Hey look -- wifi. Get it while it's hot. Regular blogging hereabouts will resume this weekend, in the meantime, here's an open thread. Read more
Hey look -- wifi. Get it while it's hot. Regular blogging hereabouts will resume this weekend, in the meantime, here's an open thread. Read more
Pope Francis broke one of the cardinal rules of American politics during his visit to the White House last week. The pope quoted from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. That's fine, of course. It's almost mandatory to praise that speech -- provided you stick to the famous mountaintop kumbaya bits from near the end. But Francis quoted from the dangerous, forbidden parts at the beginning. And that just isn't allowed. Read more
Whether or not an album is a vanity project has less to do with its merits and more to do with marketing and motivation. If it seems like a cynical attempt to cash in on fame by repackaging a movie-star as a pop-star, that's a vanity project. Ego plays a part, too, of course, hence that word "vanity." Read more
He went up from there to Bethel; and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go away, baldhead! Go away, baldhead!" When he turned round and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. Then two she-bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. Read more
Speaker of the House John Boehner is stepping down and resigning from Congress next month to take what surely has to be a better job. Any job would be a better job than trying to lead a governing party that hates the idea of governing. Plus: Theology in Chicago, style guides for the apocalypse, and NASA's live-stream above the clouds. Read more
In the world of "Left Behind," simply attending church isn't enough. It seems you have to attend the right kind of church -- the kind of church where they teach you the specific formulas and the precise propositional content of belief that will enable you to say the magic words, compelling God to extend you his grace. It's a matter of learning the spells that can bind the djinni-God to do your will. Read more
The modern assertion of "biblical inerrancy" is best explained in a 1978 document called the "Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy." That statement includes 19 denials that tell you everything you need to know about inerrancy and inerrantists. Just read through those denials and, in each case, replace "We Deny that ..." with "We Are Very Much Afraid that ..." Read more
Hall of Fame catcher Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra died Tuesday at the age of 90 and today millions of us are saddened. And smiling. We have to smile because thinking about Yogi, or talking about him, tends to make people smile. Quoting him always does. Read more
A great magician reveals a trick; the end of the season and the End of the World; standing athwart algebra, yelling Stop; coherent theodicies; "How to Get a Drink at a Crowded Bar;" and the twilight of the answering-machine song. Read more
Such hoaxes take on a seeming-reality for many of those who first believed them. After their initial disappointment when this story was proven a hoax, the fall-back position for many who wanted it to be true was to say that, OK, while this particular story was false, it still was believable because it fits with a larger pattern of such incidents, and that larger pattern is true. That this supposed larger pattern consists entirely of similar hoaxes doesn't diminish their faith in the truthiness of this larger pattern. Read more
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