THE QUESTION: Is It True? On 19 March 1963, C. S. Lewis wrote to an American lady: I am thrilled to hear that San Suez [her pet dog] has a sweater! Is this part of the demarche (it’s in all our papers) which a body of American women are making to the President [Kennedy] to get animals properly clothed “in Read More ›
Dear Sirs, With regard to Tom Bethell’s article “Controversy in Shadowlands” in your September, 1998 issue, I am disheartened to see an otherwise fine magazine engaging in needless controversy. The much-ballyhooed charge that Walter Hooper forged The Dark Tower is so far from reality as to defy belief, and one wonders why it is still being repeated. Consider the following: Read More ›
The Wonders of International E-Mail On 26 April, Bill Fong, the son of immigrant parents from China, sent Kathryn Lindskoog an e-mail from Sacramento, CA, introducing himself and asking, among other things, if Lewis had been translated into Chinese. Fong, who had once been a classics major and studied Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, said he was no longer fluent in Read More ›
In July 1974 Clyde Kilby introduced Wheaton College alumna Faith Sand to his friends Leonard and Maud Miller at their new home in Eynsham, Oxfordshire. (The couple had lived with Warren Lewis in the Kilns until he died in 1973; then he provided this new house for them.) The Millers died before 1980, and Clyde Kilby died in 1986. By Read More ›
What do the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the global warming treaty in Kyoto, and the Social Security “crisis” of demand-side Keynesian economics have in common, apart from a convergence of K’s? You can even add Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Answer: They all reflect a belief in a zero-sum world. The concept of a zero-sum system originated in a branch of Read More ›
In The Origin of Species Charles Darwin wrote that “the embryos of mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles [are] closely similar, but become, when fully developed, widely dissimilar.” He inferred that all vertebrates “are the modified descendants of some ancient progenitor,” and that “the embryonic or larval stages show us, more or less completely, the condition of the progenitor of the whole Read More ›
IT SEEMS AS IF HE HAS ALWAYS been part of the American cultural landscape, leaving dead bodies at hospital emergency-room doors, wearing Founding Father costumes to court, accusing his opponents of conducting a modern-day Inquisition. But only nine years ago, no one had heard of Jack Kevorkian, when a March 1990 newspaper article described an offer that seemed more like Read More ›
Paul Heyne, senior lecturer in economics at the University of Washington, asks: When the population of an area grows, why is it that the roads get congested but the movie theaters don’t? His answer: Because you have to pay to see a movie. If people could walk in free, Heyne writes, “I would predict a growing problem of theater congestion.” Read More ›