— 1 — The Paralympics are happening, and interesting links abound! First up, this promotional video for the Games: The BBC has a good rundown of the differences between the Olympics and the Paralympics, including some explanations of how some sports are modified. For example: One of the most important aids to the blind swimmer is the tapper. Standing at each end of the pool is a person holding a long pole with a soft circular ball on the end. As the... Read more
In the summer of 2012, I threw the best birthday party ever when I bribed all my friends with pizza and cake in order to get them to watch a Sondheim double feature. First, we watched Company, Sondheim’s concept musical about marriage, and then we saw Passion, which has a linear narrative but still manages to be a lot more disorienting. And then we had an argument. Since Company was, at the time of writing, available on Netflix instant play, I invited blog... Read more
I got to see Restless Heart, the new Augustine biopic last night. It’s not yet in theatres, but community groups can do special showings, and I was lucky enough to snag tickets to the one sponsored by St Anthony of Padua Church here in DC. (You can put in a request to host a showing or see the list of upcoming events here). Here’s the trailer: The trailer is super dramatic, but large parts of the movie are just people in... Read more
Earlier today, in my final Sondheim post, I was writing in praise of the grotesque. This post is on the same topic, but I’m code-switching a bit and doing it a more analytic, not aesthetic framework. Over at LessWrong, there’s a great illustration of how positive bias works: I am teaching a class, and I write upon the blackboard three numbers: 2-4-6. “I am thinking of a rule,” I say, “which governs sequences of three numbers. The sequence 2-4-6, as... Read more
In the last Sondheim Symposium post, I talked about Giorgio struggling with Fosca’s implacable love. If his reluctance to accept her unconditional love parallels the flinch away from grace, does it follow that Fosca is a Christ-like figure? Probably not. For a while after I saw the show, I suspected her of ostentatious humility. In fact, I hoped that some of her prostrations were insincere. She was starting to remind me of the awful, self-abnegating image of love on display in “Unworthy... Read more
The quote is from Company, the subject is Passion, as the Sondheim Symposium goes on. This installment includes spoilers for 1984. At the climax of 1984, Winston is broken by the tortures in room 101. The moment that anihilates him and represents victory for Big Brother is the moment where he cries out: Do it to her! Do it to Julia! I don’t care what you do to her, but do it to her! Tear her face off! Do it to Julia, not to... Read more
Remember the post last week on careers and hookup culture where I eschewed punny titles in favor of non-verbal rage? Well, I’ve expanded on some of those ideas and picked up a few new digressions in an essay for First Things‘s On the Square feature. My essay is titled “The Sad Secular Monks” and here’s a teaser quote: After graduation from college, young adults lose their deadlines. We stop making transitions as a cohort, and are expected to figure out when... Read more
Yesterday, in my review of inSignificant, I started teasing the next thread of the Sondheim Symposium. For Bobby to progress, he needs to make himself vulnerable and unsafe. We think of him transitioning into the role of servant, as Christ does. A future Bobby, we hope, won’t still be able to be described as “Exclusive you! Elusive you! Will any person ever get the juice of you?” as he is in “You Could Drive a Person Crazy.” If Company ends with... Read more
I received a free copy of inSignificant: Why You Matter in the Surprising Way God Is Changing the World to review as part of the Patheos Book Club, but was not subject to any limitations on my post. I tend to read and review apologetic works (or totally off-topic ones) that may be of interest to anyone in my weird audience. So, fair warning, inSignificant is written for Christians, and is probably not of interest to the non-Christian readers of the... Read more
Buried in the (correct) thread for discussing meta-questions about that gargantuan thread on natural law, Joshua Zelinsky of Religion, Sets, and Politics raised a meta-question about whether he should find natural law plausible enough to raise to the level where he cares about investigating the hypothesis. He wrote: The following is not a critique of natural law but rather a meta-level heuristic concern about it. It seems pretty clear that once one buys into a general Catholic (or a high... Read more
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