It's a scandal! Jonathan Eisen says that Hollywood is making a movie tentatively entitled Tree of Life. Plot summary?

In a mystical world of folklore, several individuals embrace in a race to find the Tree of Life, said to give immortality, fertility, and other supernatural powers.

Eisen w...

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“I’ve joined a gym,” said a friend and colleague. We agreed that this was a good thing, then she said that she hoped she’d keep it up. Cue my Inner Economist.

“What you need is something that’ll hurt if you don’t go,” I said. “Like a contract, and if you don’t go, you pay me.”

Not much happene...

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One of the more arcane pieces of knowledge I picked up as a youth was the certainty that you could use a pair of stockings to fix the fan-belt on your roadster’s engine.

“Take off your stockings,” I’d murmur to the woman in the bucket seat next to mine at the first sign of trouble.

She’d oblige,...

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Tight flower puds on the frangipani.jpg Longtime readers will know that I am a patient gardener. Not for me the flashy allure of a large pot of instant floral gratification. I like to sow seeds, wait for them to emerge, pot them on, savour the passing time and the growth of the plant towards its final destiny. But even I suffer from bo...

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There is real joy in seeing a biter bit.

And so it is with Robert Eric Frykenberg, who recently reviewed "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" by Lizzie Collingham for Christianity Today. Frykenburg is professor emeritus of history and South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madis...

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