Via Within the Crainium, a great little story on a clever solution devised by some Dutch architects to address the problem of traveling by car between China and Hong Kong: One of the most vexing aspects of traveling between mainland China and Hong Kong is the car travel: People in the former drive on the right … Read more
A selection from Conan the Barbarian: The Musical. Need I say more?
Whenever the moral confusions facing our Church begin to trouble me, to give me the slightest sense that the gates of Hell really might be prevailing, I know what to do: Stop reading that document from the USCC — just put it down, kick it across the room — and pick up something more uplifting, … Read more
The Maldavian prince Stephen the Great won his first big victory over the Turks more than 500 years ago, and he celebrated by having a monastery built and hiring artisans to cover it in beautiful murals. According to Peter Wortsman in Sunday’s New York Times travel section, Stephen kept erecting monasteries and filling them with … Read more
Sociologist Gail Dines was recently interviewed by PULSE about her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. The thesis of her book — that porn destroys sexuality by accustoming our culture to ideas of sex that are unrealistic and completely severed from intimacy and love — won’t be new to most InsideCatholic readers. … Read more
Another good reason to homeschool your kids was offered by the high school of Arlington, Massachusetts: they aren’t offering to let students recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom – even voluntarily. 17-year old Arlington high student Sean Harrington has been leading a crusade to allow the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited in … Read more
Tony Woodlief responds to the recent report that parents are actually less happy than non-parents by wondering if “happiness” is really the metric we want to use to measure a full and satisfying life: . . . I wonder if we ought to re-examine our commitment to happiness. It seems to me that there’s possibly … Read more
I don’t really understand the whole Twitter phenomenon, but I do know that it set off a small firestorm when Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff tweeted several times about the execution of convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner. At first he wrote: “A solemn day. Barring a stay by Sup Ct, & with my final nod, … Read more
As my eldest son’s Little League season draws to a close here in town, this (somewhat tardy) story seems eerily relevant: In “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner’s character builds a baseball diamond out of a corn field after a voice tells him: “If you build it, he will come.” Well, now he can buy it and so … Read more
If you are one of the three million iPad owners, I would recommend a helpful guide for taking advantage of all its functionalities. iPad Made Simple, co-authored by Martin Trautschold and Gary Mazo, is easy to read and takes the reader step-by-step through all its various potencies. I thought I had a pretty good … Read more
Thanks to Mark Shea (you did read his column this morning, “Counsel the Doubtful,” didn’t you?) for sharing this hilarious read: What happens when an American anthropologist tells the story of Hamlet to some African tribesman? Laura Bohannan’s thesis that “human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over” met its match in … Read more
Do we need a book telling us that monogamy isn’t natural, because our ancestors 8,000 years ago didn’t mate for life? Apparently so. A new book called Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha has just been released in the U.S., and while I haven’t read it, … Read more
Belgian officials have now responded to the outcry over their raid of Catholic institutions this past weekend — including the tomb of a cardinal — in search of documents relating to sex-abuse cases. They claim the search was prompted by a tip from the former head of an internal Church commission in charge of investigating … Read more
Belgian officials have now responded to the outcry over their raid of Catholic institutions this past weekend — including the tomb of a cardinal — in search of documents relating to sex-abuse cases. They claim the search was prompted by a tip from the former head of an internal Church commission in charge of investigating … Read more
Elena Kagan’s credentials to serve on the Supreme Court are being scrutinized closely, as they should. We know already she is strongly pro-abortion and gay marriage, which should be enough to cause most Catholics concern. Now we learn she is oblivious to the worst excesses of the government’s power to ban free speech, i.e., the … Read more
Elena Kagan’s credentials to serve on the Supreme Court are being scrutinized closely, as they should. We know already she is strongly pro-abortion and gay marriage, which should be enough to cause most Catholics concern. Now we learn she is oblivious to the worst excesses of the government’s power to ban free speech, i.e., the … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
David Weigel has apologized for the nasty anti-conservative comments he made to members of the liberal listserv Journolist, and is frank about his own motivations. I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at … Read more
Doubt can be the emotional equivalent of anything from a brief spring rain to a Galveston-destroying hurricane. People can feel doubt over whether to place two bucks on the Mariners to win (don’t) or about whether the God in whom they have believed all their life is a sham, a fraud, and a delusion. Doubt … Read more