Reviews and News:
A history of the post office in America.
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America’s unknown militias. “State defense forces, or ‘SDFs,’ assist with defense and disaster-recovery missions, but, unlike the National Guard, they cannot be deployed outside their home states. SDF units typically fall under the control of the state adjutant general—the same official who commands the National Guard when it is in state service. As the Heritage Foundation put it in 2012, SDFs are ‘today’s modern state militias.'”
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A history of the hot dog: “Many think that fast food was invented by Ray Kroc when he opened his first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Illinois, in 1955. But it is probably Nathan Handwerker who deserves the distinction, argues his grandson Lloyd Handwerker in his new book Famous Nathan.”
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Jon L. Breen reviews a mystery novel by a Mexican chemist set in nineteenth-century Edinburgh: “The novel stakes a lot on the quality of its solution. In the ideal locked-room mystery, the answer should be as striking as the problem. This one is, offering just the right combination of drama, outlandishness, and believability. The action climax is way over the top, with a touch of the Grand Guignol, but viscerally satisfying.”
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Obergefell and the new Gnosticism: The Court’s ruling “depended on a broader sexual progressivism; and its cultural fallout has made clearer that sexual progressivism is illiberal. Absorb its vision of the human person wholesale, and you will soon conclude that social justice requires getting others to subscribe to that vision.”
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Essay of the Day:
In Public Discourse, Mark Regnerus looks at the results of a new study of children in same-sex households.
“Professor Paul Sullins, the study’s author, found that during adolescence the children of same-sex parents reported marginally less depression than the children of opposite-sex parents. But by the time the survey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their experiences had reversed. Indeed, dramatically so: over half of the young-adult children of same-sex parents report ongoing depression, a surge of 33 percentage points (from 18 to 51 percent of the total). Meanwhile, depression among the young-adult children of opposite-sex parents had declined from 22 percent of them down to just under 20 percent.
“A few other findings are worth mentioning as well. Obesity surged among both groups, but the differences became significant over time, with 31 percent obesity among young-adult children of opposite-sex parents, well below the 72 percent of those from same-sex households. While fewer young-adult children of same-sex parents felt ‘distant from one or both parents’ as young adults than they did as teens, the levels are still sky-high at 73 percent (down from 93 percent during adolescence). Feelings of distance among the young-adult children of opposite-sex parents actually increased, but they started at a lower level (from 36 percent in adolescence to 44 percent in young adulthood).”
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Image of the Day: Fire fishing
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Poem: Elise Hempel, “No Stone”
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