ninme

From @wheatweeds:

Dang. Now we have to let him put it in Manhattan. http://americandigest.org/Bomb%20Mot.jpg

If I RT that, heads would explode. Which would be great, but I’m chickening out anyway.

Categories: War and Peace

Oh man, curtsies to RC2’s Google Reader for this one (I’m a couple days behind):

The myth, cherished by Generation Narcissus, that Jesus made precious, precious Us—the Baby Boomers, source and summit of all goodness, and final peak toward which all human history has been straining—-into the rightful teachers of the Church and that [...]

Categories: History

This is very good:

The Times – The British girls disappearing into forced marriages, by Lucy Bannerman

“I was told I was staying here for ever,” she says [Tania (pseudonym), 16]. “For ever” often used to mean until 18 – the minimum age at which a Briton could sponsor a spouse’s entry [...]

Categories: Geography and Foreign Affairs

I’m not in a particularly good mood today and the weather (hot, muggy, stagnant) isn’t helping. Neither is this:

[Charles Krauthammer] On Robert Gibbs refusing to comment on the planned mosque at Ground Zero because it’s a “local” issue: It’s no more a local issue than 9/11 [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

In Caitlin Moran’s TV column this week (see, she writes a TV column):

Over on Channel 4, and another piece of respectable documentary-making was tarted up in the stockings and suspenders of a sensational title — Amish: The World’s Squarest Teenagers. The premise was simple: before officially getting their hats nailed [...]

Categories: Entertainment

NRO – K-Lo: Facebook Saves a Teacher Can it save Western civilization, too?

A University of Illinois professor who teaches Catholicism gets canned for teaching Catholicism (guess which topic) then hired again after a Facebook campaign.

Anyway I thought this was worth quoting:

“All religion is an essential part of the human story,” he tells [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani has been “spared” stoning (she might still be hung though), but it’s brought up a subject we don’t often hear much about:

The Times – Is female sexuality more wicked than murder? By Janice Turner

Last week I met an Iranian woman who, if she had remained in Iran, could have been [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

…What marriage is to black people. Apparently. Or that’s what this reminded me of, anyway.

Religion Dispatches – Does the Bible Really Call Homosexuality an “Abomination”? This word, used for centuries to justify an anti-gay posture, has been badly translated and even more poorly understood.By JAY MICHAELSON

Incidentally, I’ve been buying pretty much everything from UK companies [...]

Categories: History

Announced he has throat cancer today and has to cut short his book tour to have chemo on his esophagus. But anyway, the news had a link to this review of his memoirs* (which he was on tour promoting), leading with:

In 1973, at the age of 24, Christopher Hitchens was called to Athens, [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Wheat & Weeds – Font Of Wisdom

One of the Vatican webmasters apparently wasn’t paying much attention during his spell-check, as the encyclicals of Pius XII at the Vatican website read “Times New Roman” every time the pontiff actually wrote “times.” Heh. Could’ve been worse. Could have been “Mary conceived comic [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Wheat & Weeds – Agony of Agora

I was kind of excited about this movie, because last year, a few weeks before I saw the first trailer for this movie, I’d read Umberto Eco’s Baudolino, and Hypatia features rather, erm, heavily, in parts. But, oh well!

Won’t be seeing this one, as it’s a prolonged [...]

Categories: Entertainment

National Post – Christopher Hitchens: An Orwell for our time

The mark of Hitchens’ courage is a willingness to take his convictions wherever they carry him. Most popular pundits are tribal in their outlook. They will drench the page with their tears if Americans or Israelis perpetrate some real or imagined outrage in Gaza, [...]

Categories: People and Current Events

Epic:

This would have been better yesterday, but Peter only sent it to me today.

Categories: Art and Literature

And this one, because the subject is of endless fascination to me, features rather heavily the Japanese obsession with Christian churches:

I love especially the bit where she’s dipping her fingers in the holy water. I suppose it looks about the same to us as Madonna with Sanskrit all over her hands in her Yoga [...]

Categories: Entertainment

Catholic Herald – Bishop deplores plan to ‘abolish’ faith schools

The Liberal Democrat manifesto commits the party to stopping Catholic, Anglican and Jewish schools from selecting pupils on grounds of faith.

Catholic, Anglican and Jewish schools, eh? What about, oh just to pick a religion at random, Buddhist schools? Just for example?

Categories: Politics