Consumerist calls the practice “the grocery shrink ray.” That’s when “the manufacturers of food and consumer goods make their products smaller — sometimes almost imperceptibly smaller — rather than raise prices. You know what it looks like: it’s why your toilet paper doesn’t quite fill the holder anymore, and why you don’t get as many servings of hot chocolate as you used to.” Companies have been doing it, this article reports, for a long time, and has the pictures to prove it.... Read more
Brilliant: A Troll on OKCupid. Read more
I mentioned in Clerical Detectives my non-commendation of the compiler’s recommendations, though I should also say that his brief biographies and his summaries of the books are nicely done, judging by those of authors and books I’ve read. But Philip Grossett’s judgments are what you might call post-sixties. For example, his comments on one of the Father Bredder stories by Leonard Holton (aka Leonard Wibberly), which are not classics by any means but are rather good. The compiler writes of one:... Read more
A useful list of the surprising large number of clerical characters in mystery stories, defining “clerical” a little broadly, with introductions to each one. Very useful, if you like mystery stories, though I’d pretty much ignore his recommendations. Read more
“’Personal Torah.’ What a jarring phrase, at least to ears like mine,” writes Orthodox rabbi Avi Shafran, responding to a Washington-area rabbi’s now much publicized “coming out” and leaving his wife of twenty years. He had written his congregation that ““The truth is that like anyone else, I have no choice but to live with the reality, or personal Torah, of my life.” No, says Shafran. He feels sympathy for Rabbi Gil Steinlauf’s pain, but does not think he should... Read more
Embedded in an argument for the superiority of winter over summer is this interesting insight into friendship, as understood by the Danes: Crucially, cold weather also facilitates coziness — a phenomenon so important, and so ill-served by the weedy word “coziness”, that the Danes have made it a central part of their (unusually happy) culture. They call it “hygge”. Hygge can mean hot chocolate by the fire while it’s snowing outside, but it also implies camaraderie and intimacy: it’s a social coziness,... Read more
It’s hard to tell from the report whether the new Bishop of Albany, Edward Snarfenberger, was giving the kind of after dinner talk he the ecumenical Capital Region Theological Center expected for their fall fund-raising event, but this Unitarian-Universalist pastor’s summary suggests it was a good one. For example: “Most surprisingly given the liberal theological climate in Albany, he spoke about what was missing today was fear of Hell.” But amusing as the poor befuddled but earnest man’s response is, I want... Read more
“You spend so much time among anti-Zionists. How can you tell which ones, which minority, are anti-Semites?” Mark Oppenheimer once asked a friend of his he described as “a Jew very much on the Left . . . who favors boycott and divestment [from Israel and is] . . . deeply enmeshed in proudly anti-Israel politics.” Oppenheimer, who writes the “Beliefs” column for the New York Times, is questioning an Episcopal minister who lost his job after allegedly anti-Semitic statements, and seems (and rightly, I... Read more
For those in the Pittsburgh area: You will want to know about the conference being hosted this weekend by my friend Wesley Hill on Christian Faith and Same-sex Attraction. It’s being held at Trinity School for Ministry, an Anglican seminary in Ambridge, a small city up the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. Two of the four speakers are both well-known young Catholic writers, and I think both converts, Eve Tushnet, another blogger here, and Melinda Selmys. The others are Dr. Hill (an... Read more
“Praying for Justice Kennedy could indeed become the main work requiring and justifying the need for the Mass. The Mass used to be, for some of us, the occasion to stir hope for the New Year. But the Mass has become by now the Harbinger of Hopes Disappointed, of sadder days to come,” writes Hadley Arkes, in a gloomy description of this year’s Red Mass and the upcoming term of the Supreme Court. Much of the column is a description... Read more
David Mills
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