(Taken from iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2010/03/once-more-into-the-breach.html.)

Once More Into the Breach

(with apologies to the Bard)
ACT XXIV, SCENE 13. On the eve of the health care battle.

Enter the PRESIDENT.

PELOSI.

O that we now had here
But one one-hundred of those Blue Dogs 
That face no re-election to-day!

OBAMA.

What's she that wishes ( Read more... )

"The Christian should see two realities at once, one world (as it were) within another: one the world as we all know it, in all its beauty and terror, grandeur and dreariness, delight and anguish; and the other the world in its first and ultimate truth, not simply 'nature' but 'creation,' an endless sea of glory, radiant with the beauty of God in ( Read more... )

I found another Avatar review that I liked--this time on the Telegraph.  It's a powerful comparison of Cameron's universe to Joseph Conrad's--and the way that both oppose exploitation while unwittingly perpetuating the image of the savage.  This is an argument (about Conrad) that I first encountered in Edward Said (I read it in Culture and ( Read more... )

This is pretty cool. My old professor, and Dean of Baylor University Honors College Thomas Hibbs, wrote a review for "Twilight: New Moon". He does reviews like this routinely--I think his title in the department is "Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Culture". I remember he did a really good lecture (that I couldn't attend because the room ( Read more... )

I flew back from DFW to Durham today, ending my Thanksgiving break. It was great to see my family, but as yall know flying always makes me a little uneasy. Today's flight was neat though--I was taking off at 6:40 am central, so the sun wasn't up yet, and I was flying east into the sunrise, and after I got above a layer of thin clouds, I got to ( Read more... )

From www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/sf/page/24867/Christian orthodoxy must be defended and proclaimed both in a broad sense and directly at the point at which it is being attacked. When heretics attack the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Church ought not to respond with a ponderous conversation on the benefits of chastity. We respond by defending ( Read more... )

"As a general rule, quiet and untroubled possession weakens desire. In giving my model a rival I return to him, in a way, the gift of the desire that he just gave to me. I give a model to my own model. The spectacle of my desire reinforces his at the precise moment when, in confronting me, he reinforces mine. That man whose wife I desire, for ( Read more... )

Teddy, on preparing to open a whole watermelon in August to share with the group:

"The splattering fruit juice!  Bursts of joy!  One night of love... The bitter sweetness of those days is the essence of youth!"

XD XD XD

I saw this on www.billmuehlenberg.com/2009/10/11/a-review-of-god%E2%80%99s-battalion-by-rodney-stark/ this morning: a revisitation of the Crusades, bashed constantly by the comfortably enlightened.

A review of God’s Battalions. By Rodney Stark.

HarperOne, 2009.

Very few people have much good to say about the Crusades nowadays. Most think it ( Read more... )

[NOTE--How the heck do I get lj-cut to work with pasted text?  If I paste something in from the clipboard, it NEVER goes into the "put your lj-cut contents here" gray box in rich text, and even if I switch into HTML and add the tags ( Read more... )