Notes from his monograph “Beauty” — Beauty and value For Plato and Plotinus, “beauty is an ultimate value.” Like truth and goodness, it justifies rational judgments. But can’t beauty be “the enemy of truth”? The attractive yet untrue myth or urban legend, for example. And immoral things are sometimes beautiful. Kierkegaard and Wilde chastised “the ‘aesthetic’ way of life”…

Social constructivism is everywhere. Here’s a short list by André Kukla, in his 2000 book Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science, of some of the things that have been called socially constructed: “gender (of course) illness, women refugees, quarks, Zulu nationalism, Indian forests, Japan, Ireland, the past, emotions, reality…

For my own future use, I’m going to reproduce here a sizable portion of After Virtue, by Alisdair MacIntyre. This is from pages 68–71 of the second edition, published in 1984 by University of Notre Dame Press. All stylings are his own, except for anything that appears in brackets, which…

Verlyn Klinkenborg’s book on writing is really special. I’ve been taking the bus to work for the past couple of months, which has afforded me more time to read. For years I’d told myself I’ve no time to read for pleasure; really, I wasn’t making the time for it. …

I am honored, humbled and unsure how to announce that Grace Frye, Kathleen Creedon and I are national award-winning journalists. The Society of Professional Journalists recognized our March 1, 2018 news story for the Trinitonian — “After months, an arrest and some answers in Mandadi case” — as the national…

Published in Courthouse News Service on Feb. 27, 2019. — In a 7–2 decision Wednesday, a Texas appeals court struck down a provision of the state’s open-meetings law that made it a crime for officials to hold meetings without quorum to conduct secret deliberations outside the public eye, calling that part of the statute unconstitutionally vague. The Texas Open Meetings…

Published in Courthouse News Service on Feb. 14, 2019, and co-authored with Erik De La Garza. — Former Texas nurse Genene Jones, who spent the last three decades in prison for the murder of a 15-month-old girl, was ordered to undergo a second competency evaluation Thursday after a first evaluation concluded she can stand trial on five new murder charges. Bexar County Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers ordered…

Published in the San Antonio Current on Feb. 14, 2019. — The San Antonio Current purchased 42 of my photographs from the Bexar County Courthouse on Valentine’s Day 2019, when more than 200 couples were married at a discount on the historic building’s steps.

Published in the San Antonio Current on Feb. 11, 2019. — “Yeah, let’s dance. This one’s an angry one.” The next words from Sophie Allison, the Nashville musician best known by the stage name Soccer Mommy, fulfilled the promise as everyone at the Paper Tiger last night mouthed in unison: “I don’t wanna be your fucking dog / That you drag…