From the Notebooks

"Today, thanks to the blessings of democracy, citizens of the Land of the Free and other Western democracies pay taxes 5 to 10 times higher than those under the absolute monarchs and submit to rules and regulations that Louis could never have imagined." Bill Bonner. I'd

Monday

Twitter Tebow severely disappointed me ("disgusted me" might be more accurate) with his crying at the end of Florida's loss to Alabama in the SEC Championship game, but his heart and head are in the right spot: He's going to appear in a pro-

Something for Sunday Morning

“Always keep the same measure of self-control; otherwise through irregularity you will go from one extreme to another.” The Philokalia

Abbie"s First Drawing

On display downtown last night. -- Mobile post

Brews You Can Use

Pretty soon, it'll be one man controlling everything, overseeing a one-nation world, drinking its one beer. All of that might not happen any time soon, but the beer part might. Due to all the recent mergers and acquisitions in the beverage market, "the four top players

Tomorrow's Reading

With respect to my earlier post: Tomorrow's reading is from 1 Samuel 8: 4 - 7, 10 - 22: 6 But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, "Give us a king to govern us." And Samuel prayed to the LORD. 7 And the LORD said to Samuel,

Samuel the Libertarian/Anarchist

Watch for tomorrow's First Reading at Mass. It's one of my favorites. It's the Lord's response when Samuel tells Him that the Israelites want a king. Classic (well, the Bible's always classic, but this is "classic" in the

From the Notebooks

Merleau-Ponty's theory of art, according to Richard Kearney: "Paintings or poems are not just creative expressions for their authors. They also require audiences. The significance of a work of art, consequently, is not something fixed once and for all by the artist or passively consumed by

Wednesday

Miscellany I guess the Vatican is (justifiably) disturbed by the message behind James Cameron's Avatar [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/vatican-slams-avatar-prom_n_419949.html] . The newspaper said it "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature." I

From the Notebooks

Investment Decision: Dying White Guys or Growing Non-Whites? "If the growth rate of per capita income . . . between 2003 and 2050 remains as it was between 1973 and 2003--averaging 1.68 percent annually in Europe, the United States, and Canada and 2.47 percent annually in the rest