Each week of Advent I’m highlighting some gift ideas that IC readers might be interested in giving or getting. Here’s this week’s list: Last week I mentioned the Carmelite Monks of Wyoming and their wonderful coffee, but failed to highlight their popular Jingle Bell Java. The Anchoress admits she not only buys it for Christmas … Read more
Good morning! Just a quick round-up today; feel free to add your own links in the comments: A Wisconsin shrine has been approved as the first Marian apparition worthy of belief in the United States. Carl Olson parses the reports about a recent study claiming that “religion makes you happy because of its social rather … Read more
The folks over at the Population Research Institute have done it again. Below is the fourth installment in their “Pop 101” series, this time answering the claim that too many people lead to poverty. It’s a nice companion video to the one Joseph posted on Monday (be sure to check it out here if you … Read more
In a comment to my Tuesday morning post about Michelle Rhee and school reform, Deacon Ed made the point: [T]he only real solution to D.C.’s education woes (the same as it is everywhere else) is a voucher system where parents — who have the best interest of their children at heart — get to choose … Read more
What can I say? I can’t stop watching this video. Why? It contains everything I miss in the daily grind of life here in Washington, DC. On November 13th in some nameless food court at some nameless mall somewhere in America, people started to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus” of G. F. Handel.
Fr. Philip Bloom of Washington state has a special mission to the people of Peru: He’s teaching them Natural Family Planning. The Mary Bloom Center, in the highlands city of Puno, near Peru’s Lake Titicaca, is named after Fr. Bloom’s mother. He began the center’s work during his years as a Maryknoll priest associate in … Read more
Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception! Over at First Things, David Mills has an excellent column on just what this doctrine means, why we believe it, and why it so confuses our Protestant brothers and sisters: [Mary] is, [Pope Pius IX] wrote, “far above all the angels and all the saints so wondrously did God … Read more
New York magazine has a surprisingly good article on the little-discussed consequences of the Pill that will have every Catholic woman wanting to yell “I TOLD YOU SO” at her computer. (Or was that just me?) After opening with a description of the Pill’s 50th anniversary gala earlier this year (and really, the details of … Read more
There are two more days left of Hanukkah and in honor of that, here’s a modern twist on the story of the Maccabees. Happy Hanukkah to all of our Jewish readers! [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSJCSR4MuhU&feature=player_embedded#! 635×355] (Ht: Coffeemom)
If you’ve seen the recent hit documentary Waiting for Superman, or have been following the debates over school reform, you’ve heard of Michelle Rhee. The former firecracker chancellor of the D.C. school system is an absolute superstar in the field. In just three years, she — along with D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty — had begun … Read more
OpenCulture is fast becoming one of my favorite Internet hangouts. And this sort of post is a perfect example of why: In four minutes, Rosling visually traces the health of 200 countries over 200 years, using 120,000 data points, and we end up with a little reason for optimism. [video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo&feature=player_embedded 635×355]
In a recent column for Mercatornet, InsideCatholic contributor Bob Reilly argues that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would be a subversion of the very military virtues they claim to value: In his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, poor Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, never seemed to … Read more
Belgium is certainly on the cutting edge of things! Not only are their doctors boldly euthanizing patients sans request, their lawyers have come up with a new basis upon which to sue: wrongful life. Similar to the already widely-accepted cause of action “wrongful death”, this new twist allows parents to sue a doctor on behalf … Read more
If this article doesn’t make you want to pull your kids out of school and go find an igloo in the Arctic tundra, I don’t know what will. Writer Jan Hoffman highlights a ninth grade boy whose schoolmates secretly created a Facebook identity for him, making him into a bully and causing classmates and friends … Read more
Artist Lloyd Osterdorf has so far taken us through the lives of nine Catholics of the 20th century who lived out the social doctrine of the Catholic Church in their daily lives. Today, we have the final entry in the series “Catholics in Action,” serialized in 1952-53. As always, these pages come from Catholic University’s … Read more
CBS news reports that Hillary Clinton’s role as Secretary of State will be her “last public position”: At a town hall meeting appearance in Manama, Bahrain on Friday, Clinton denied intentions to run for either president or vice president on the ticket with President Obama, who defeated her in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Some experts … Read more
I usually ignore commercials. In fact, I do more than that. We have a standing rule in our house that there must be “alternative programming” readily available during all viewing. Watching sports (with commercials advertising the sorts of things in which modern, secular, sports-loving young males are usually interested) does not mesh well with having a … Read more
Time for a few morning links: NASA announced yesterday that they have discovered “alien life” in California: a bacteria that is partially composed of (and feeds off of) arsenic, in place of phosphorous — something previously thought impossible — raising the possibility of a “shadow biosphere” here on earth. That sound you just heard is … Read more
Given my usual tendency to (over)indulge in a bit of “tin-foil-hattism,” it’s hard for me to read this sort of thing without freaking out: A special team will monitor 9-1-1 calls about people in danger of dying and they will travel directly to a person’s home without being summoned. … The team — composed of two … Read more
I don’t know much about Moldova, except that it’s sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine and is the poorest country in Europe. Massive economic migration is creating an entire generation of parentless children. Thousands of working-age adults have fled the country to find work, leaving their children with older relatives or in shelters. In some villages … Read more