New Chesterton books that I hadn't heard of until last weekend: The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton Vol. I: Non-Fiction and The Fantastic Fiction of Gilbert Chesterton. The first is merely a commercial re-packaging of three of his books (though it's kind of an odd combination), the second a commentary by Martin Gardner, who's a Chestertonian with a unique take on things.
Related link.
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Notre Dame called me last night, asking if I'd donate again this year. Heh, heh, heh. That was fun. I made sure to tell the ND sophomore that I'm sure he's a fine man and all, but that I simply couldn't donate in light of The Invitation.
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Just last week, I was talking with my partner about the unemployment rates. I said (rough quote), "Unemployment is over eight percent, but I gotta believe there are a lot of people out there who have taken pay cuts in one form or another. For instance, I know many companies that are either shutting down for a week, once a day every month, or doing other things to save labor costs. And what about people who lost their job but found lower-paying jobs or part-time paying jobs? What about the self-employed who no longer have enough work to keep themselves busy 40 hours a week?"
Well, this article at Bloomberg answered some of my question: The unemployment rate does not include people who can find only part-time work. If you include those folks, the unemployment almost doubles to 16%.
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Interesting: Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated The Holy Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said yesterday in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic's missing years.
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This is why my study is in my basement: A helicopter rescue team were scrambled after screams were heard in a German forest - only to find a man laughing his head off at a new book.
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Newt crosses the Tiber? I've always liked what he says, but never been able to get my head around his, er, ummm . . . marriage problems. Maybe this third wife and his new faith will take.
His conversion reminds me of the guy who pointed out earlier in my comments box that, though more Catholics become Protestants than vice-versa, the Protestants normally pick up the soft Catholics, whereas the Catholics tend to pick up the Protestant cream (Newman, Brownson, Knox, Chesterton, Waugh, Maritain, Merton, Adler, Muggeridge, Neuhaus, Hahn, Gingrich, Scheske (heh heh)). Of course, given his personal history, maybe he's not Protestant "cream," but he is a heavy-hitter and definitely welcomed aboard.
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PSA: Blogging will be light the next two weeks. It's Holy Week and I'm getting ready to go to California. It's all brain cells on other decks for the next six days, then I'm leaving. I'll have some pre-programmed posts for the days I'm in California, but nothing much.
