I haven't written much here about the whole "Intelligent Design" movement, in part because the thing itself is a bit too fuzzy to get a handle on. Part of the problem I have with it is that it is a movement — and much more of a political movement than a scientific one. That political movement got a big boost last week when President Bush responded to a question by saying that Intelligent Design should be taught "alongside" evolution in... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 129-133 We left Buck Williams outside of the offices of "Global Weekly," somewhere in midtown Manhattan, miles and miles from midtown Manhattan. Buck heads inside and meets up with his friends and colleagues for the first time since one third of the world's people disappeared and hundreds of thousands more were killed in various catastrophes involving planes, trains and automobiles. Since that event, Buck had been on his own, but: He was with people who cared about... Read more
"And courage is a weapon we must use" Emiliana Torrini, "If You Go Away" R.E.M., "Laughing" Mindy Smith, "Come to Jesus" Norah Jones, "Crazy" Supersuckers, "Hey Ya" U2, "Where the Streets Have No Name" Allison Moorer, "Sing Me to Sleep" Nina Nastasia, "Nobody Knew Her" Sinead O'Connor, "If U Ever" Over the Rhine, "Etc. Whatever" Those last two are kind of wistfully hopeful, I guess, but that was still a bit of a downer for a Friday morning. My friend... Read more
I've spent much of this week cleaning up the online forums at the newspaper, a task I've come to think of as lifeguard duty at the cesspool. We had a few months where this duty slipped through the cracks and the forums reverted back to a Hobbesian state of nature. It's still pretty ugly in there, but before this week it was really, really ugly. Got an infestation of Angry White Guys with unlimited free time who managed to bully... Read more
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. Four years ago today President Bush received a daily brief warning him that terrorists planned to attack America. He spent the next three weeks on vacation. If he had done something, anything, might the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have been prevented. I don't know. Nobody knows. But here is what we do know: He did not do anything. And nearly 3,000 people died. The blame for the attacks lies, of course, with... Read more
Please forgive a brief aside, we'll pick up again on page 129 this week in a second post. Here I want to explore a theory about the theological foundations of Bad Writing and, in particular, Bad Evangelical Writing. As it turns out, I doubt this theory applies to LaHaye and Jenkins, but bear with me. In the last installment, we followed Buck Williams on an impossible journey across central New Jersey to Manhattan, which seems distorted and immense — like... Read more
I used to be disgusted, now I just try to be amused My Bloody Valentine, "What You Want" Violent Femmes, "I Held Her in My Arms" Elvis Costello, "Red Shoes" The Waterboys, "The Whole of the Moon" Lone Justice, "After the Flood" Peter Gabriel, "Games Without Frontiers" Sting, "Fragile" Mirah, "Don't Die in Me" T'Pau, "Heart and Soul" Tom Waits, "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You" If you're keeping score, that's eight songs from the '80s,... Read more
Paul Provenza's movie "The Aristocrats" hasn't opened in Philly yet, but I'm hoping it comes here soon. It is, of course, a one-joke movie, but I like that joke. And the reviews have been very good. Well, most of the reviews. Michael Elliott — the guy at "The Christian Critic's Movie Parables" — panned it. He probably should have. His gig, after all, is monitoring Hollywood movies for content that his audience would find objectionable. His particular audience is made... Read more
A word here about greed and need, which have been treated as a bit too interchangeable in some of the previous threads. (And also because it's an appropriate subject during hold-out week for NFL training camps.) Greed and need would both fall under the category of what economists call "incentives." They can both serve to motivate people to work harder, or to break the rules. If you're a human resources manager or a prosecuting attorney, either one will serve as... Read more
So, OK, quick review w/o any of the tangents that were apparently confusing to some: 1. Any given proposal — tax-cut, tax-hike, public works, whatever — must justly serve the public interest and promote the common good. Any politician advocating any kind of policy must demonstrate that the policy meets this test. 2. When politicians support proposals that result in immense financial benefit for themselves personally they have an even greater obligation to demonstrate that the proposal in question is... Read more
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