Author: Adam Lee

I’ve been getting into alternate history novels lately – The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove, Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp – and one of the better ones I’ve read is Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2002 book The Years of Rice and Salt. I’ve read Robinson’s Mars trilogy, which I thought was…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter VII Hank Rearden asks Ragnar Danneskjold, the pirate, why he’s chosen a life of violence against society, rather than just disappearing like the vanished industrialists: The shock that came next was to see Danneskjold smile: it was like seeing the first green of spring on the sculptured planes of an…

On a dreaming night not long ago, I was walking by myself along a lonely road, in search of reflection and solitude. The nearest homes were only a far-off and fuzzy glow, a fleeting scent of woodsmoke through the bare and tangled arms of dark trees. It was a chilly, blustery night, and the snap…

As you may have noticed, post pagination is back, and I’m not happy about it. This isn’t of my choosing; it was imposed on Patheos atheist bloggers without our consent and with very little advance notice. This is a cheap and artificial way to inflate page view counts, and it does so at the cost…

Brittany Maynard died this month. Diagnosed with brain cancer on New Year’s Day, at the age of 29, she opted for surgery, but the cancer returned and became even more aggressive. Deciding that radiation or chemotherapy was only delaying the inevitable and would destroy the quality of her life in what time she had left,…

I think it’s about time for another of these. This is an open thread for the purposes of self-promotion. Do you have a blog, a Twitter or a Tumblr account you’d like to publicize, a Kickstarter project you’d like to promote, a side business that does cool things for reason or science? Post in the…

Atlas Shrugged, part II, chapter VII Hank Rearden has moved into an apartment in Philadelphia, so as not to have to see his family anymore. He’s also – finally – begun divorce proceedings against Lillian, handing his lawyer a blank check and telling him: “I don’t care what means you use, how many of their…

It was an exceptionally ugly night for Democrats. The Republicans winning the Senate is discouraging, though not unexpected. (I had held out hope of a 50-50 tie.) But the Democrats also lost multiple governorships, including several that should have been easy holds or promising pickups. A few scattered thoughts: • If you thought the last…

I haven’t responded to William Lane Craig’s column in a while, but this question was too good to pass up: Dear Dr. Craig, I have usually found your words to be a source of information and reassurance in my Christian faith… So I was really disappointed, almost shocked, when I read your newsletter of April…

• After serving most of a ten-year prison sentence for tax evasion, Kent Hovind was due to be released next year… but now the government is pressing new charges, saying that he filed fraudulent liens in an attempt to stop them from seizing his property as part of the punishment for his original conviction. •…