“If you go down to the woods today,” the children’s song warns us, “you’re in for a big surprise”; but if you go down today to Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens—greenest of local green lungs, a veritable Central Park for Australia’s second-largest city—you’re in for an even bigger surprise. To wit, the sole John Fitzgerald Kennedy memorial in the world which appears to have escaped the attention of Arthur Schlesinger.
Icelanders under the age of 25 don’t believe that God had a hand in creating the world, according to a new poll. The poll carried out on behalf of Icelandic atheists suggests that Icelanders under the age of 25 don’t believe in God. It suggests that the vast majority of the under 25’s in Iceland already know how the world came into being, with the remainder owning up honestly to the fact that they don’t know much about heavenly matters.
Some folks are selling... a lot.
Here’s an extraordinary essay by the architect professor Christopher Alexander, author of the well-known book A Pattern Language. In the piece, Alexander talks about how his work over the decades, studying which architectural patterns produce buildings that please us. Here is how it begins, audaciously:
I’m about to walk out the door, headed to Wichita for the Eighth Day Institute’s symposium. I won’t be able to check in until tonight, so please be patient. Before I go, here’s something to think about: Kenneth Minogue’s 2003 essay on what “Christophobia” — the fear and loathing of Christianity — has to do with the West and its future. Excerpts: