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A palpable arousal has overtaken the refugee resettlement community in Portland, as they gear up to receive an influx of Afghan refugees For Oregon organizations that contract with the federal government to help refugees resettle in the US, the sobering headlines meant an immediate shift in workload. “The pace of what happened—I can’t wrap myContinue reading “Invade, Abandon, Invite”

Wherein our hero falters and redeems himself… Nicholas Taleb writes about risk in investing and in general, and burst onto the scene with his widely praised The Black Swan. For those of use who may have read The Black Swan and then got on with our lives, his real vocation is now Being Nicholas Taleb,Continue reading “And Never the Twain Shall Bro”

Repeating myself from a couple of posts ago, it’s a cliche but the decidedly anti-religious secular order of the present feels very much like religion. It has its own fantastic mythology, its own miracles, its own faith as bulwark against undermining by reason or empiricism. It works as a received religion, despite confusing its apologetics,Continue reading “Mirabile Dindu”

It’s a cliché but the West’s secular post-religious dispensation feels very religious. Its values are opposed to the religion it displaced (despite it wearing the language of routed Christian morality like a skin suit) and the successful campaign against Western decency advanced a good deal on a Jewish critique of Christian shame as unnatural, taughtContinue reading “Sunday Sermon: For Shame”

“Chris! Hey Chris! What are you doing?” I was at a streetlight facing the river at the north end of downtown. Here the train tracks come together ahead of Union Station just to the north, taking over 1st Avenue where the cars are banished. The street burrows under overpasses and bridges, combining with the dilapidatedContinue reading “Christopher”

Shortly after having been saddled with the public role defending an all-but engineered crisis at the southern border, Kamala Harris explained the only lasting solution would be to fix its “root causes”. Maintaining a border–as we were doing mere months ago–is no longer possible somehow; but, fortunately, curing Latin American poverty, corruption and violence is.Continue reading “Moot Causes”

Regarding Saturday’s post about Friday night’s chaos downtown today comes confirmation from Portland police it involved two separate stabbings, one of them a slashing for good measure following a bullet to the torso. That victim survived. A second man was spotted staggering along by a passing ambulance around the corner from the taped-off crime sceneContinue reading “Update: a slice of Portland nightlife”