Here • My colleague G.W. Carlson shared his appreciation for Clarence Jordan, subject of an upcoming symposium at which GW will speak (along with some other guys). For more on Jordan’s legacy a century after his birth, read this post by Kirk Lyman-Barner of the Fuller Center for Housing, which will host the symposium. (H/T … More That Was The Week That Was
Okay, one more Olympic post… Last fall I spent a couple of weeks attempting (with a big assist from my HIS354 Modern Europe students, and with tongue mostly in cheek) to determine the “best national anthem” — pointing out at least once or twice along the way that there’s really no objective way to determine … More The Best National Anthems: Special Olympic Edition
8/5/16: If you came to this post, you might want to see this morning’s update, which folds in the results from 2012 London and corrects a couple of spreadsheet errors. It’s a good thing the Olympics are wrapping up this week. If they continued much longer, I wouldn’t get any pre-semester work done! Not just because I’m watching … More Which Country (and Continent) Dominates Each Olympic Sport?
Here • I liked Lauren Winner’s use of a pie social as a metaphor for the Church, though I Midwestern-ized it into a potluck supper. • Trying hard not to pile on Penn State after the NCAA sanctions that were announced Monday, I tried to make the case for sports playing an integral role in … More That Was The Week That Was
As an Olympics junkie, I was pretty thrilled to see this interactive feature from Slate making the rounds yesterday. For the men’s and women’s competitions in four Olympic events (100m dash, discus, long jump, 100m freestyle swim) it lines up eight gold medalists going back through time and animates their performances. So, for example, you … More Olympic Records Over Time
With the Summer Olympics about to start, there’s been some attention paid to the last Olympiad hosted by London: the 1948 summer games, which took place in a country still subject to rationing and other austerity measures, experiencing the beginning of the end of history’s greatest empire, and nervously watching Cold War tensions heat up … More Mussolini’s World’s Fair
Here • The 70th anniversary of a dark day in French history, when French police helped their German occupiers to round up 13,000 Jewish women, men, and children, cram them into a bicycling arena without sanitation, and eventually send them to their deaths in Auschwitz. • The summer’s half over, but there’s still time for … More That Was The Week That Was
We’re one of those households that gets by without cable or satellite. Most of the time, that’s fine with me: Hulu, NetFlix, and digital broadcasting provide more than enough entertainment/information options. But that does mean that I’m missing out on the first of two terrific sporting events to happen in Europe this summer. The London … More The Cold War Continues… in Sports
The past week found me writing and reading an even more motley crew of posts than usual. Behold: a small but eclectic sampling of the week that was. Here The first installment of what I plan as a recurring Monday feature: a semi-serious look-ahead at “This Week in History.” Embedded will be a recurring sub-feature: … More That Was the Week That Was
The Pietist Schoolman 