My birthday is tomorrow, but I’ve already been surprised with a few very nice presents. First I got to see a no-hitter for the New York Mets. Then I got to see the 2012 Transit of Venus (online, anyway, it was cloudy here). I feel privileged to have witnessed both of those, because neither is expected to be seen again during my lifetime. Then I learn via TBogg that tomorrow will also be a very special day in the blogosphere,... Read more
Charles Kuffner links to this article on dinosaur sculptor Keith Strasser and says, “I want to be a designer of dinosaur sculptures when I grow up.” That’s an excuse to tell this story: During the 2004 election, when I still lived in Delaware County, I volunteered with Move On, knocking on doors in Everybody’s Hometown. We coordinated at the home of another volunteer — “Dino” Don Lessem. Lessem is a popular author and dinosaur expert whose career includes, among other... Read more
“I think we’ve gotten used to the idea that wages don’t go up.” “All women want is to have contraception coverage in health insurance plans that they are already paying into. Why is that so hard to understand?” “People haunted by the purposelessness of their lives try to find a new content not only by dedicating themselves to a holy cause but also by nursing a fanatical grievance.” “Capitol Police removed a man from the U.S. Senate on Tuesday after... Read more
In Western culture, at least since its Christian formation, there has been a perduring tendency to give too much importance to the morality of sex. The sexual has threatened to take over the moral focus of whole generations of persons. Everything about the “sexual” is considered “moral” or “immoral,” and “morality” is almost reduced to “sexual morality.” All of this is to the detriment of concerns about economic justice, the oppression of whole peoples, political dishonesty, and even theft and... Read more
So the big news from the election that everyone was watching yesterday is cause for celebration. Oh, no, I don’t mean the Wisconsin recall. That’s awful. I mean the defeat of Proposition E in Oceanside, Calif.: In election returns updated early Wednesday morning, Oceanside voters rejected an ordinance that would phase out rent control in the city’s 17 mobile-home parks. … With 100 percent of precincts counted, Proposition E — the measure that would gradually eliminate rent control — was... Read more
Here’s a snippet from a rabidly anti-Catholic rant from a writer incensed by the Vatican’s recent crackdown against women, LGBT people, nuns and Girl Scouts: The Vatican is hypocritical and duplicitous. Their belief is always that someone else needs to clean up their act; the divorced, the gays, the media, the US nuns, the Americans who were using the wrong words to pray, the seminaries, etc. It never occurs to the powers that be that the source of the problem... Read more
I go to check out at the library and the library clerk asks to see my card. Fair demand. Am I or am I not a member in good standing entitled to check out these books? Here we have a controversy, a dispute, an unsettled question in need of settling. The clerk has asked a legitimate question and the burden of proof rests on me to respond. So I give her my library card. That settles things easily. I have... Read more
Kirk Lyman-Barner says the ongoing foreclosure crisis is a national disaster and that churches should mobilize in response the same way they would if these millions of families were being displaced by tornado, flood, fire, hurricane or earthquake. He points us to the Fuller Center for Housing’s Save a House/Make a Home initiative. (The Fuller Center is a nonprofit related to Habitat for Humanity.) Lyman-Barner summarizes the effort: Banks and lenders with foreclosed properties donate their houses to affordable housing... Read more
I had to look this one up: ar•bi•trage noun \’är-b∂-,träzh\ 1 : the nearly simultaneous purchase and sale of securities or foreign exchange in different markets in order to profit from price discrepancies 2 : the purchase of the stock of a takeover target especially with a view to selling it profitably to the raider I’m probably still not confident enough in what that means to try to use this word in conversation. But in the context of the following... Read more
Ismael Estrada of CNN reports on the aftermath of another recent bigotry eruption in a nondenominational evangelical church: “We don’t teach hate, says church where anti-homosexual song filmed.” About 20 protesters gathered on Sunday outside the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle here to voice opposition to a viral online video that was taped in the church and shows a young child singing song with lyrics that offer a harsh message for homosexuals. The video, which surfaced on YouTube last week, shows a... Read more
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