thoughts in and out of season
More items on AIDS, the all-purpose, all-political, all-symbolizing disease:
Here’s a brief interview with historian Thomas Madden, who makes some obvious points on what the Crusades were really like: Part 1 and Part 2. If a belated counterattack 900 years ago against Islamic military expansion and oppression is on the short list of the sins of Catholic Christendom, then Catholic Christendom looks pretty … More ...
We’ve seen a largely successful attempt at public abolition of Christmas. This may be a first sighting of a similar campaign for Thankgiving: from “Clifford’s Puppy Days,” a PBS children’s program, their latest episode Fall Feast:
… More ...“It’s the Fall Feast holiday, and the Howards are planning to visit Emily Elizabeth’s grandparents. But a snowstorm
Jacques Chirac took time off last week from promoting the EU and UN to worry about the threat posed by US cultural hegemony to the ecology of cultural particularism. A single world culture that chokes out the diversity of local cultures would be a “sub-culture,” he said, and would constitute a catastrophe for humanity.… More ...
The repeated assertion by the current Nobel peace laureate that HIV was deliberately created in a Western biological warfare laboratory has deservedly attained notoriety. The brief wire service story reporting the comments is a reminder of the world of international dreams—or fantasies—from which such prizes and comments emerge:
An example of what happens if the struggle against radical Islam is recast as a struggle against “fundamentalism” (that is, against every serious form of religion): French “headscarf” law bans priests from schools. Priests wear Roman collars, after all, and Roman collars are just like headscarves. The problem’s a general one. If you combine … More ...
4 related articles from worldnetdaily.com:
Lawmakers consider
‘smart’ driver’s license
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40796
Feds plan to track every car
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40795
Senate wants massive database dragnet
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,65242,00.html
Computer chips used to keep tabs on kids
Now I’ve seen proposals to place similar devices in the elderly (for their safety of course) and in convicted criminal offenders released on … More ...
Here are some of the fruits of the movement for full inclusiveness in religion, and more generally of the search for this-worldly transcendence: a mini-conference on homosexual sado-masochistic religion at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, a leading scholarly organization (search for the word “gay” on the linked page), and a respectful … More ...
One of the problems people have with religion today is that they don’t know what to make of the word “God.”
In a sense they’re right to be puzzled. Our concept of God is our concept of the most basic thing there is. It’s a concept of something beyond all concepts. That’s why Aquinas says … More ...
It seems there’s mostly bad news for us most of the time; but there is actually some good news in the news:
Khmer Rouge tribunal approved Cambodia is planning a “UN-backed tribunal to put leaders of the murderous Khmer Rouge regime on trial.” I’ve always thought that Pol Pot is the greatest evil, the greatest … More ...