Cry 'Woof'
Study is the second pillar of Dominican life. Read about it in my January column at CatholicMom.com. Read more
Study is the second pillar of Dominican life. Read about it in my January column at CatholicMom.com. Read more
Via Slashdot: Boujemaa Razgui, a flute virtuoso who performs regularly with The Boston Camerata, lost 13 handmade flutes over the holidays when a US Customs official at New York’s JFK Airport mistook the instruments for pieces of bamboo and destroyed them. Razgui had made all of the flutes himself, and they were the tools of his trade, his old friends. I hope he gets some kind of recompense, but his loss isn’t something that can be measured in monetary terms. Read more
The duke often mused on his good luck in marrying her. If it wasn’t for the engine of her ambition he’d be just another local lord, with nothing much to do but hunt, drink and exercise his droit de seigneur.* ____ * Whatever that was. He’d never found anyone prepared to explain it to him. But it was definitely something a feudal lord ought to have and, he was pretty sure, it needed regular exercise. He imagined it was some... Read more
The Albertine Order of St. Mary’s-without-the-Arm grew by necessity from the logic of colonial survival. From the Day of Landing, 1 December of year 1 YOE, it was clear to Prefect Consolmagno Higgins and his followers on the Our Lady of Loreto that the new colony of S’Mary’s World would be unable to maintain the technological level planned for and expected by the framers of the Articles of Colonization. Much of the Loreto‘s materiel and many of her passengers were... Read more
Mystery novels thrive on novelty, on how to murder the victim and hide the perpetrator in new and previously unused ways, and this was especially true in the Golden Age of the whodunnit. Peter Wimsey’s career began whimsically enough in Whose Body? with a mysterious body in a bathtub. He investigates a country house mystery that perhaps isn’t really a country house mystery in Clouds of Witness. But Lord Peter has to truly extend himself in his third outing, Unnatural... Read more
Recently I ran across this entry at a site called “wikiHow”: fifteen steps to Persuade a Christian to Become Atheist. It explains how to befriend somehow with the express purpose of destroying their faith in God. Really, it’s kind of creepy: to befriend someone, and to try to become their close friend, not because of shared interests or mutual liking, but with the intention of changing them. Naturally I think that the destruction of a Christian’s faith in God is... Read more
Last week, I began talking about the Divine Office as a daily devotion. Today I want to go into some specifics. Each day, the Divine Office consists of a number of distinct sets of prayers, the Hours. I usually pray three of them. I begin my day with Morning Prayer, also known as Lauds. After work, or sometimes after the kids go to bed, I will pray Evening Prayer, also known as Vespers. And just before going to bed, I... Read more
This was first posted in December of 2003. Whilst out and about with my two boys this evening (fetching home a copy of Panther for my PowerBook, as it happens), we discovered that there’s now a Lego Store at the Glendale Galleria. Not only is there now a Lego Store at the Glendale Galleria, it’s directly next to the Apple Store where I went to get my copy of Panther. With two small boys in train, I had about as... Read more
Here’s a little something upbeat for New Year’s: the Andrews Sisters with “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”. But I was interested to discover (via the magic of Pandora) that the Andrews Sisters’ recipe of upbeat rhythms and close-harmony was anticipated by the Boswell Sisters, a rather jazzier trio that performed with the likes of Jimmy Dorsey, Bunny Berrigan, and Benny Goodman in the first half of the 1930’s. Interesting stuff that you won’t be able to sing in the shower, because... Read more
The calendar for S’Mary’s World was established by the Articles of Colonization, as was usual in the early colonial era. Every earth-like planet has slightly different periods of rotation and revolution, and practicality dictates that local matters are scheduled according to local time. Maintaining a proper chronology is essential to colonial success, and so practicality also dictates that the calendar be established and well understood prior to landing. In that era, prior to the discovery of wormhole gates, it was thought... Read more
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