The annual list of popular baby names from the Social Security Administration is chock full of biblical names on the boy’s side — 13 out of the top 20. Less so on the girl’s side — only six of the top 20. Inspired by that imbalance, I present the following. 7 biblical women’s names that deserve wider usage: 1. Tirzah. This name has never cracked the SSA’s Top 1,000 list — not even after it was used in the movie... Read more
Doing my best impression of Barbara Billingsley in Airplane: “Oh stewardess! I speak evangelical …” Former White House speechwriter Michael Gerson was very skilled at peppering President George W. Bush’s public statements with so-called “dog whistle” language targeting evangelical Christian voters. These passing phrases and allusions wouldn’t alter or confuse Bush’s message to other listeners, but they would have an additional resonance for the evangelicals listening. The actual meaning of those phrases didn’t much matter, what was important was that... Read more
Here’s what I’m trying to figure out about “Super-Duper Tuesday” — the ridiculously early multi-state primary-palooza on Feb. 5: How are the candidates going to manage their concession/victory speeches? Here’s the Feb. 5 list (copied from TPM/Election Central): Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho (D), Illinois, Massachusetts, Minesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico (D), New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia (R). [Oops, and Arizona.] So we could, in theory, be treated to the... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 393-395 Here, just after he finished typing Chapter 21 and just before he began churning out the first and only draft of Chapter 22, here is where I think Jerry Jenkins paused briefly to skim over the previous 392 pages. In doing so it seems he noticed a few — but only a few — mistakes. He seems to have reconsidered the impact of the whole Babel Fish incident — the explicitly divine harmless destruction of thousands... Read more
Everything is, everyone is, broken… “Pilgrimage,” R.E.M. “A Pillar of Salt,” The Thermals “Pillar to Post,” Aztec Camera “Pineapple Head,” Crowded House “Pink Cashmere,” Prince “Pink Houses,” John Mellencamp “Pink Moon,” Nick Drake “Plan of the Man,” The M’s “Planet Telex,” Radiohead “Play God,” Chagall Guevara Mellencamp’s reach exceeds his grasp a bit on “Pink Houses,” but I love what he’s grasping for. The heart of the song is a genuine affection, a genuine love even, for “people and more... Read more
I spent a year getting out of debt by doing corporate training — lots of three-day weekends in hotel meeting rooms with our account managers talking about sexual harassment and not creating a hostile workplace environment. If I were still working in that capacity, I would have to advise our managers not to hang this recent Pat Oliphant cartoon in their office. It’s exactly the sort of misogynist garbage that would get the company sued. And we would lose the... Read more
Today would have been the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 78th birthday. That honorific — “reverend” — refers to King’s vocation as an ordained Baptist minister. He was the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. But King believed his ministry extended beyond his congregation. He believed that God had called him to work for justice not just in the hearts and lives of the believers at Dexter Avenue, but in all of Montgomery, in all of Alabama,... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 387-391 “I felt my heart strangely warmed,” John Wesley wrote of the moment of his conversion. Something similar is happening to Buck Williams in this passage, but his warmness is far stranger than Wesley’s: Buck did not trust himself to respond with coherence. He still had chills, yet he felt sticky with sweat. What was happening to him? He managed a whisper, “I want to thank you for your time, and for dinner,” he said. I don’t... Read more
“In the real world they pay professionals. That’s why we call them pros.” — Carver I finally caught the first episode of Season 5 of The Wire. Now that the show’s focus has widened to include my own trade, its almost Aristotelian* emphasis on virtue and craft seems even more emphatic. This thread runs throughout the series, a constant opposition of those who care about “the job” and those who care about the career. The “natural po-lice” are craftsmen. They... Read more
So with Jan. 6 come and gone, everybody seems to have taken down their Christmas lights. We have an Epiphany and the world gets darker — that seems backwards. – – – Al-Qaida has frequently employed a “sleeper-cell” strategy, with its agents posing as peaceful, innocent citizens. Now, let’s be very clear — I’m not saying that Adam Yoshida is a concealed terrorist, a Manchurian blogger. But on the other hand, it’s impossible to rule it out. These things are,... Read more
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