Jane The Actuary
Patheos
Chicago, IL, United States
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Past articles by Jane:
A Boy Scout Update
So I feel obliged to comment on this latest news report about the Boy Scouts, even though to some degree, it's just not newsy, per se. From the AP, yesterday, "Boy Scouts could be hit with more sex abuse claims": The lawyers’ ads on the internet aggressively seeking clients to file sexual abuse lawsuits give a taste → Read More
So let’s talk about anti-vaxxers, shall we?
So, apropos of nothing, let's think about anti-vaxxers for a bit, shall we? It seems to me that you can classify them into four groups. First are the traditional faith-healers. They're a small minority and their anti-vaccination stance is a small part of an overall rejection of modern medicine. We accept their → Read More
So about those Methodists. . .
The Methodists, you see, do not have a pope or a patriarch. At the same time, they don't have the "everyone do your own thing" of nondenominational churches. They have bishops, and they have Annual Conferences (which are simultaneously meetings and an organizational structure analogous to dioceses) and General → Read More
What does it mean to be pro-open borders, and why does it matter?
Here's an Eric Zorn column from a couple days ago, partially reprinted in Sunday's Trib: "Pelosi says border walls are 'immoral.' But that's not the conversation we need to be having right now." It's a short piece and difficult to excerpt only a fraction, so this is a larger quote than I would generally use: Better → Read More
What if Trump doesn’t care?
So we are now actually arriving at that point at which government workers are about to miss a paycheck due to the shutdown. Federal employees are protesting. The media is featuring other impacts of the shutdown, such as missed paychecks. And this follows reports from a week ago that Trump "said he'd keep the → Read More
Happy Elizabeth Ann Seton Day! (with discussion questions)
It would seem that I have not, despite multiple years of blogging, blogged about her, the first American citizen to have been canonized, a wife, mother, widow, and religious foundress, whose feast day is today, the anniversary of her death on January 4, 1821. She was raised as an Episcopalian, devout but also happy → Read More
Would you invite a neighbor to church?
I should clarify that I probably would not, but that's largely because (a) I'm an extreme introvert and (b) most of my neighbors are already members of my church, which is a mere block away. In fact, kitty-corner from us is a retired teacher, and three doors over the other direction is a current preschool teacher. → Read More
In which Democrats seem to have learned the wrong lesson from Obamacare politics
The "right" lesson is, of course, that in order to ensure one's signature reform is successful you need to work with the other party -- not just a few members of that party whose beliefs are so centrist as to approach your own, but comprehensively, so that it becomes a part of the fabric of the country rather than → Read More
George Bush and the Communion of Saints
Did you watch the Bush funeral yesterday? I didn't in real time, but thanks to the magic of YouTube and Apple TV and a husband who has put in the effort to set everything up properly, did so after dinner. And I'll admit, GHW Bush, in my mind, had always been a sort of mini-Reagan: Reagan set the collapse of the → Read More
Cardinal Cupich, Please stay home
In (Catholic) news this week: "Cupich named to organizing group of Vatican's February meeting on abuse crisis." Are you asking yourself, as I am, "what the frick is this about?" Or even "this is a frickin' joke"? Or saying to yourself, "there is no frickin' way Cupich should be among the anti-abuse meeting → Read More
Are teens being deceived into transgenderism?
At the National Review yesterday, "Autistic Children Pushed to Become Transgender?" which itself links to a report in the Daily Mail, "School has SEVENTEEN children changing gender as teacher says vulnerable pupils are being 'tricked' into believing they are the wrong sex." Yes, it's the Daily Mail. But I don't have → Read More
When does anti-racism turn into Scarlet Letter-labelling?
This is an article from the Tribune a week ago that I'd been meaning to write about: "Cook County promoted former Chicago alderman once recommended for firing after allegedly saying, ‘I can’t stand these Mexicans’" Its title in the print version is more succinct: "County promoted worker after slurs about → Read More
Voter disenfranchisement? Not in this case
Here's an article I'm going to share with you because I saw it on twitter and it's just sooo silly: "What It Feels Like to Be Disenfranchised by a Voter ID Law; I had a birth certificate, a photo ID, and utility bills proving my residency. But Tennessee decided that wasn't good enough." This is one of a series of → Read More
Defining democracy
Here's a sort of pre-Election Day post meant as a conversation-starter. Consider the rhetoric you've heard lately: "our democracy is threatened by Trumpism." Or by gerrymandering. Or tightening of voter ID regulations. Or lack thereof. Or by low turnout. Or too much turnout by voters who don't understand the → Read More
What I think about birthright citizenship
Yeah, a more conventional blogpost title would be something like, "what you should think about birthright citizenship," but I think there's a lot of room for disagreement here, and I'm not going to claim that I have all the right answers. But let's think about the issue a little bit. To begin with, there are three → Read More
6 Super-Scary Halloween Costumes for the Political/Policy Nerd
As you know, readers, when I'm not blogging here, I'm writing at Forbes.com. My latest is an article about how people don't seem troubled by simultaneously believing they earn their Social Security benefits fair-and-square and yet the rich should be taxed more heavily to subsidize them. Prior to that, I wrote that → Read More
Fighting Climate Change “like we fought the Nazis”?
How do we fight climate change? My money's on carbon capture (though I know there's an ongoing dispute about whether this is feasible, I still tend to think it's comparatively more feasible than converting all energy generation to solar and wind). New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a → Read More
No, you can’t change the 2-Senators-per-state Constitutional provision
Here's an, er, interesting outcome of yesterday's Kavanaugh confirmation vote: liberals are, at least on Twitter, (again) suggesting that the Senate is "broken" because small states have the same representation as large states. Here's Matt Yglesias, and after pushback, a follower of his replied, And here's Ken → Read More
What to do in a “none of the above” election
Two items in the news today: first, a report that, whaddayaknow, Rauner's ad about Pritzker's toilet-removing tax-cheating scheme was not just fake news: "Cook County watchdog says 'scheme to defraud' saved Pritzker $330,000 in property taxes" Billionaire Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker improperly → Read More
What’s the purpose of Christianity? On (skeptically) reading Spong
It's a quiet weekend so I pulled out a book I had picked up at the library, Unbelievable, Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today, by John Shelby Spong. Yes, that Spong, who is still writing at the age of 87, though in the introduction he says it's his last book because of a → Read More