Drudge has a link to an article concerning an all-girl gang in San Francisco that is going about and beating up other women and girls with apparent randomness. Police are astonished at the violence and cruelty of the attacks, some of which have included attacks on small children. Can this be unrelated to the kick-butt image of women that increasingly dominates pop culture? People pick up their self-image from images and models around them, and a culture permeated with images... Read more
In a post-war world, you need stealth, finesse, cunning. You need, in short, Odysseus, the man of twists and turns, who is the perfect post-war hero. Odysseus would be great in Special Forces. Read more
There are, I think, two forms of sleeplessness: The fretting, turning, twisting, aged kind, With night unending, dark and death rule all. But then there is a sleeplessness that’s quiet, Delicious, calm, composed. I lie awake Like the lidless seraphim, who night and day Sing to the God who slumbers not nor sleeps, Like the sleeplessness of God Himself, So full of life He cannot shut His eyes. Or like a child who stands upon her bed, And watches birds... Read more
Inspired by Gary Hotham, and by the world around me, I sometimes try my hand at haiku. (Gary, by the way, has refused to comment on the quality of my haiku, which is probably just as well.) two pillars of water in morning light — the fountain in the square Read more
Even after spending a week mulling over Jesus’ temptations and preaching on Luke 4, I find myself puzzled by any number of details. With help from some members at Trinity Reformed Church, however, I think I’m getting a better feel for the temptation. Here are a couple of fruitful insights offered by members of Trinity: 1) Jesus goes out into the wilderness as the “son,” and in context this means “Last Adam” (3:38). One of interesting parallels is that Jesus... Read more
Even after spending a week mulling over Jesus’ temptations and preaching on Luke 4, I find myself puzzled by any number of details. With help from some members at Trinity Reformed Church, however, I think I’m getting a better feel for the temptation. Here are a couple of fruitful insights offered by members of Trinity: 1) Jesus goes out into the wilderness as the “son,” and in context this means “Last Adam” (3:38). One of interesting parallels is that Jesus... Read more
Another review from the August 15 TLS summarizes the findings of Richard J. McNally’s Remembering Trauma , a study of the issue of suppressed memories. McNally’s research, by the reviewer’s account, is exhaustive and his conclusions devastating. Here are some excerpts: McNally resists the conciliatory impulse to take a middle ground, perhaps along the lines of “recovered memories occur more often than some people think but less than others think.” Nonsense, he says. Some people think the world is round... Read more
In his recent book, Seeds of Wealth: Four Plants that Made Men Rich , Henry Hobhouse defends the automobile as an environmental boon. Reviewing the book in the August 15 issue of the TLS , Paul Levy summarizes Hobhouse’s argument: In 1900, apart from a few steam and internal combustion-driven experimental omnibuses and cabs, there were 7,000 horse-drawn cabs and 3,000 buses daily, totalling “nearly 40,000 horses at work in London, each emitting 20 litres of solid effluent a day,... Read more
Joshua Muravchik has an entertaining critique of the current wave of “neo-con” spotting in the current issue of Commentary . He cites absurdly distorted newspaper articles claiming that the Bush administration is “rife” with neo-con Straussians, which then go on to mangle Strauss beyond recognition. Muravchik is less convincing when he claims that there are whisps of anti-Semitism infecting attacks on neo-conservatism, but the article as a whole helps put these attacks into perspective. Read more
Joshua Muravchik has an entertaining critique of the current wave of “neo-con” spotting in the current issue of Commentary . He cites absurdly distorted newspaper articles claiming that the Bush administration is “rife” with neo-con Straussians, which then go on to mangle Strauss beyond recognition. Muravchik is less convincing when he claims that there are whisps of anti-Semitism infecting attacks on neo-conservatism, but the article as a whole helps put these attacks into perspective. Read more
Leithart
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