What the world needs now
Is another blogwatcher

Like I need a hole in my head…

Lots o’ links, because I went to earth for a while there. But now I’m back (and badder than ever).

Amy Welborn: In honor of St. Cecilia: “Post your most memorable spiritual/musical moments here. Not just your favorite hymns, but, if you can, a real moment in time in which music has revealed something to you about God, life and truth.“

From Nazi-occupied Austria to the monastery–really powerful.

Camassia: Sensible comments on faith and works (and God as “benevolent wallpaper”).

Hit & Run: Link Wray, RIP. “Besides, how cool is it to get an instrumental banned by radio stations?”

Libertas: “The Passion was really something else altogether–a violent, R-rated film shot in Latin and Aramaic! When I first saw it, The Passion reminded me of nothing so much as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver — a gritty, blood-soaked, intensely personal statement about self-sacrifice. The Passion would’ve fit in beautifully during the 1970’s, perhaps Hollywood’s last great decade for personal, director-driven film. And it also fit beautifully into the post-9/11 sensibility of national self-sacrifice.” (more) (…I still haven’t seen The Passion, so this is all secondhand for me.)

Mark Shea: “But the weird thing about our culture is that it is often far more upset by image than by reality. The WaPo prints a story about torture in secret CIA facilities and William Bennett is upset, not that the torture happened, but that it was reported. A bunch of protesters shock a crowd with images of what is occurring every day down the street in the Planned Parenthood clinic, and the Guardians of Our National Discourse in the press are far more upset by the image than by the reality.” (more) Yes. Exactly.

McSweeney’s: Actual phrases from a French-to-English conversational guidebook. “That’s not expensive, honey, that’s ‘Dream Whip.'” Fascination indeed! (via E-Pression)

Media Doctor: Canadian site providing scathing commentary on health-care reporting. Via Colby Cosh.

Siris: The virtue of amiability. Via Dappled Things.

The Rat: The laws of night and honey.

Derek Lowe: Aspirin wouldn’t be approved today. Via the Club for Growth.

And:

Children as young as eight are being taught that the controversial European Constitution is up and running–even though it has been rejected by voters.

More than 100,000 copies of a textbook claiming the constitution will help the EU run “like clockwork” have been distributed to primary school children on the continent. …

…The teaching material, entitled Europe, My Home, features two children, Lea and Thomas, who are guided through the complexities of the EU by a character called Good Father Houpette. …

When they arrive at the chapter on the constitution, the children are pictured reading the rules and regulations of an indoor sports hall.

“Not long ago the European Union was given regulations such as these,” Father Houpette says. “With this new constitution everything will go like clockwork, just like in your club.”

more (via Hit & Run)