State of the Culture
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…would have been far more interesting if malfunctioning computers would always shoot out noisy sparks, flames, and smoke. Like they do in that TV series I mentioned, Another Life. Even though my wife and I had officially abandoned it, I watched another episode and a half by myself because I really wanted to find out what
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That phrase appeared 35 or so years ago in an article in The Hillsdale Review, a little magazine published by former (I think) students of Hillsdale College. I wrote some for it and still have several copies (I think). I should dig them out and see if I can find the name of the person
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Several days ago I wrote about the Ahmari-French argument, which might better be termed the liberal-postliberal argument (meaning classical liberalism, not the current party label), and which is currently happening on the right. See this post. I don't entirely agree with either side, and am not much interested in participating in the argument, so will
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Some twenty-five years ago I wrote a piece for Caelum et Terra in which I asserted that a fundamental weakness of the American system is that it is agnostic on the ultimate questions. The Constitution defines a structure and a set of procedures that are meant to be philosophically and theologically neutral. It assumes a workable
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…treat it as a sort of caution. The man made few concessions to congregations. You can always count on his tunes to veer off from the predictable. We sang, or tried to sing, "Hail Thee, Festival Day" at Mass this morning (I know, it's really an Easter hymn, but it's reasonably appropriate for Pentecost, too).
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It happened to come to my attention earlier today that this was the date in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Turks. Many years ago I read a book about that event which was sad and disturbing, as is almost any account of mankind's propensity for conquest and slaughter. I thought often of that story
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A CapitolOne ad: Life Doesn't Alert You About Your Credit Card–But Eno Can And I thought I was pretty close to unshockable in such matters. Sure, I'll keep an eye on that credit card for you. Of course Eno has changed a lot since the above pic (ca. 1972). Brian Eno, in case you don't
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Or: "Driving Through The Caution Lights." In 1932 my grandfather was the judge in a case where the lynching of the defendants was a very real possibility. This is what he said to the court: Now, gentlemen, this is for the audience, and I want it to be known that these prisoners are under the
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And this time I really mean it. (But I'm going to continue the blog; more on that in a moment.) It's always funny to see someone make a decision, then change his mind, then change it back again. Those who have been reading this blog for a long time know that the Sunday Night Journal
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It must be close to twenty years ago that I wrote a science-fiction story in which Christmas had been replaced by "Holiday." (That wasn't a major part of the story, just a passing remark by a character.) I thought it was clever at the time, but it soon became an interesting and personal reiteration of
Light On Dark Water 