Cry 'Woof'
Yeah, I was a math major, I suppose I should get excited by Pi Day. It’s just that I’d be much more impressed if today was March 14, 1592. Read more
Yeah, I was a math major, I suppose I should get excited by Pi Day. It’s just that I’d be much more impressed if today was March 14, 1592. Read more
The High Kings is one of the Irish groups that comes across my Pandora station regularly. Their shtick is doing traditional Irish songs in close harmony, and I always notice close harmony because Jane loves it dearly. I linked to their version of “The Leaving of Liverpool” a while back; today I want to point out two quieter songs that I very much like. The first is “Will Ye Go Lassie Go”, also known as “Wild Mountain Thyme”; this is... Read more
Now, about Markham V. Reynolds (Junior). Your questions regarding that gentleman are very delicate, very subtle, very much like being smacked in the head with a mallet. Am I in love with him? What kind of a question is that? It’s a tuba among the flutes, and I expect better of you. — Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society Read more
I don’t know how many of my readers are in the Los Angeles area, but I’m going to be at the diocesan Religious Education Congress on Saturday for a good bit of the day. If you’re there you might see me wandering about. Read more
The latest S’Mary’s World news is that work on Watchman for Daybreak is proceeding. As I type this, I’ve got about 2,500 words written and a couple of scenes blocked out in my head. As I never talk about stories while they are in progress, though, I haven’t much to say about it. I don’t want to disappoint anyone, though, so why don’t you go read Neil Gaiman on the importance of libraries and imagination? Oh, and if you’re desperate... Read more
Over President’s Day weekend, a friend from college that I hadn’t seen in several years recommended that I try an author named Steven Pressfield. “He writes novels about military history. The detail is amazing, and they are really good.” We have similar tastes, and so I picked up The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great; and I’m glad I did. Before reading this book, I knew a little about Alexander the Great. He was the son of... Read more
According to Thomas Aquinas, we can know things in three ways: Directly, as we know the things we see around us. Indirectly, by reasoning from the things we see around us. By revelation from God. The first category—the things we know by direct experience, as I know the keyboard on which I’m typing and the desk it sits on—would go without saying if it weren’t for the persistent influence of Descartes’ methodological doubt and the absurdities of those who followed... Read more
Every so often I see someone on-line claiming that rationality started with the Renaissance, when the bonds of the Catholic Church were finally broken. It ain’t so; if one troubles to look into it, one finds that so far from being dark the middle ages were an time of intellectual flowering. Trouble is, even if you’ve got the proof at your fingertips it’s like playing whack-a-mole. The claim pops up here and it pops up there like the hero with... Read more
We’ve been talking a lot about faith here at Cry Woof over the last few weeks; and last week in particular I wrote about the “Light of Faith“, a light that helps us to see things more clearly. In paragraph 9 of Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis takes it one step farther: The word spoken to Abraham contains both a call and a promise. First, it is a call to leave his own land, a summons to a new life, the... Read more
I had the good fortune to meet Jennifer Fitz in Dallas at the Catholic New Media Conference; she’s quiet, articulate, understated, witty, and sharp, and now I’m glad to say she’s blogging at Patheos. Blogging up quite a storm, too. Go see what she means by “sticking the corners”. Read more
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