Appalachian State versus the University of Michigan. A small college from the hills of North Carolina against my colossal alma mater in Ann Arbor, the school with the winningest record in NCAA football history and ranked fifth in the nation.

Most…

I work in the office with a guy named "Rob." We're the same age and had a lot of the same experiences growing up: listened to the same music, watched the same Detroit Lions teams, saw the same blockbuster movies…

William Burroughs liked opium, a lot. He liked its derivatives, morphine and heroin. He liked other types of dope. He liked women. He liked men and boys. He wrote recklessly. He lived recklessly. He loved his common law wife. He…

Sometimes I'm Gothic. Other times, Tudor-ish. In the morning I might be Romanesque, but by the afternoon I'm Bauhaus.

The architecture of my mind changes day-to-day, hour-to-hour, sometimes minute-to-minute. As a good Catholic, I generally want to live a life of…

I am glutton and gluttony is me.

I know, gluttony is one of the deadly sins. Gluttony and its sibling sins (lust, avarice, watching Jerry Springer) lead to other sins.

But that didn't stop me when my parents handed down their old…

Two ancient spiritual tools combined into one new digital project.

It's Global Fast 2007, and it's encouraging people to fast and give alms. The goal: to change the world by getting 10,000,000 people to give up their food for one day…

In a manner reminiscent of Jeff Foxworthy's "You Might be a Redneck if…" I've come up with my own list.

You might want to reassess your Catholicism if:

You think the Rosary is a cute thing that old ladies do.

You'd sing louder…

Anyone else follow the Russian spy poisoning case last week? It fascinates me, but only in a harnessed way. I entertain two assumptions:

1. There's a lot of James Bond stuff that Joe Public never hears about. How much? I have…

I think it started with the census.

In the category "Religion," people wrote "Jedi." It was humorous, but then a few newly-proclaimed Jedis decided to take it seriously and start a Jedi religion. Last week, two of them, along with Chewbacca,…

Have you heard of this development? New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificates.

Here's how it works. If you're a man but feel like a woman, you can be…

The early pages of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited describe the drunken antics of students Lord Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder (the narrator). Ryder makes the later observation that he himself “got drunk often, but through an excess of high spirits, in…

I’ve been reading some Nock. Albert Jay Nock, one of the premier American essayists of the early twentieth century and one of the founders of modern conservative/libertarian thought. A weighty man, that Nock.

But also a disturbing man. In a 1964…

In the past six months, my family and I have watched two movies set in the Depression era: Cinderella Man and Sea Biscuit. Great movies, but the intense poverty portrayed in them unsettled my children.

After both movies, the kids asked all…

I like books and movies about the Mafia and organized crime. GoodFellas is one of my favorite movies, and I almost subscribed to HBO, just so I could watch The Sopranos as the episodes came out.

One thing I’ve always found fascinating is…

While out with a group of guys the other week, I heard an interesting conversation. One guy (in his forties) mentioned that a couple of local high school girls in the junior and senior classes are very good-looking. The other…

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a magazine and ran across a fascinating observation.

Our surroundings call forth certain behavior. We tend to act like students when we step in a classroom, and we tend to act like shoppers…

“What a Bedlamite is man!” That’s Thomas Jefferson, lamenting man’s inability to make progress despite his seemingly endless capacity for improvement.

I appreciate the sentiment, but the statement doesn’t make much sense. If a person is crazy, he or she must…

Pithecanthropus? The word probably looks familiar to you. It’s a man’s name.

Pithecanthropus is the ape man. He's also known as the Java Man and the Peking Man. Latin-loving scientists call him Homo erectus, Homo modjokertenses, Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, Pithecanthropus robustus, and…

I watched The Greatest Game Ever Played last week. It’s a true story about an unaccomplished young golfer, Francis Ouimet, at the turn of the century, and how he beat the world’s top two golfers in an 18-hole playoff at the…

My friend’s wife recently gave birth in a Kalamazoo hospital. Her doctor wasn’t available, so a female doctor from New York handled the delivery. The doctor had the stereotypical New York mannerisms, including sassy remarks in a “poisonous Eastern voice,”…

It was the love story of the Middle Ages, and one of the greatest love stories of all time. Abelard, the premier philosopher of the twelfth century and an instrumental force in the rise of the University of Paris, had become…

I was heading home after a wonderful magic show in Colon, a little village in southwestern Michigan which earned the title “The Magic Capital of the World” after Harry Blackstone, a resident of Colon, invited magicians from around the world…

We’re told that a pluralistic society produces tension: one culture’s tradition clashing with another culture’s; one segment’s secularism clashing with another’s religiousness; one race’s interests clashing with another race’s interests. And on and on.

There’s no doubt some truth to this,…

While on vacation, I flipped through Ian Lendler’s Alcoholica Esoterica: A Collection of Useful and Useless Information as It Relates to the History and Consumption of All Manner of Booze. It’s clever and pithy, but marred by sophomoric jibes against…

The secularists are giddy that three potential Republican presidential nominees have questionable pasts: John McCain (affair, divorce), Newt Gingrich (affair, divorce, affair, divorce), and Rudy Giuliani (divorce, affair, divorce). One writer refers to them as “the most maritally challenged crop…

I delivered a speech to the Lansing Guild of Catholic Lawyers two weeks ago, on the topic Deus Caritas Est and the Practice of Law. In preparation, I had to read the encyclical, which I hadn’t done yet. Yes, there are…

The new issue of The American Conservative arrived last month, via computer subscription. One of the feature articles is by former blogger Diana Moon, who writes from the perspective of a member of one might call “BA”: Blogger’s Anonymous.

