A cartoon explaining the difference between wearing a suit on the east and the west coast. As one commenter on Bobby Winters’ Facebook post notes: “California’s dress code is perverse. Instead of buying a $300 suit, they’ll spend $200 on pair of jeans, $100 on a tommy Bahamas shirt, and another $200 on sunglasses. In other words, they spend like an adult to look like an adolescent.” Read more
Archbishop Charles Chaput says it would be a mistake to call Francis a liberal or a marxist, in an address on Francis and Economic Justice: As I told the Italian newspaper La Stampa in an interview some weeks ago, words like “liberal” and “conservative” don’t describe Catholic belief. They divide what shouldn’t be divided. We should love the poor and love the unborn child. Service to the oppressed and service to the family; defense of the weak and defense of the unborn... Read more
Customers can treat waiters and fast food clerks very badly, sometimes amazingly badly. Some of it’s just inconsiderateness or selfishness, but some of it’s a cowardly assault on the defenseless. Here is a waitress’s response. Our eldest son worked for a couple years in high school and then summers after at a Quizno’s in an affluent, boutiquely little town, and dealt with obnoxious people every day. One summer a young woman working there became a particular target, with people sometimes asking... Read more
As it turns out, egyptologists had the answer all the time, illustrated with a very nice picture, which they understandably misinterpreted. According to IFL Science, we now know how the Egyptians pulled those 5,000 pound stones and those huge statues on sleds across the desert sands to build the pyramids. [N]ew research shows how adding a small amount of water to sand significantly reduces the sliding friction — a clever trick that allowed the Egyptians to cut the number of workers needed... Read more
“I think it is part of our endless colonial mindset that we wait for ideas, especially about philosophy and theology, to come from Europe,” says Marilynne Robinson, interviewed by the Jewish Daily Forward. Then when they arrive they are not quite assimilable to our own assumptions and values — though this is never acknowledged. People try to adapt to them, which suppresses original thought, and then a new idea drifts in, the older one is half-abandoned, and on it goes. We are a... Read more
Robert P. George warns about the addictive drug that is fame and approval: Advice to young scholars and, especially, to aspiring public intellectuals: Although it is natural and, in itself, good to desire and even seek affirmation, do not fall in love with applause. It is a drug. When you get some of it, you crave more. It can easily deflect you from your mission and vocation. In the end, what matters is not winning approval or gaining celebrity. Your... Read more
In last Thursday’s The Experience of Conversion I quoted the first few paragraphs of an essay I’d written for The New Oxford Review, trying to explain how one comes to the Church from outside when you have so many doubts and questions. It was behind the magazine’s paywall but the editor has kindly made it free for a while. Here’s The Anatomy of Conversion. Read more
In last Friday’s A Lesson for Creative People, I passed on a story about then Jorge Bergoglio’s teaching and the lesson he taught a clever thought. The student, now the Argentine writer Jorge Milia, said more about his old teacher in an interview published by CNS, which I just found when searching for information about Milia. Related to the subject of last Friday’s item, he said: His unwavering vocation (was) to not let us founder, to entrust us with concrete... Read more
Physicist George Ellis Knocks Physicists for Knocking Philosophy, Falsification, Free Will, by John Horgan, from the Scientific American weblog. Interviewed by Horgan, Ellis criticizes ideas like that of Lawrence Krauss, that physics can by itself explain why the universe exists. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle... Read more
Writing in June 2008, an SF Gate and Huffington Post columnist named Mark Morford explained what is so special about Barack Obama. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity. Dismiss it all you like, but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence — not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence — to say it’s... Read more
David Mills
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