Jonah Lehrer reports on research showing that competing against people who are far and away better does not make you better, but causes you instead to shut down. Excerpt: According to a paper by Jennifer Brown, an applied macroeconomist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, Mr. Woods is such a dominating golfer…

The English conservative philosopher John Gray reviews Philip Blond’s “Red Tory,” and finds it wanting. He judges that Blond’s economic prescriptions would require a level of protectionism that is completely unrealistic. Plus: The real objections to the programme set out in Red Tory are not purely practical. The core of Blond’s political thinking is a…

I know it’s a bit late, but here’s a terrific homily delivered at Easter Vigil by my Beliefnet co-blogger Deacon Greg Kandra, at his Catholic parish in Queens. The theme: “What does it mean to be a Catholic today?” Excerpt: It is about the people who made that mission happen: sisters and brothers, priests and…

You may be aware that CNN’s ratings are in dramatic free fall. It’s big prime-time hosts have lost almost half their audiences over the past year. Meanwhile, the competitors who have chosen to be consciously conservative (Fox) or consciously liberal (MSNBC) are outperforming CNN, which tries to be neutral. Ross Douthat suggests that with nothing…

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