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Science Museum/SSPL Torturer’s Apprentice
The new science of interrogation is not, in fact, so new at all: “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” and “waterboarding” all spring directly from the practices of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The distance, in both technique and ideology, between the Inquisition’s interrogation regime and 21st-century America’s is uncomfortably short—and provides a chilling harbinger of what can happen when moral certainty gets yoked to the machinery of torture.
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The Road from Ravenna
In the footsteps of the last Roman emperor
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The Travel Advisory
Highlights of a “Fall of Rome Tour”
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Empire's End
Hadrian's Wall, which demarked Roman Britain's northern boundary, still marches across the rugged landscape—and through the mists of time
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The George W. Bush Presidential Library
An unauthorized preview, with never-before -seen drawings of the interior
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Fatwa City
Behavior modification gets down to business
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Feeling Entitled?
Huey Long's aspiration—"Every man a king!"—is at last within our grasp
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People to People
Some say that liberals and conservatives need to build bridges of understanding. Drawbridges might be better
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Knock It Off
The art of the unreal
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Let Someone Else Do It
The impulse behind everything
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Never Mind
Old science doesn't die ...
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Witless Protection
Coping with the sixteenth minute
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Wonders Never Cease
Updating Philon of Byzantium's famous list
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Fat Target
It's starting to look like 1536 all over again
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Primary Considerations
If the first presidential primary were held in the "most representative" state, which one would that be?
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The Next Testament
If the Bible were being compiled for the first time right now, what would we put in it? Making the case for a NEW New Revised Standard Version
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Looking for Trouble
Get a life—at your own risk
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Setting The Bar
When our standards don't live up to our standards
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The Path of Brighteousness
Godless Americans launch a semantic crusade
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Feudal Gestures
Why the Middle Ages are something we can still look forward to
