dead Dog. Stiller and flatter than before, sometimes the canine corpses are hauled away by the city, at other times unceremoniously chucked off the road into a ditch or the bushes. Then Nepal’s kites—handsome, eaglesque, carrion-eating birds—do [...]

Credo

By |2015-01-19T15:21:59-06:00January 18th, 2015|Categories: Poetry, Socialism, Stephen Masty|

That socialism is, you see, A foolish ideology; While gilded creeds of every miser Leave us, frankly, none the wiser; Thronging after what is new And slick is not the best to do; To feast on gadgets or repasts; Is to ignore the Joy that lasts, And that disposability Kills unborn, but also we; The [...]

Ebola, the Slave & the Puritan Preacher

By |2015-01-05T16:48:26-06:00January 15th, 2015|Categories: History, Slavery, Stephen Masty|

As the world grapples with fearsome Ebola Fever, we have been through something similar before. Last time it was stemmed in Colonial America by a black African slave and his owner, a firebrand, evangelical, white clergyman. Onesimus was a slave, owned by the Puritan polemicist and renowned preacher Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Beyond Black Studies Departments, [...]

Problems in Cloning Mammoths

By |2015-01-08T00:08:11-06:00January 8th, 2015|Categories: Progressivism, Stephen Masty|

Britain’s The Independent newspaper, second in Progressivism to The Guardian, reports that scientists may be able to clone a woolly mammoth within a human generation. There the problems start. Nicknamed Buttercup, the 2.3-metre beast was discovered frozen in Siberia, having succumbed to swamps and predators some 40,000 years ago. She is missing a leg but [...]

Should America Invade the Hendiadys?

By |2015-01-01T08:21:11-06:00January 1st, 2015|Categories: Classics, Language, Stephen Masty|

In the unlikely event that any neo-cons read this, some will pore through the atlas with sound and fury; others will try and reroute the Pacific Fleet; while a few more will summon the 82nd Airborne to drop and rain down mass destruction. But they will be disappointed. The Hendiadys is not a group of [...]

A Post-Christmas Day Prayer

By |2015-01-19T20:33:13-06:00December 26th, 2014|Categories: Christmas, Poetry, Stephen Masty|

Get ready! And hurry! We mustn’t wait! It’s time for worship! Don’t be late! Be not like those wretches who Disdain our values, through and through That made us what we are today! We ‘ere grow stronger ‘ere we pray, When pray we fully—not by half; Come worship, now, the Golden Calf! On bended knee [...]

Impeachment at the Vatican

By |2015-01-19T20:35:43-06:00December 21st, 2014|Categories: Catholicism, Poetry, Stephen Masty|

“He’s out of touch as he can be, Now filling up the Holy See With rabble-rousers, populists, With throngs of half-baked dogmatists; Who make us weep, or maybe laugh, Who cannot read a simple graph, Who can’t perceive the bottom line, Who deign to cavil, moan and whine; Far too unlettered to ensure That we [...]

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