The Economist is handing out year-end awards for wacky science, one of which goes to the team that published a paper on the trajectory of a falling Batman last summer. The Economist summarizes the findings, which are not encouraging for future Batmen: “if Batman jumped off a 150-metre-tall structure he might expect to glide comfortably to a distance of 350 metres. But the students also reckon that the bat-suit cannot generate enough lift and that he would crash-land at a... Read more
Robert Gottleib reviews Penelope Niven’s Thornton Wilder: A Life in the January 7 issue of The New Yorker . The most interesting bits are selections from Wilder the epistolary literary and cultural critic. There’s this from a 1937 letter talking about the Astaire-Rogers film Swing Time , which Wilder saw in Europe: “Watch the audience. Spell-bound at something terribly uneuropean – all that technical effortless precision; all that radiant youth bursting with sex but not sex-hunting, sex-collecting; and all that... Read more
At the Real Clear Religion web site, Jeffrey Weiss nails the problem with Peter Jackson’s rendition of Tolkein. Summing up the climax of the Lord of the Rings , Weiss writes: “In book and film, Frodo has heroically carried the Ring to the one spot where it can be destroyed. Instead, he claims it and — in that one moment — Gollum attacks and bites off Frodo’s finger with the ring. In the book, this is what follows: ‘But Gollum,... Read more
Matthew 7: What man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! Every week we learn again that our Father is a... Read more
“Unless you are converted and become like little children, you cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” Jesus says. To enter His kingdom, we must be needy, eager, dependent, watching the world with wonder. Jesus fills His kingdom with children. But the world and our own flesh makes it difficult to be childlike. Young people are too cool, too cool to take unfeigned delight in anything, too cool to need anything, too cool to ask for anything. Older people are too... Read more
When Lear subjects himself to his daughters, his Fool remarks that he might has well pull down his britches and let his daughters whip him. He is no longer acting like a father; he has become a child in the hands of Goneril and Regan. At the end of the play, Lear is in the same position with Cordelia. He wakes up acting like a child, a “foolish fond old man,” ready to run away with Cordelia and spend the... Read more
I first discovered Peter Leithart’s writings in the pages of Pro Ecclesia and First Things . Even his earliest writings are striking for their creative engagement with the Christian tradition and for their superb rhetorical power. When I turned to his books, I found a sacramental and political theologian for the whole Church. Writing from a strongly Reformed, evangelical perspective, Peter manifests a wonderful love for Christ and for Christ’s scriptural word in all its dimensions. Indeed Peter’s love for... Read more
Rebutting Jonathan Last’s portrait of Batman as the comic book answer to liberalism, Travis Smith (writing at the Weekly Standard site) argues that Spiderman is the better antidote to modernity: “The essential difference between Spider-Man and Batman can be detected in their styles: Spidey’s banter is full of quips and gags, while Batman is always grim and gritty. That Batman’s archnemesis is the Joker is fitting. One who believes that suffering can be abolished through determined human effort has little... Read more
In his contribution to Gifts and Interests (Morality and the Meaning of Life) , Jacques Godbout suggests that the freedoms of modernity are “founded on the immediate and permanent liquidation of debt.” In the market, all debts are immediately canceled: You give me goods over the counter, I give you money; we both leave without owing anything to each other (25). This enables him to specify the difference between gift and commodity: (more…) Read more
So, the prose is a overwrought, but Robert Raynolds vividly captures the giftiness of gratitude in a couple of passages in his 1961 prose-poem, In Praise of Gratitude . Returning from a visit to Mexico as a young man, he pays a visit to the woman who will become his wife: “She opened the door, and suddenly as she saw me a change of light came over her face and her body rose out of the routine of answering a... Read more
Leithart
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