A Whole Bunch of Links

Well, since I've been out of town for a while--and just generally suffering from a case of writers' block and generic blahs--I haven't had a whole lot of time or energy lately to blog. But I have been noticing lots of little things that I think are worth sharing. Here are a few.

First, this week's Carnival of Homeschooling is here. My post I Won’t! I Won’t! I… Uh, Ok is presented. I also didn't yet post a link to last week's Carnival, which is located here. While I didn't have anything in that Carnival, there were some good items there, including this one about some very unwelcome trends in university-level undergraduate education: that schools are neglecting undergraduate education in favor of "research", and that academic standing is increasingly being assessed on point systems, which create perverse incentives for students to avoid tough classes and real learning in favor of classes that offer easy grades.

And then I saw this essay, by Rebecca Walker, daughter of feminist author Alice Walker (who wrote The Color Purple, among others). The essay has to do with the real-world effects of feminism on the lives of others--particularly the children. Rebecca is estranged from her mother, and explains why. In her view, the breaking point came when she became pregnant with her son, which was viewed by her mother as a betrayal of her ideals. Rebecca expresses a great deal of pain in this essay. And while it only represents one side of what is obviously a very touchy personal dispute, I do think it deserves to be widely read and considered. (Hat tip to Dr. Helen on this one.)

Finally, Mary Eberstadt over at National Review has published the second entry in her series entitled The Loser Letters, which is sort of a Screwtape Letters-type discussion--by a hypothetical recent convert to atheism--of why the arguments promulgated by atheists have so little effect against the beliefs of the great bulk of the Christian community.

There's a lot here. Hopefully it'll keep you occupied until I get up the gumption to write my next post. :-)