Author: Adam Lee

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter X The tramp on Dagny’s train reveals how the mysterious meme “Who is John Galt?” came into being, and why he fears he might have been the one who started it: “Well, there was something that happened at that plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the…

Summary: Morbid, irreverent and funny, but a subtle and compassionate humanism runs throughout. Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, the creator of a popular YouTube series answering questions about the funeral industry, and the founder of the Order of the Good Death, a “death acceptance” organization dedicated to helping people reconcile with mortality. Her book Smoke…

Amidst the steady drumbeat of grim headlines in the Middle East, the trend I’ve been most concerned by is the strange drawing power of ISIS, also known as Islamic State or Daesh, the brutal extremist group rampaging through Iraq and Syria, capturing cities and committing horrendous acts of violence. ISIS seems to exert an almost…

• Oliver Sacks, the neurologist and science writer, has terminal cancer. Here, he writes a beautiful, elegiac, deeply humanist essay about confronting the prospect of death and what he intends to do with the time he has left. • This can’t end well: In response to the increasing threat of ISIS, which is drawing Muslim…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter X Dagny is in a desperate race against time to reach Quentin Daniels, the physicist whose brain might save the world, if only she can persuade him to resume his work before it’s too late. So, naturally, she takes a transcontinental train that will take several days to get her…

The week after I spoke in Alabama, there was a happy milestone in this reddest of red states: a federal court ruling for marriage equality was set to take effect. Judge Callie V.S. Granade, a George W. Bush appointee, struck down a state ban on same-sex marriage, and the state’s request for a stay was…

I hope there’s a day when I won’t have to write about the latest mass murder in gun-crazed America, but today isn’t that day. This time, the tragedy took place in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where a young family – Yusor Mohamad Abu-Salha, her husband Deah Shaddy Barakat, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, all…

I was going to put up a Friday Night Music post, but I’ve been traveling this weekend and didn’t have the time. So, here’s a weekend bonus with two great songs. My post on First Aid Kit two weeks ago was popular, but as Jeremy Shaffer pointed out in the comments, they don’t just make…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter IX Dagny gets a letter from Quentin Daniels, the physicist she hired to work on reconstructing the motor. He tells her that he’s reached the end of his rope and that he intends to cease his efforts, because “I do not wish to work in a world that regards me…

After washing your hands, vaccination is probably the simplest and best medical advance in human history. But in spite of overwhelming evidence of its efficacy at preventing death and disease, irrational fearmongering is persuading people to skip shots for themselves and their children, and we’re now paying the price. In the U.S., 2014 was the…