As the cover story for Mere Orthodoxy's third issue, I wrote on how we value care work, and the thin line between humility and degradation. A care worker knows that …
“Father” Is Not a Part-Time Job
Can you unbundle fatherhood from marriage? That's the topic that Richard Reeves and I are (politely) skirmishing over at Fairer Disputations. Reeves would like to see more support for and ideals of fatherhood where fathers live apart from their children and are not married to their mothers. Men need to know what they can uniquely contribute to their… Read More
Why Government Can’t Talk to Citizens
Whose to blame when government services don't work? I got to review an excellent book on the last mile of policy for Deseret. Social studies students learn how a bill becomes a law, but Jennifer Pahlka would argue that you can’t stop the story at the president’s signature. The administrative infrastructure and vendor contracts that… Read More
The Narrowness of Barbie Feminism
I was rooting for Greta Gerwig's Barbie, but I was ultimately disappointed by the movie. I got to review it for The Dispatch. Gloria comes off as the Betty Friedan of the film, giving voice to the problem without a name. She offers her lecture on the impossibility of being a woman to each brainwashed… Read More
The Colleges Cheated First
At First Things, I'm writing about Chat-GPT and cheating in college. The core problem—students only have a reason to cheat if they think they have no need to learn. The cheating began with university administrators, when they started to substitute a credentialing process for an actual commitment to the formation of a particular kind of… Read More
Cramming Child Care into CHIPS
At Deseret, I make the case against the child care benefit in the fine print of CHIPS, which would make child care a work-administered benefit at some semiconductor plants. Making child care a work-linked benefit means repeating all the problems of the employer-linked insurance and retirement plans, and adding a more serious problem. Child care… Read More
Embracing Amateurism in the Face of AI
As Chat-GPT and other machine learning models make it easier to generate text and art, I wrote in praise of doing something yourself, even if you do it badly, in Deseret. When you choose to be bad at something, you get to experience the joy of being an amateur in the classical sense. Today, “amateur”… Read More
Books I Hope to Read in 2023
2022 had the most babies and the fewest books read, both in total, and off of my "to read" list for the year. This was predictable. I read 7/11 of my "to read" books, and 85 books/26k pages across the year. Nothing earlier than 1950, either, I think (though Goodreads gets this wrong if I… Read More
The Best and Worst of Rings of Power
I wrote about Rings of Power for both First Things and Mere Orthodoxy. There's potential in the show, but the first season fell far short of good storytelling. At First Things, I wrote about the moral muddle of its structure: Tolkien’s stories aren’t mystery boxes. His characters have a very clear idea of what is… Read More
The Race to the Bottom in Sports Gambling
At Deseret, I'm writing on the particular perversity of legalized sports gambling. States touting possible revenue from taxes aim to profit from the degradation of their citizens. It’s as though a state instituted a tax on adultery, and then began promoting websites like AshleyMadison and held press conferences with prostitution rings. By advertising invitations to… Read More
My Favorite Books of 2022
This year began with a baby, had a move in the middle, and I'm now getting to discover what normal might look like in our new state. These were my favorite books I read over the course of the year, listed in roughly chronological order. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society… Read More
A Breast Pump Designed for Your Boss
In "Designing Women," I'm writing at Comment on how the tools intended for women often serve the interests of someone else. I'm very much indebted to Designing Motherhood, which I …
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