Among the many awesome additions to the new and improved InsideCatholic, this is one that I’m very excited about: Introducing Cord Hamrick — aka “R.C.” — to our blogging family. This is usually the place where I’d introduce Cord, but longtime readers will know him already: R.C. has been writing insightful, thought-provoking, and encouraging commentary … Read more
Two weeks ago, Slate‘s Amanda Marcotte wrote about how glad she is that women today feel free to opt out of childbearing. They’re empowered by “choice,” and that’s a great thing, says Marcotte. The problem, as she sees it, is that Americans increasingly believe it’s bad for society — the numbers are up 10 per … Read more
The Spectator just had this shitpile: “We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.” Reid’s general comments reflected the same overall message to progressives that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered earlier today. It essentially boils down to: We’ve done a lot of stuff, but we … Read more
I’m old enough to remember three channels on our black-and-white TV, which was topped with rabbit ears. Those were the days when neighbors naughtily listened in to conversations on the “party line,” and the length of a long-distance phone call had to be carefully measured using the second hand on a wind-up clock. I’ve also … Read more
Welcome to the brand new InsideCatholic! Almost exactly three years ago, we launched the initial version of the site. While we’re proud of that effort, it was very much a first step. This is our second. As Deal mentioned in his morning column, we’ve designed this next iteration of IC to take full advantage of … Read more
Imagine one body with two heads. The twin giants of the Catholic literary revival of the early 20th century, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, were so much associated in the eyes of the reading public that they together became the butt of the caricaturist’s humor and the satirist’s wit. Most famously, George Bernard Shaw, in … Read more
It’s a pretty well-established fact that the new social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) have permanently changed the way we think about on-line privacy. But I’m not sure I had thought about it in terms as stark as those Jeffrey Rosen uses in his New York Times Magazine article, “The Web Means the End of Forgetting” (my emphasis … Read more
Over at The Hermeneutic of Continuity — best “inside Catholic joke” blog name ever, by the way — Father Tim Finigan links to a very unusual Twitter account: @summatheologiae. The account’s author, whose project is described as “tweeting one article a day for your amusement and edification,” has quite a job on his hands. So far, there are … Read more
When it comes to the promotion of ridiculous ‘threats to our children,’ no-one beats the mainstream media. Take this latest civilization ender, the pastime known as i-Dosing. Here’s how it works, as described by Wired: i-dosing involves donning headphones and listening to “music” — largely a droning noise — which [Web sites] peddling the sounds … Read more
I’ve always been a sucker for those online IQ tests that ask you a bunch of fun, mostly visual/spacial questions, and then proclaim you a genius. (I’ve never enjoyed real IQ tests, though; they’re much more grudging in their endorsements.) This “Face Memory Test” from the “Science and Nature” portion of the BBC’s website has … Read more
“You see, I am not a Christian,” said the young man at lunch, chilling the conversation in an instant. He was exceptionally good looking, and obviously intelligent, but also obviously sad. His father, a former Protestant minister who was essentially driven out of his church for his faithfulness to the Scriptural directives regarding human sexuality, … Read more
One of the biggest problems with Distributism–the idea that economies should not be based on corporations (pure capitalism) or on the State (pure socialism), but on individuals and families–is the question of how to achieve that goal. Frequent commenter R.C. pinned the tail on the donkey when he wrote: “Is there anything we can do … Read more
 Last week I made melancholy tribute to the shrinking cadre of men who heed the call to serve Christ’s Church as priests, and tried to think of ways we can offer them human support while they go about God’s business. Whenever I think about the question of calling, I’m reminded of my own brush … Read more
This is cool: According to the BBC, astronomers have discovered a star “so big and bright that it stretches the boundaries of what scientists believed was possible”: The star, known so far only as R136a1, has an observed mass 265 times greater than our sun, and modeling suggests it was once 320 times bigger… But … Read more
Yes, I’m turning 40 this year. And I realize that this past year – the last one in my 30’s – I have gone through a minor midlife crisis. Lacking the funds to purchase a sports car and being too in love with my wife and kids to start flirting with anything that would cause … Read more
Lots of talk recently about Shirley Sherrod, the USDA employee who was fired yesterday after a video clip was released that purported to demonstrate her “reverse racism” in a speech she gave to an NAACP meeting. Andrew Breitbart, who released the tape, essentially said that the NAACP “started it” with their accusations of racism against … Read more
Lots of talk recently about Shirley Sherrod, the USDA employee who was fired yesterday after a video clip was released that purported to demonstrate her “reverse racism” in a speech she gave to an NAACP meeting. Andrew Breitbart, who released the tape, essentially said that the NAACP “started it” with their accusations of racism against … Read more
On June 28, in the case McDonald v. Chicago, the United States Supreme Court held that cities and states cannot interfere with the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. The city of Chicago had tried to ban handguns, but Chicago resident Otis McDonald challenged the law, arguing that it made him less safe. … Read more
For someone always interested in the issues of religion and morality in comic books, today’s visit to the comic book news websites was a definite payday. First up is a self-contained graphic novel just released earlier this month, Ghostopolis, by Doug TenNapel. He’s the writer/artist who wrote some of my favorite Christian comics, including Earthboy Jacobus, … Read more
The LA Times’ Jacket Copy blog — tagline “Books, Authors and All Things Bookish” — recently alerted me to one of the most enjoyable “quickie time-waster websites” I’ve found in quite some time: I Write Like. Based on “a Bayesian classifier” — the programming backbone for a number of ordinary, run-of-the-mill spam filters — the website is disarmingly … Read more