Light On Dark Water

March 6, 2015

Interview with Ana Marie Cox

See previous post. This is very heartening. Thanks to Marianne for bringing it to my attention.
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March 5, 2015

A Bruised Reed

You may have seen the story at The Daily Beast in which Ana Marie Cox explains why she's coming out as a Christian. It's a touching statement, and my first thought was I hope the bruised reed won't be broken. I thought I recognized Cox's name. She was the originator of a blog called Wonkette, which I recall reading
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March 4, 2015

Climate Change Is A Factor in Everything Bad

(Click on the image if you're having trouble reading the text.) That the drought has been a factor in the war is easy to believe. That the drought was caused by climate change is almost surely a much shakier assertion. I remember a conversation with a climate change affirmer in which she said something
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March 1, 2015

52 Authors: Week 9 – Ronald Blythe

Ronald Blythe, born in 1922, published his first book in 1960 and more than half a century on is still at it. His most recent release was a privately printed collection of poems, which came out late last year. In the interim he has written fiction, literary criticism, biography, and nature and travel books. And
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February 28, 2015

Of Course

I saw this headline on Google News yesterday: Huge New Holes In Siberia Have Scientists Calling For Urgent Investigation Of The Mysterious Craters and immediately thought "Someone will blame it on global warming/climate change." I clicked on it and read the story, at the Huffington Post. Sure enough: The leading theory is that the holes
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February 25, 2015

The Searchers

You have to make allowances for movies made in the 1950s and earlier, I know. Well, you have to make allowances for movies in general, but it was sometime in the 1960s that movies (American ones, at least) made a noticeable turn toward a greater realism, or at least believability (not necessarily the same things).
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February 23, 2015

52 Authors, Week 8: Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)

I read Theology at Manchester University in 1979-1982. I was a book lover, and I spent most of the summers reading the book lists for my courses. I planned to take Christology in my third year, so in the summer of 1981 I read The Myth of God Incarnate. That’s a collection of essays published
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February 22, 2015

52 Authors, Week 8

This week’s entry will be a little late. I hope it will be posted Monday evening.
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February 22, 2015

Internet Mobs

There are such things, and they are frightening. Someone mentioned here a while back the case of Justine Sacco, who said something stupid on Twitter, and was ruined for it. You can read the whole story in this New York Times piece, which also includes stories of other people who made the wrong sort of
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February 19, 2015

Why Argue About Same-Sex Marriage?

Why even bother? Why bother thinking about it at all, since it seems pretty clear that it isn't going to be stopped. A large segment of the country, including those all-powerful federal judges, have accepted the dogma that defining marriage as a union of two people of opposite sexes is morally and intellectually identical to
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