Baron Foster of Thames Bank aka Norman Foster is the baron of high tech modernist architects. Foster is famous for the glass and steel Hearst Tower in New York and pickle shaped “Gherkin” that distinguishes the modern London skyline. Quick off the mark after the Notre Dame fire, Foster enthused that the restoration of the cathedral was a “great opportunity.” His rapidly sketched out design calls for a needle like spire made of “crystal glass and stainless steel” with an... Read more

I must have written thousands of articles over the years for various papers, journals, blogs, websites and magazines. Bit by bit they are being archived over at my main blog-website. Scroll to the bottom of the home page to see the various categories: apologetics, church history, film and television, culture, the Inklings and more. Four articles are loaded into the archived articles section of the blog today. They are a pretty good sampling of the different categories I’ve been writing... Read more

A researcher in North Carolina has pulled out of a genetics experiment because he’s worried about the ethics of it. This article reports that Chinese scientists have inserted human genetic material into the brains of monkey so they will become “more human” Like most people my mind jumped immediately to the Planet of the Apes movies. In the updated franchise this is almost precisely why the apes took an evolutionary leap: scientists looking for a cure for Alzheimer’s tested their... Read more

Yesterday in Texas, an avowed white supremacist, John William King, was executed for his part in the gruesome killing of James Byrd Jr. in 1998. King and his friends Shawn Berry and Lawrence Brewer beat James Byrd then chained him to the back of their pickup and dragged him for miles along a country road. Still alive during his ordeal, Byrd was finally killed when he hit a culvert and his right arm and head were torn off. If you... Read more

After the horrific terrorist bombing in Sri Lanka our modern, utilitarian world asks why such things happen. They happen because, below the surface of our political news cycle, below the surface of our celebrity culture, below the surface of our affluence, below the surface of our humanistic attempts to create our utopias another battle simmers. This is the battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. Put in simply, mythic terms, this is the battle between the... Read more

Anyone who reads the gospels closely will have discovered some seeming discrepancies in the timing of the event of Jesus’ Last Supper, arrest, trial and execution. The most glaring problem is that John’s gospel has Jesus being executed on Friday afternoon, the day the Passover Lambs were being slaughtered in the Temple. However, the Last Supper on Thursday night is clearly portrayed as a Passover Meal. How could Jesus and the disciples have eaten a Passover Meal if the lambs... Read more

One of the questions which immediately arose during yesterday’s fire at Notre Dame in Paris was whether this was a jihadist terrorist action. In 2016 three jihadist women were arrested for plotting to blow up Notre Dame and last Friday, one of their number–Ines Madani–was sentenced in a French court. Curiously, a fire broke out near the Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem at the same time as the Notre Dame blaze. No doubt conspiracy theorists will... Read more

Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a hero? I think she’s driven by the Resentment Loop. After reading Max Scheler’s Ressentiment I’m fascinated first of all by what I call the Resentment Loop. This is the constant replay of negative emotions or experiences. We do this when there has been some conflict that we are powerless to resolve. You know how it goes…”I should have said this…I should have said that…Next time I see him I’ll say…What I should have done was…I’ll get him back…Just... Read more

There was some gossip last week that the latest member of the royal family–American TV personality Meghan Markle said the baby she and Prince Harry are expecting will be raised “gender fluid. The palace PR machine went on to deny the story utterly, simply saying it was false. It does open the question to the whole LBGTQ debate, and it occurred to me the other day that the alternative marriage movement, by its very nature, breaks the ten commandments. Which... Read more

Some atheists, Muslims and Christian fundamentalists like to grumble and gibe that the celebration of Christmas and Easter are “pagan.” They are right and they are wrong. They are right inasmuch as the wellsprings of our Western culture are deep in the pre-Christian cultures of Europe. They are wrong because the early Christians, like the Hebrews before them, saw their religion as a contrast and a corrective to the prevailing pagan culture. Like cultural iconoclasts shall we seek to purge... Read more