I have to admit that it really didn’t impress me very favorably the first time I read it: “Silence and Word: Path of Evangelization”—that will be the theme of next May’s World Day for Social Communications, the Vatican announcement said. That’s really strange, I thought. After all, even as it stands World Communications Day isn’t … Read more
One of the better philosophy newsgroups on the Internet is entitled “comp.ai.philosophy.” This group features constant variations on questions such as: How close can artificial intelligence (particularly computers) approximate to human consciousness? Is free will reducible to neurological mechanisms? and so forth. From my unscientific sampling, I would estimate that the clientele of this newsgroup … Read more
What should be done about income inequality? That basic question underlies the arguments hashed out in the supercommittee and promises to be a central issue in the presidential campaign. Supercommittee Democrats argue that income inequality has been increasing and can be at least partially reversed by higher tax rates on high earners. They refused … Read more
Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution Francis Fukuyama; Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 272 pages; $25 Francis Fukuyama thinks big and always on the cutting edge. But he’s no windbag intellectual. He actually knows things; he works hard to master the political, economic, and scientific information required to support his breathtaking theoretical claims. … Read more
To mark the implementation of the new English translation yesterday, the First Sunday of Advent, and to and facilitate discussion, we have reposted this piece and George Weigel’s column on the topic. The reasons given for the new English translation of the Mass are that: it is more faithful to the Latin it restores … Read more
Remember the slogan “ethics is playing catch-up with science”? It was one of the trusty clichés of science journalists in the heated debates five or six years ago over embryo research, “therapeutic cloning” and embryonic stem cells. From a layman’s point of view, the nub of the issue was this: adult stem cells were ethically … Read more
The long-awaited introduction of the new translation of the Roman Missal on November 27, the First Sunday of Advent, offers the Church in the Anglophere an opportunity to reflect on the riches of the liturgy, its biblical vocabulary, and its virtually inexhaustible storehouse of images. Much of that vocabulary, and a great many of … Read more
In the great scheme of things — greater things than worldlings imagine on a trip to the mall — it doesn’t matter a bit that Texas A & M and the University of Texas are winding up their celebrated Thanksgiving Day, football rivalry. What matters — maybe more than a little bit — is … Read more
Will Michelle Obama’s efforts as first lady help or hurt American children and the nation in which they live? When speaking about her “Let’s Move!” program to fight childhood obesity, Mrs. Obama often explains her vision of government as parent — the Big Mother who will teach children the important things their derelict real … Read more
A trigger provision, buried in U.S. laws since 1990, quietly took effect at the end of October. The U.S. taxpayers’ annual donation of 22 percent to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization’s budget was summarily terminated when UNESCO voted 107 to 14 (with 52 abstentions) to approve full membership for Palestine. The cutoff … Read more
Editor’s Note: Steve Chapman is on vacation. The following column was originally published in September 2007. In most countries, the future is impossible to predict, but the past doesn’t change. In Russia, it’s just the opposite. President Vladimir Putin, when he is not busy restoring autocracy to a country that has known little else, … Read more
The mainstream news media is filled with awe that Newt Gingrich showed some “compassion” for illegal aliens in the recent GOP presidential debate. A look at his record while in Congress shows this is nothing new. In fact, Gingrich’s leadership in Congress is one of the reasons we have so many illegal aliens today … Read more
As in the month of June 1943 the Nazi racial policies would become more diabolic, climaxing with the installation of a third crematory in Birkenau by the end of the month, there was some irony in the contagion of race riots among some engaged in the war effort against the Axis: the so-called “Zoot Suit … Read more
Newt Gingrich is facing criticism from other Republican candidates for his proposals to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants in America, revealing the deep-seated frustration of conservatives at the failure of the federal government to control America’s borders. On a gut level, the issue of amnesty for illegals reflects the unease of Americans … Read more
Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus Thomas Cahill, Doubleday, 1999, 333 pages, $24.95 The Book of Revelation does not prophesy a plague of shoddy Gospel scholarship, but surely one has descended on us. Some works have been simply outrageous (Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son) and some … Read more
We are in the midst of the 11th presidential nominating cycle since party commissions and state laws made primaries the predominant method of choosing national convention delegates in 1972. Over the years, politicians and journalists develop rules of thumb to describe how these things work. In this cycle, some of those rules seem to … Read more
The culture of Hollywood has just been beautifully defined by two awards-show decisions. The first one was Brett Ratner being dumped as the director of ABCs Oscars telecast after he said, “rehearsals are for fags.” It wasn’t long before Ratner turned himself in for “negotiations” with the gay, anti-defamation cops about doing PC penance. … Read more
Watching the Euro melt has confirmed what only a handful of people had predicted — and had done so against the expectations of the entire European and American establishment, for whom the creation of this single currency was the achievement of a lifetime of planning. The whole European currency scheme was both brilliant and crazy. … Read more
Catholicism is in crisis all over Old Europe. Nowhere is that crisis more pronounced than in Ireland, where clerical corruption and disastrous episcopal leadership have collided with rank political expediency and a rabidly anticlerical media to produce a perfect storm of ecclesiastical meltdown. The country whose constitution begins “In the name of the Most … Read more
Everyone is wondering about the next disaster to befall Europe. Italy is one focus; Spain is also a possibility. But these crises are already under way. Instead, the next crisis will be political, not in the sense of what conventional politician is going to become prime minister, but in the deeper sense of whether Europe’s … Read more