Eclectic Amateur

Via Mark Shea, I’ve been introduced (virtually) to a very cool blogger, Dawn Eden.

In the last few days, he’s linked to her:

• encounter and confrontation with Nazi wannabe esteemed scientist Dr. James Watson
  

• common-sense (and therefore probable hate speech in Canada) observation on “gay pride” and homosexual “marriage.”
  

And she gets to write headlines for the New York Post! How excellent is that?! (Other than the fact that you have to be warped enough to (a) live in NYC and (b) actually enjoy it …)

Katolik Shinja

… is Joshua Snyder’s blog. He is apparantly an American convert to Catholicism, living and teaching in South Korea.

This is not a perspective one meets every day.

Some days, the Internet can be a great thing.

If Victor Lams and Sandra Miesel ever worked together …

…they could actually flesh out my horrible inspiration today:

“Gauntlet: The Election of a Medieval Pope”

Containing pithy computer-voice sayings like

“Cardinal needs food badly”

And

“Borgia is about to die”

Victor could do the graphics, music, and voiceovers, and Sandra could supply the nitty-gritty historical details of favorite weapons of Italian assasination, how the lock-ins of conclaves really worked, etc.

Sometimes, the things that come together in my brain scare me …

I just saw the news that former President Ronald Reagan passed away yesterday at the age of 93.

I absorbed a visceral dislike of Reagan and Reagan conservatism as a college student during the 80’s, which I’ve been slowly unlearning ever since.

Was Reagan a perfect man? Of course not. Can his presidency be legitimately criticized? Of course.

But as I look back and learn more about what I was not taught in those years, I am more impressed with the sense that here was a man. One who tried to do the right thing and speak truth plainly, to the best of his ability. A marvelous thing this days, and a further wonder that such a man was granted eight years in the White House.

Did he have successes and failures, times he was in the right and times he was in the wrong? Of course. (Who does not?)

And let us not forget that even good and great worldly accomplishments are as straw before the true Accomplishment of knowing God and enjoying Him forever. Let us pray that the Great Communicator is no long merely “communicating”, but communing, with all the saints.

Kathy Shaidle has a beautiful story of Not Hating Reagan. I don’t have a moment of epiphany like Kathy, but count me as another who No Longer Hates Reagan™. God bless, Gipper.

Somehow, this actually fits …

Non curo. Si metrum non habet, non est poema.

“I don’t care. If it doesn’t rhyme, it isn’t
a poem.”

You are a type A personality. You like bright
things, you don’t call in sick to work, and you
have devastating opinions about art.

Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This quiz must be pretty accurate, because it seems to characterize certain other people correctly, also.

What 20th Century Theorist Am I?

This is all Victor Lams’ fault:

You are an undergraduate! Your mind has not yet
warped into the utter oddness of contemporary
theory. If you put down the beer bong, and
start reading dreafully weird theory, you’ll
probably have a better chance of not getting
the answer designed to make fun of you.

What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

For the record, while I did at times drink more than was good for me as an undergraduate, not only have I never used a beer bong, to my knowledge I was never even part of a party where they were in use.

I did, however, spend quality time with Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Marx, and Franz Fanon (who is, in fact, “surprisingly readable for a major theorist”). Happily, I missed spending quality time with Derrida or any other post-modernist philosophers, for which I credit any remaining sanity that I might possibly retain (cue snickering from the peanut gallery …)

Anglefish Update

We have babies! For the first time in a year.

Of course, this would happen two weeks after giving up on having another clutch and starting to convert the rearing tank into another community tank. So I have no idea how they’ll survive. So far today, the parents do seem to be defending them well. Maybe some will make it.

Cool Dino Links

An eclectic list:

• Dinosaur Data Files from The Natural History Museum, London
• DinoData.net
• Archives of the DINOSAUR Mailing List
  

Nothing that quite achieves what I was wishing for previously, but they’re still good.

Fair Warning

Regular readers (both of you know who you are) have no doubt noticed that blogging is a weekly thing, at best. Fully expect this pace to continue, if not diminish. You Have Been Warned™.

While I will not have the iron willpower of Mark Shea to give up blogging entirely for Lent, I am going to attempt the perhaps harder discipline of not reading blogs for Lent.

This may (or may not) have the perverse effect of causing more blogging, as I take the time to purge bookmarks and write rather than just read and/or comment in other people’s blogs.

Empty Chairs and Responsibility

Tonight, I see that twisted GenX genius Victor Lams comments at Amy Welborn’s about reaction to Fr. Rob Johansen’s “Empy Chair” sermon (which references Victor’s comments on Baby Boomers; how’s that for circularity?):

And I do think that all of us, non-contracepting parents, genXers and Baby Boomers alike, bear the collective, national guilt of the crime of abortion.

For reasons unknown to me (not that I’m arguing!), my older boys want bedtime storytime to cover the whole Bible, including the “boring” parts like Numbers and Leviticus. (Reason #42491435 to both homeschool and keep Nintendo out of the house.) Last night, we got to Leviticus 20:

The LORD said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any alien living in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech must be put to death. The people of the community are to stone him. I will set my face against that man and I will cut him off from his people; for by giving his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. If the people of the community close their eyes when that man gives one of his children to Molech and they fail to put him to death, I will set my face against that man and his family and will cut off from their people both him and all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech.

— Leviticus 20:1-5 (NIV)

I think Victor has it right. There are a lot of laws in the Pentateuch. This is the first time I’ve noticed one where guilt is imputed, not simply to the one breaking the law, but to all of those who know and look the other way.

And there will be a special place in Hell reserved (or, if you prefer, a custom millstone) for those who not just close their eyes, but open them, and call evil good.

[Episcopalinal priest Rev. Katherine] Ragsdale called conservative evangelicals opposed to abortion “a small and wacko fringe” and said an abortion-rights stance is a natural position for a Christian.

Keep all my decrees and laws and follow them, so that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. You must not live according to the customs of the nations I am going to drive out before you. Because they did all these things, I abhorred them.

— Leviticus 20:22-23 (NIV)

Woe to those who call evil good

and good evil,

who put darkness for light

and light for darkness,

who put bitter for sweet

and sweet for bitter.

Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes

and clever in their own sight.

— Isaiah 5:20-21 (NIV)

God have mercy. God have mercy on us all.