Current Affairs

Mass killers are atheists? That's what this popular and insightful blogger has observed [http://voxday.blogspot.com/2007/12/atheist-killers.html]: > Large-scale murder or small-scale slaughter, it's simply amazing how often these killers turn out to be explicit atheists, especially given the fact that they

The December issue of The Atlantic Monthly has a feature piece about The Golden Compass [http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200712/religious-movies]. Summary: Pullman's books are rabidly anti-Christian (the dark and murderous institution that pursues the protagonist is "the Magisterium"--subtle stuff), but Hollywood bent

I stumbled across all sorts of interesting things this weekend: A cool Wikipedia entry on fictional portrayals of psychopaths in literature [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_portrayals_of_psychopaths_in_literature#Dostoyevsky.27s_Crime_and_Punishment_and_The_Possessed] ; The Crux Project's Denyse O'Leary'

Yeah, I know I'm not blogging on Saturday mornings anymore, but I ran across four (at least mildly) interesting things yesterday: Paul Johnson offers his list of England's Top Ten Cathedrals [http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0321.htm]. __________ The controversial Jason Whitlock offers his spin

A long-time friend moved to South Carolina. He's a mortician. He got the call to pick up one of the firefighters killed in the tragedy earlier this week. This is his email: > I went to the Medical University today to pick up our guy. It was unreal.

I haven't weighed in on the Imus conflagration, but a reader has sent to me the best piece of commentary I've seen so far [http://www.kansascity.com/182/story/66339.html]. Excerpt: > While we're fixated on a bad joke cracked by an

Sad stuff [http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070330/wl_csm/odanube]: > When Johann Strauss gazed upon Europe's grandest waterway 140 years ago, it inspired him to compose the Blue Danube Waltz, went on to become an unofficial anthem of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. > Today, the river

I could've called this "The Lying Eudemon." Yesterday I said that I had Friday off and was going to use the time to read and write. Well, that wasn't quite accurate. My wife and The Seven are gone for the weekend, and I have

Beyonce on cover of Sports Illustrated [http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,251846,00.html]! Beyonce on cover of Sports Illustrated! I've seen that headline at least three times in the past 18 hours. Now, I have little doubt that Beyonce is good-looking, but who in the

Catholics holding steady at 17.2% of the world's population [http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=102831]. Goodness knows, I'm doing my part. Prima facie dumb story of the day: Chimpanzees may have been using stone "hammers" as long as 4,300