Sleepless and pensive, I pick up the Pensees. (The entire book is available online, yet I — who spend the better part of every day reading a computer screen — paid for a print edition. This may say something about the current prospects for e-books.) Pascal’s jottings are a glorious mess. I love this book for passages like this: For, in fact, what is man in nature? A Nothing in comparison with the Infinite, an All in comparison with the... Read more
Back before the war began I had a little bit of a problem with homonyms — questioning in one post whether or not Iraq posed an "immanent" threat to America's national security. Brendan Lynch pointed out that I had confused "immanent" with "imminent" — rightly guessing that my theology studies contributed to the mix-up. (The kingdom of God, you see, is both immanent andimminent. Or is it imminent and immanent?) To clarify (from Webster's New World): im ma nent adj.... Read more
Just got the September/October issue of PRISM magazine in the mail. I was an editor and staff writer at "America's alternative evangelical voice" for the magazine's first seven years and I've just started contributing again to it's "Washington Watch" segment. It's a little tricky to write about the "current goings on" in Washington when: A) you're in Media, Pa., and B) you've got a bi-monthly's almost-four-month lead time. I posted the Sept./Oct. column here, and it seems to have aged... Read more
So I'm reading Eric Alterman's latest column in The Nation and I start to see this strange image. It's Eric in a rumpled raincoat, an unlit cigar in one hand and a notebook in the other, his glass eye ever-so slightly askew. It's Alterman as Columbo. It made me wish that somebody in the Washington press corps would take a cue from Alterman — or from Peter Falk — and confront the president with the contradictions and bizarre falsehoods of... Read more
Altriiiiia — I just met a girl named Altria … Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the House majority whip, is getting married next month. The wedding is planned for mid-October, Taylor said. This will be the second marriage for Blunt, 53, who got divorced last year, and the first for [Abigail] Perlman, 41. Perlman is a lobbyist — the head of government affairs for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris: Their relationship became controversial in June, after The Washington Post... Read more
The “Business” section is irrelevant. We need a “Work” section. “Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital,... Read more
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