February 2007

  • Drawing Cards – Storyboarding the Tarot

    Guest Author: Eric Slade Roberson of Shift Your Spirits A few months ago, Slade was kind enough to invite me onto his site as a guest author, where I took the opportunity to summarize the How to Choose a Religion series. (That summary has things in it that I still haven’t gotten around to here… Continue reading

  • French: la langue de l’amour?

    In (belated) honor of Valentine’s Day, I present to you an hommage to the language of love. (I really shouldn’t do this, and I feel guilty about it. As a linguist, I value all languages highly and respect them as monuments to human culture and innovation. On top of that, French really is a lovely… Continue reading

  • How to Choose a Religion VII: Old Religions, New Religions

    What is the difference between older religions and newer religions? Ever since I posted the previous essay in this series, Languages of Spirit, I’ve had a surprising number of page hits from people putting this question into Google. I don’t know — maybe some professor somewhere issued this as a question for a take-home test,… Continue reading

  • A Druid Imbolc Celebration

    Imbolc is traditionally the time when the lambs are born, and the sheep begin to give milk. (The etymology of “Imbolc” is uncertain, but is probably derived from Old Irish i mbolg, “in the belly”, referring to the pregnancy of the ewes, or to the nascent springtime.) In the British Isles, the daffodils are blooming,… Continue reading

  • Meditation on Money: Becoming the Wolf at the Door

    My wife and I are finally having to face up to the fact that we really haven’t done such a great job of handling our money over the last 10 years. When we started out, we were just poor graduate students. We were fortunate in that we didn’t have much debt, but on the other… Continue reading