July 2012
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I had thought I would write a brief post about this interview with Yale computer scientist and cultural critic David Gelernter, but have been too busy, and that's likely to continue through tomorrow, so I think I'll just throw it out for discussion. This is another of those things, like the Heather King piece I…
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At Least It's Out In the Open Now There are several immediately obvious things to say about the declarations this week by the mayors of Boston and Chicago that they would attempt to block the Chick-fil-a (what a silly name) fast food chain from opening restaurants in their cities. First and most obvious is their…
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"Because you really do love God," [Caryll] writes to one friend, "your suffering, bitter though it is, is healing the world's sorrow. Don't think of it in terms of what is unbearable to you, but when a specially bad hour ends, even in sheer weariness, think, 'That is a drink of water to someone dying…
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Weekend Music I debated with myself about the order of these. First I met her, then I lost her seemed more natural, but since it's the weekend let's suppose it's two different women and that there's a happy ending. Actually they're almost the same song with different lyrics, which I guess is appropriate.
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(from the Vatican News Service) Vatican City, 27 July 2012 (VIS) – It was 1908 when, in the wake of a serious economic crisis, Rome renounced hosting the Olympic Games which were eventually celebrated in London, England. In the same year Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, sought help from the Vatican…
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"Voula Papachristou 'bitter and upset' over Olympic ban." I don't see why her remark was "racist." Or rather I do, of course–it's because of the extreme-hyper-super sensitivity that so many people exercise about any reference to Africa–but I think it's pretty irrational. I can see objecting to it on the grounds that it was tactless…
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I mentioned the other day that my wife is the archivist for the local archdiocese. She tells me that she spent the entire day today trying to find out what color the eyes of someone who died in 1921 were. The person was Fr. James Coyle, and someone wants to have a portrait of him…
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It is a great embarrassment to me that it's now been over two years since I moved this blog from Blogger to TypePad, and I still haven't converted everything from my old site to this one. I moved the blog itself, which was not difficult. I started the blog in June 2006, and of the…
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Sympathy for the Truth I almost felt sorry for President Obama for a little while this week, because of the “you didn’t build that” controversy. In case you managed to miss all the fuss (which actually I think got relatively little attention from the pro-Obama press), he included the following words in a speech: If…
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For the help she provided to someone writing a history of the Mobile Archdiocese. Only a brief mention, but no mention at all would have been very unjust: Noland called Mobile's Catholic archives "absolutely wonderful," and praised the archivist, Karen Horton. As well he might. She downplays her contribution, but I'm pretty sure it was…
Light On Dark Water 