Congrats To C. Yates And Alex

Congrats to my (J) new little brother, C. Yates, and my lil’ sister, Alex, on their engagement.

“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.”
Song of Solomon 8:6

The State Of . . . South Africa

I (rich) spent the last week-and-a-half in South Africa on a much needed vacation. I went with a good friend to visit another good friend conducting a study on land distribution after the end of apartheid. You can check the TSOcast for more on this. I was in the country for about [...]

“An Ideal Husband”

The NY Times’ Maureen Dowd gets down with Father Pat Conner, a 79-year old Catholic priest.
“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. [...]

Gabrielle Union Talks About Being Brutally Raped

“As a 19-year-old college student, she was raped at gunpoint and beaten beyond recognition during a night shift working at a Payless ShoeSource. “I blanked out and had an out-of-body experience, like I was hovering above seeing this horrible thing happen to someone else—not me,” says Gabrielle, who got through the trauma partly because of [...]