Gotta get it: The Bad Catholic's Guide to Wine, Whiskey, And Song: A Spirited Look at Catholic Life and Lore from the Apocalypse to Zinfandel. Only $10.17 at Amazon.
__________
Taking the kids to The Golden Compass? Check out non-partisan Snopes first.
__________
When you're pounding out theories in the ivory tower, it's easy. You can come up with any ole theory and make it sound good, if you dress it up with enough surface erudition. But when it comes to application, it's a different thing altogether. A true philosopher lives his thought. The fraud doesn't. Animal rights extremist Peter Singer (who taught that rats can be as innately valuable as humans) has always been a fraud. This story came out a few years ago, but I had forgotten about it until I saw it at O'Leary's blog yesterday. Excerpt:
In the late '90s, his mother Cora suffered from Alzheimer syndrome and could no longer recognize family members. She had clearly lost the qualities that, according to Singer, give us rights. Nonetheless, Singer spent tens of thousands of dollars that might have gone to an animal liberation cause to give his mother a good quality of life. When challenged about this, he merely replied, “Perhaps it is more difficult than I thought before, because it is different when it's your mother.”
Yes, Prof. Singer, it is different when it's your mother. Another philosopher, Peter J. Colosi, who teaches philosophy at the Franciscan university in Gaming, Austria, explains, “The difference, when the sufferer is your mother, is that you love her. And it is love that opens our eyes to the true source of the worth of persons: their inner preciousness, unrepeatability, and uniqueness.”
__________
More than 12 a minute: A Californian man ate 103 burgers in just eight minutes to set a new world record. Officials likened the achievement to Roger Bannister breaking the four minute mile. That's, not to put too fine a point on it, gross.
__________
"I'd do anything to be a citizen of your country. Almost."
