Skeptical of drinking from The Fountainhead

I'm researching Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead. I read the voluminous work back in college, and found it preachy and philosophically disturbing. Rand uses the story to explain objectivism, which holds a radically autonomous view of the human person and proclaims the virtue of selfishness. Since college, I've talked to countless people who have were profoundly influenced by the novel, including Christians. I've struggled to articulate to them the intellectual discord between objectivism and Christianity, because, to some extent, Rand's philosophy describes human nature as we find it and, thus, resonates with reality. But this essay contrasting George Bailey with Rand's hero, Howard Roark, does the job well.

The Heresy of Cool

I wish I had written this piece. I would have titled it, "The Heresy of Hip," because that is alliterative and hip is the new cool. Er...unless hip has been further eclipsed by some new verbiage.

For those, like me, who slave at the feet of cool:

Coolness is heretical. Or at least the pursuit of it is. This is because an inverse relationship exists between our attempts at being cool and our faith in Jesus Christ. The one struts, confident in his ability to do and say all the right things. The other limps, just as confident in his ineptitude, his missed cues and bad timing.

The professionally cool know the short shelf life of their product and are thus characterized by an ability to be just ahead of the curve. They seem to just be leaving the places at which the rest of us are just arriving. It all looks as effortless as it is actually rigorous. That is to say, it’s hard work being cool. And a funny kind of hard work to boot, because it’s not allowed to look hard. Read on...

Requiem to chocolate

After some amateur sleuthing of my diet, I isolated chocolate as the culprit of several medical heists. So it had to die. In the aftermath, I'm finding solace in fruit desserts, like this scrumptious blackberry upside-down cake.

Signs of Brooklyn, in one word