August 2009
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…to tell you about this xkcd cartoon. http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js
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Of course I don’t really want to spend a lot of time talking about the American health care debate, but I can’t resist putting in my two cents’ worth. I’ll try to keep it brief. First, let’s stipulate that our present system is a mess from almost any point of view, and is in serious…
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Does it make sense, or do any good, to offer up for other people pain which is a direct result of your own sins or mistakes? I figure it can’t hurt, but I wonder what an informed theological view of the question would be. http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js
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Clare recently introduced me to this terrific folk group, and their album Shaken By A Low Sound is my current favorite music. They can be described very broadly as bluegrass, but with a twist, and their repertoire includes very un-bluegrass folk material such as Robert Johnson’s “Come On In My Kitchen.” The singer sounds somewhat…
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I’ve run across several tributes from people on the political right who knew Kennedy personally and have very good things to say about him as a man and a friend. Here are a few: Cal Thomas David Frum And Kathryn Lopez of National Review Online describes seeing him often at daily Mass. And then there…
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What do you say upon the death of someone whom you neither admired nor respected? In general simple silence is in order. And in general I don’t feel the impulse to comment on the death of a prominent person merely because he or she was prominent, only if his or her position and career seem…
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We’ve arrived again at my favorite part of the lunar cycle: the waxing crescent, approaching the half. This means that for the next several days when I take the dogs for their last walk around 10 or 11pm, I’ll see the moon in the western sky, over the water. Then for some days after that…
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Superficially this novel seems a domestic drama of the sort that I would not ordinarily find very interesting. To summarize the bare facts of the narrative would make it sound as if nothing much happens: a family buys a house, and various troubled relationships in and around the family and its new home arrive at…
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This picture struck me not for any aesthetic merit but for the reflection provoked by the juxtaposition of the cat and these particular books. It was not arranged; Meme just happened to be sleeping there. On one side of the cat, a novel by my favorite mystery writer (and one of my favorite writers, period),…
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I was going through and mostly discarding old magazines a week or so ago and discovered that I had completely missed the September 2008 issue of Touchstone. It contains an excellent piece by Eleanor Bourg Donlon about Becoming Jane, the fictionalized biographic film about Jane Austen that we were discussing here a week or two…
Light On Dark Water 