By Noah Diekemper People have clashed in controversy since the news broke that Disney’s live-action update of Beauty and the Beast would use Gaston’s lackey LeFou to feature an “exclusively gay moment.” Some decried Disney’s gay parade (“think of the children!”), while others failed to see the change as newsworthy at all (“Wait, he wasn’t gay before?”). I think that the latter view is more … Continue reading No One Says No To Gaston: How Lefou Models Typical Human Behavior

By Andrew Egger How do you brew an evolutionary culture war? Take one long-standing religious tradition, then add one serious scientific challenge. Season with cultural suspicion, and add a dash each of class prejudice, anti-intellectualism, and intellectual arrogance. Take outside and let curdle in the sun for a century. The age-old (for us) conflict of creation and evolution carries with it much of the same … Continue reading Intelligent Design: Neither Science nor Faith

By Mark Naida 1 On an early April morning, lines of fog still hung over the corn stubble that lay in the fields waiting for a plow to turn it under. I saw the fog through a break in the young wall of thin birches and ash trees that divided the interstate from the field. This line of trees is a sliver of the Northern … Continue reading A Small Stand of Trees

By Emily Lehman “There would be just one right thing, without alternatives: he must do that.” -William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury “I took the road less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” -Robert Frost, “The Road Less Traveled” “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, / The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’” -John Greenleaf Whittier, … Continue reading There is No “Might Have Been”: The Multiplicity of Goods and Learning to Affirm Reality

  Every Friday at 5:01 pm, I clocked out, grabbed my purse and rode the metro to the Sculpture Gardens. Jazz was calling. A free outdoor concert was held weekly during the summer on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. My friends and I would meet there after a long week at work and drink sangria while listening to jazz. We all pitched in for … Continue reading Can’t Buy Me Friends: A College Student’s Perspective on Money

There’s a greasy feeling that settles over you as you watch A Series of Unfortunate Events, Netflix’s new take on Lemony Snicket’s gothic kid-lit books. From the theme song on, the viewer is pummeled with unpleasantness: children orphaned, neglected, and abused; clueless innocents cruelly murdered; a whole world awash in inconvenience and ennui. At every turn, the show stops to ask the viewer: “Why are … Continue reading An Unfortunate Series: Netflix’s New Offering is a Pale Imitation of its Source Material