I was 8 years old. This image rocked my small town world.

A more accurate version of The Night Before Christmas from THE APARTMENT ('60).

Back in the mid-2000s, I said something critical of David Brooks in a social setting. One of my colleagues went to a local right wing blogger and told him. That blogger excoriated me as part of the leftist bias in higher ed and I got hate mail for a couple of weeks. Good times.

Here's my boutique bluray cover for The Star Wars Holiday Special

Release the Bunheads season 2!

As a Catholic bishop, I would urge radical transparency in anything related to the sexual abuse of minors. Fortunately, Trump did nothing like that. Let’s focus instead on the decline of modernity starting with Duns Scotus

Just a wonderful and thoughtful essay. I’m so tired of the “back to normal” crowd.

Beneventan nerd since 1990.

I have often said: lead with Beauty. Lead with Bach, lead with Dante’s great Commedia, lead with Chartres

EUGENE DEBS MENTIONED running around freaking out

Alberto Giacometti, Tall Figure, Half-Size, 1947 https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1136792

This holds up as a generalization about academic politics as well.

Happens every year at my university.

Just walked past a colleague in the hallway. I said good morning. They chose not to respond. Glad to know that some things in this crazy world don’t change.

Lost my appetite thanks to this LinkedIn post.

I spend enough time staring at Wisconsin: “Let’s have another stunt mass, not follow church teaching.”

Hey—look at Marquette being an (unfortunate) example!

is trump dead again

Man, MU students were way ahead of the curve on this sort of fuckery.

"62% of faculty indicated that they had at some point seriously considered leaving Marquette." Uff da!--"seriously" not a "it's February and I have to trudge through a foot of snow" way.

Those of us with Long COVID have been grievously harmed by our government’s failure to implement disease control measures. That same government's denial of COVID's dangers has also created massive stigma around our illness, redoubling that harm. My latest: www.thegauntlet.news/p/long-covid...

the delta in quality between CUA press books and CUA academics is huge

If only Marquette lived up to this history.

Same as it ever was with this doofus.

No one has the right to obey.

I don't always criticize people for misusing the phrase "to beg the question," but when I do, I prefer to humiliate the "Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and of Biomedical Engineering" at the Yale School of Medicine who thinks that we should "unyoke" the sciences from the humanities.

Opining about the male loneliness crisis while women are losing access to reproductive rights, the maternal mortality rate is rising, and women are being forced out of the workforce is a real choice. It is a choice to ignore the deaths of women to promote the perceived victimhood of men.

When I had a heart attack back in march, I was in a hospital waiting room and this guy was on the tv. I had the horrifying thought that he might be the last tv image I would see.

80s power pop song of the day (cover edition) youtu.be/Z8uVk5VHmZg?...

80s power pop song of the day. youtu.be/87-po1bKalE?...

The narrowing of what we imagine as "the liberal arts" to a subset of humanities subjects (literature, philosophy, art, etc.) should be rejected. The liberal arts in fact embrace *the whole range* of non-pre-professional subjects, including the natural sciences. That's the vision we should defend.

80's power pop song of the day. youtu.be/1hGMjP2NRu0?...

Indiana Jones and Are You Fucking Kidding Me Why Do I Have to Put Learning Outcomes on My Syllabus The Outcome I Want is For the Students to Learn What's Assigned on the Parts of the Syllabus They Can Barely Find For All the Dumb Boilerplate Nonsense I'm Supposed to Put on the Syllabus

I picked a hell of time to stop drinking. 🥃

transphobia is one of the most pathetic choices a person can make for themselves. i am angry that my friends are increasingly unsafe in our country because their existence is a convenient political tool for powerful ghouls who have sold out their humanity.

Guess what!? My biography of Henri Bergson will be available in paperback NEXT WEEK (June 19th)! John Banville called it "the most intellectually stimulating book I read this year" and the NYT called it "lively and deft". Get your copy here (or don't I'm not a cop): linktr.ee/eherring

Least important point ever, but did he not know how to punctuate his degree?

After the spring Kelly and I had, this is my wish.

Notably missing are the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and Marquette University.

James Carville: How to Turn Trump’s Economic Chaos Against Him www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...

Tonight at 9

Two articles of mine. Sorta random choices.

Fintan O’Toole’s review of Padraig Scanlan’s “Rot”revisits the history of the Irish Famine. The real truth of it is that dehumanizing the poor, while relying on a vicious unhinged capitalism masquerading as tough love to absolve those responsible, was our blueprint. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Wherever Aristotle and Aquinas ended up they’re commiserating in its bar about the absolute state of their fanclub

If this had to happen I’m glad it happened before Kennedy wrecks our health care system.

Sad day. What a legend.