Is it just me, or have there been more blown officiating calls this year than any other year? I mean, not just minor infractions, but big-gun, game changing, career impacting judgments of idiocy. Just off the top of my head: Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers had his perfect game go up in flames when umpire Jim … Read more
You’re blind, ump
Is it just me, or have there been more blown officiating calls this year than any other year? I mean, not just minor infractions, but big-gun, game changing, career impacting judgments of idiocy. Just off the top of my head: Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers had his perfect game go up in flames when umpire Jim … Read more
Are Apologies A Sign of Weakness?
This summer my son Chippy and I have been watching the John Ford/John Wayne westerns. So far we have screened “Stagecoach,” “Fort Apache,” and “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.” “Stagecoach” is easily the best of the three, possessing a nearly perfect screenplay and memorable characters, major and minor. “Fort Apache” is marred, I think, by … Read more
Flipping Freeways
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
Hear the lamentation of the women!
A selection from Conan the Barbarian: The Musical. Need I say more?
Creator Red in Tooth and Claw?
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
Romanian monastery treasures
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
Progressive arguments against porn
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
How do they teach civics?
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
Is parental happiness overrated?
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
Tweeting about an Execution
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
Dreams For Sale
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
A Very Helpful Guide to iPad Potencies
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
Shakespeare in the Bush
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
Marriage and monogamy unnatural?
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
The Church in Belgium
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
Breathtakingly Stupid Argument From Elena Kagan
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