Tuesday, April 6. 2010
Up here in Yankeeland, many people read Town & Country to keep up with what's going on socio-culturally.
Garden & Gun may become the Southern version of T&C, but we enjoy it very much also.
Our friend Anchoress emailed me this piece from a Lutheran, The dictatorship of relativism strikes back—and goes nuclear. It begins:
The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (“tank cardinal”) and caricatured in North America as the “Enforcer” or even the “Rottweiler.” The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzinger’s was hardly a household name.
Found these at the Bass Pro Shop in Nashville a couple of years ago. In my case, their message happens to be true. Yes, there are still some Farmalls in New England, and my Grandpa's is still running fine even though he stopped running long ago.
The ones with the close-together front tires creep me out on Massachusetts hills, though. I prefer a "wide stance" on the hills.
Monday, April 5. 2010
 California Voters Support ObamaCare. They eat Unicorn meat out there (image via Surber).
An atheist: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity
Outsourcing grading
Dr. Helen: Is Control over Porn Really about Control over Men’s Sexuality?
From Back to the 1970s: Let’s Get Small!
Whatever the new problem—resource depletion, air pollution, acid rain, the ozone hole, or global warming—we always end up back at the same old “solutions”: stop population growth, stop economic growth, stop consuming things, redistribute wealth, go back to small village living, and we’ll all sing Kumbaya. No matter how many times green gloom is discredited (i.e., the Simon-Ehrlich wager), lapsing into the old eco-fundamentalism is just too irresistible.
Can Christie save New Jersey?
Wilkinson: Glen Whitman and the Rise of the New Paternalism
Insurers not demons, just messengers
Containing Mexico
Switzerland as an example for the world
From Mead's Liberal Internationalism: The Twilight of a Dream:
These days, liberal internationalism is a solution in search of a problem: it is an idea whose time has passed. Liberal Wilsonians must take a long hard look at a world that is not moving toward global governance in any serious way and think about how the values at the heart of the Wilsonian vision can be advanced in a new century.
AVI: America is a Pacifist nation
Is the O eloquent no more? Related: What do some Democrats say in private to each other?
Powerline: Why can't they just forgive and forget?
Rahe: Global warming, RIP
Guy at the NYT thinks he understands me:
Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.
Hence their anger and frustration...
Plain cruel: The O's sissy pitch
Classical liberals should support open borders. It is a debate.
Juan Williams gets quite a few facts wrong but he is beginning to get it.
AP’s Fournier: Relax, it’s just a Tea Party
Whoa… 4 in 10 Tea Party Protesters Are Democrats or Independent
Rep. Cleaver backs away from spitting claim
Neoneo: It is difficult to demonize tea partiers.
Indeed it is, neo. My pup's scarey violent Tea Partay (with potentially lethal croquet) a couple of years ago:
Sunday, April 4. 2010
Alfie's Theme (1973). A saxophone is so much like a singing human voice...that it is one.
- Deacon Kevin McCormack, on Religion on the Line (radio): "If there were no Easter, there would be no Christmas."
- My Pastor in church this morning (paraphrased): "If we cannot believe that Christ rose from the dead, or are on the path to believing it, then we're wasting our time here." (I think that is debatable, but I like totally get his point. - the illumination comes from stepping into the light. Many things in life are like that. Maybe most things.)
Death Be Not Proud
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
John Donne
Saturday, April 3. 2010
From Steyn:
Lenin famously said the west would "sell us the rope by which we will hang them". He was underestimating our suicidal stupidity: We're happy to give it away.
From Dr. Clouthier: 10 ways to keep your relationship (by being realistic).
Dried salt Cod from the Grand Banks became popular in Italy, Spain and Portugal during the 1500s and 1600s, and naturally became incorporated into meatless fast days like Christmas Eve and Good Friday - and Fridays in general.
I stumbled onto some baccala at the market the other day as I was hunting for fresh mint, and, even though it is not a fast day, I will make a pile of these as an Easter appetizer.
Photo is Pew & Son Flake Yard, Gloucester, MA, 1899, from this site of old fishing photos. "Flakes" are codfish drying racks. That Atlantic Cod is, alas, being overfished to extinction. Mankind will be sorry. I remember when you could drop a hook with a clam on it into the Gulf of Maine and come up with a big Cod or Haddock for supper in about two minutes.
Friday, April 2. 2010
Thanks, BL. More Depression toons here.
"Self-respect requires fortitude, one of the cardinal virtues; self-esteem encourages emotional incontinence that, while not actually itself a cardinal sin, is certainly a vice, and a very unattractive one. Self-respect and self-esteem are as different as depth and shallowness."
Ted Dalrymple, via Dr. Sanity's BAD ROMANCE
Thursday, April 1. 2010
Sipp, with Peggy Lee's killer tune Is That All there Is?, reminded me that we were way past due a Peggy Lee day. Here's I Don't Know Enough About You.
I think the guitar man was her husband.
 I have today's hot topics here, but had no time to link them due to the News Junkie's surprise announcement.
American solvency hangs in the balance.
Earth's water supply hangs in the balance.
Middle East peace hangs in the balance.
Freedom hangs in the balance.
Future of humanity hangs in the balance.
Leftist control of the US government hangs in the balance.
Fate of earth's climate hangs in the balance.
Immigration reform hangs in the balance.
Success in Afghanistan hangs in the balance.
Feel free to help out today by adding your own news flashes below -
Wednesday, March 31. 2010
One never knows where Lent will take you. A month or two ago, I was fairly certain that I knew what painful, self-flagellating things I needed this Lent for, but it has led me in another direction entirely, and a direction which offers more joy than pain.
It has led me to another level of the relational aspect of faith, as my posts during this Lent have indicated. It crystallized in my mind when I was contemplating my relationship with dogs during a recent night-time post-prandial dog-walk with my pal with ceegars. I generally connect with dogs pretty well, and think I have a good idea of how much of the bond is real and how much is imaginary.
Everything we experience in life is relational, in a sense - including to inanimate things and abstract things. It's how we are constructed. If I can delight in the slobbering kisses of a dog, what is it in me that prevents me from fully delighting in the (not-slobbering) kisses of God?
I won't go on with this because it's too personal and probably boring for anybody who isn't exactly where I am, but maybe you can get my drift. I am a work in progress.
Saturday evening, out the car window en route to the theater -
Tuesday, March 30. 2010
The great ocean currents are an interesting tangle, global cooling aside. Our Gulf Stream is just one segment of this thing:
- "Authentic" classical music, with original instruments and strict constructionists directing (eg John Eliot Gardiner) was popular over the past couple of decades. Interesting too. But is it time to Forsake Authenticity?
- In praise of PG Wodehouse. Without doubt the best author to read when you are sick - except for Peter De Vries.
- I am having a good time going through Jacquetta Hawkes' The Atlas of Early Man: The Rise of Man Across the Globe, From 35,000 B.C. to A.D. 500 With Over 1,000 Maps And Illustrations. It is structured like a timeline so you can see what was going on across the globe with civilization and pre-civilization during different periods.
- No Christian heroes, please.
- I have been advised to watch Ridley Scott's 2005 Kingdom of Heaven. Anybody seen it?
Monday, March 29. 2010
"I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while."
James Lovelock, via Samiz. Comments at Wizbang's Still Think Climate Change is About Climate? (and elsewhere).
"I have a feeling..."!?!? Well, I have a feeling too, and it is that such people give me the creeps.
I like the look of David's new place ( Never Yet Melted). Sort of a Virginia version of Maggie's Farm.
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