She’s a self-described…

This column is called “The Edge,” so my topic choice this week might seem a little odd. I’m writing about one of the oldest institutions in Western civilization: the monastery.

Monastic-type living stretches way back. It even pre-dates Christianity, possibly as…

I work as a municipal attorney, but it never crossed my mind that a simple residential zoning ordinance could have big moral consequences. But that’s apparently the case, based on a situation in Black Jack, Missouri.

On its face, the Black…

Well, far out. Voodoo is back. Actually, it never left. According to some, voodoo is a derivative of the world’s oldest religion. Originally a pagan African religion, it got mixed with Catholicism in Haiti during Spanish and French colonial rule.

Since…

I’m constantly frustrated at the frequency with which priests simply don’t show up for weekly confession or schedule something else in the same time slot. More times than I count I have had this type of conversation:

“Does Father have time…

Thank goodness for research and science. In the past four months, I’ve learned all sorts of things.

1. In January, I learned that young adults as well as teenagers drink more under the influence of alcohol advertising. Last month, researchers discovered…

It’s been a few years now, but last week’s Masters reminded me of the whole Martha Burke fiasco and NOW’s demand that Augusta National eliminate its males-only policy. Although the Masters circus has died down, I still live with the…

Courtney Love has tenuous Catholic roots? That’s what I read last week. Though she comes from a genealogical line of tortured writers, her mom, Linda Carroll, was adopted by Italian-Americans who raised her Catholic.

Linda herself doesn’t appear to have safeguarded…

An acquaintance recently told me about an incident that happened in his tool-and-die shop years ago. Like many such workers, he had hung pin-up posters of women around his work station. One day, he came to work and found they…

Well, we’ve hit the 30 million mark. It happened earlier this month: more than 30 million blogs are online, according to the medium’s watchdog, Technorati.

What can I say about blogging that hasn’t been said already? For that matter, what can…

Matt Dubay of Saginaw, Michigan filed the suit last week — Roe v. Wade for Men — seeking to escape $500 monthly support payments for a daughter he fathered out of wedlock. His ex-girlfriend knew he didn’t want a child and…

Two interesting stories hit the media last week: In one, a 71-year-old was granted permission to continue substitute teaching at an elementary school. In another, a firefighter filed a grievance against his department chief for discrimination.

What kinds of people are…

NBC wore out my patience last week. It was Thursday, the night of the Olympic ice skating finals. My daughters (aged 11 and 4) were pretty excited.

Good ol’ NBC. They took their school-night coverage to midnight (EST). My four-year-old was…

The electric light? The West invented it, the West used it. Radio? Ditto. The rotating axis for front wheels? Ditto again. Clocks, Internet, telegraph? Ditto, ditto, ditto.

The West has a powerful tradition of not only making inventions, but also of…

I hadn’t heard the name for years STOP For all I knew it had died long ago STOP And even though I couldn’t clear less about it STOP I was sad to see it die STOP

I’m talking about Western Union.…

I remember falling in love. I was a dope.

I was in Ann Arbor, attending the University of Michigan. She was in Ypsilanti, attending Eastern Michigan University. It was a long-distance relationship: ten miles of urban driving, often after a few…

I had a few more points to make in last week’s column about diversity, but I ran out of space. It turns out that I should’ve tried to cram them in, since I received quite a few positive emails.

A quick recap:…

Religion is good for you. Religious participation, sociologists tell us, correlates with lower levels of criminality, better health, greater marital stability, and greater well-being.

According to an article in this month’s Atlantic Monthly, sociologists and economists are studying this phenomenon further…

The principal had earlier sent the student home for wearing the shirt. The student contacted the Thomas More Law Center, which then contacted the school and demanded that the student be allowed to wear the t-shirt. The principal — with…

At this point, depending on what Punxsutawney Phil does and where you live, there are only sixty days of winter left. Here in Michigan, we start getting hopeful for nice weather around March 15th.

How are you handling it so far?…

Last Friday, for instance, I was reading a story from Sweden. A logo designer named Bjorn Atldax created a blue jean logo that consists of a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead. According to Bjorn, the…

I also don't have many debts. My father's ample salary paid for college and law school, so my earnings have always been available for savings and my mortgage.

Monetarily blessed, I am.

But I don't seem to be able to afford a…

From St. Peter’s Square:

Pope Benedict warned on Sunday against rampant materialism which he said was polluting the spirit of Christmas.

“In today’s consumer society, this time of the year unfortunately suffers from a sort of commercial ‘pollution’ that threatens to alter…

Already popular in Latin American countries, a reviewer from the Washington Post said the extreme violence of the show took even HBO by surprise. The show, says the reviewer, is “bound to jolt and fascinate viewers who can stomach its extreme…