As a counterpoint to the How I Pray series, I’ve challenged other bloggers to answer Lifehacker’s How I Work questions on their own blogs for a kind of ora et labora thing. Now my uber-techie friend Jeff Miller, The Curt Jester, steps up and shames all geeks with his mad power-user skilz, yo. Jeff was my first How I Pray victim subject, so there’s a kind of symmetry in having him here again: What everyday thing are you better at... Read more
“In the past men were handsome and great (now they are children and dwarfs), but this is merely one of the many facts that demonstrate the disaster of an aging world. The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance. Mary... Read more
Melanie Bettinelli is a homeschooling mother of five who blogs at The Wine-Dark Sea. Read more entries in the How I Pray series. Who are you? I’m a wife, a stay at home mother of five kids ages 2 to 8, a homeschooler, and Texan expat wondering yet again this winter how I came to be living in frosty New England. I’m also a bibliophile and blogger and former adjunct English professor. My passion is literature, particularly poetry, T.S.... Read more
The remains of King Richard III, found under a parking lot 530 years after his death at Bosworth Field, were reburied in Leicester Cathedral yesterday. The Catholic archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, led the ceremony, which featured prayers, readings, plainsong, and a homily. The Cardinal celebrated a separate funeral mass at Holy Cross Church in Wellington Street, Leicester. The reburial closes the book on a dramatic three years that witnessed the rediscovery of the king’s remains under a parking lot where... Read more
Scott Eric Alt took up the How I Work challenge. Interesting stuff: What’s your workplace setup like? Very spare and spartan, as you can see from the pic at the top left. If I have any kind of technology around me at all when I write, I will be distracted and never get anything done. How can I write when there’s someone saying something dumb on Facebook? So I shut it down and shut it off and write on paper.... Read more
The rise of indie game development leads to all kinds of strange and fascinating mashups of game genres that no major studio would ever put together. There’s a good reason for that: shoving deckbuilding, choose-your-own-adventure, and arena combat into one game will result in a hot mess unless it’s done with great skill. Well, the folks at Defiant have that skill, because Hand of Fate (Defiant Development, Teens and up, Xbox One/PS4/PC/Mac: $25) all three of those things in one package,... Read more
The How I Pray series was inspired by Lifehacker’s How I Work series, which asks tech and business folks a set of questions about their work habits. I decided to answer those questions myself as a counterpart to the prayer series: ora et labora. Location: The New Jersey Pine Barrens Current Gig: Writer, editor One word that best describes how you work: Desultorily Current mobile device: iPhone 5S, iPad 2 Current computer: Custom desktop PC running Windows 7, and cheapo Dell... Read more
Brandon McGinley’s book, The Joys and Challenges of Family Life: Catholic Husbands and Fathers Speak Out is due out next month, but you can order it now at a steep discount. Yr humble blogger contributed a chapter about tech and the family, while writers such as Tod Worner, Daniel Bearman Stewart, and others address first-time fatherhood, infertility, porn, and other issues of interest to Christian men. Buy it already and beat the rush! Read more
In the modern media ecosystem, the stories come faster than the mind has time to process. We find ourselves crouching into offensive or defensive postures, falling back on tribal catchphrases, and reacting too fast, too soon, and always with too much outrage. I don’t have to go further than the last couple days to show how we, as Catholics (and I include myself), are all too ready to be drawn into the outrage cycle that stifles thought. Round One: Dolce... Read more
I had a chance to interview the Most Reverend David O’Connell, Bishop of Trenton, about his recovery from an emergency amputation, his Lent, the synod, and his diocese. An excerpt: Has [your recovery] given this Lent any added meaning? It’s something that has been part of my own movement into Lent. I’m conscious of this disability, and that it is requiring sacrifice on my part. The biggest sacrifice is the fact that I can’t get out and see my people.... Read more
God and the Machine
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