March 1, 2012
AT The Orthosphere, Kristor explores the ill humor and petulance of atheists he has known. Given that they seem settled in their views and have thought about them a great deal, why do they seem angry? He gives a small example:
The tiniest thing will provoke their outrage. The current hatred of Tim Tebow is a good example. But it can get incredibly picayune. A member of my congregation went directly from Mass to a tennis match a few weeks ago. Read More »
March 1, 2012
RICK SANTORUM, whose political shortcomings are serious, deserves immense credit for his statements on contraception in recent months. Santorum is making points that no mainstream politician has dared to make, principally that artificial contraception has led to a catastrophic increase in illegitimacy and single parenthood. Furthermore, he has said, artificial contraception is harmful to women’s health. This is true. According to the Abortion/Breast Cancer Center, approximately half of the increased cases of breast cancer in recent decades is attributable to oral contraception, abortion and delayed childbearing.
In a column yesterday at the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto praises Santorum and seems to agree with his points. But then he makes this stunningly clueless statement:
Santorum has come under particular attack for saying that contraception is “harmful to women.” Read More »
March 1, 2012
LAMENTING the resignation of GOP Senator Olympia Snow, other liberals in the Republican party expressed disappointment yesterday that voters care about issues other than the economy. Gee, they ask, why is the basic breakdown of society such a big deal to these people? The New York Times reports:
Georgia Chomas, a cousin of the senator who described herself as more like a sister, said social conservatives and Tea Party activists in Maine were hounding her at home, while party leaders in Washington had her hemmed in and steered the legislative agenda away from the matters she cared about. Read More »
February 29, 2012
MRS. Z. writes:
Perhaps you saw this article from The Blaze. According to two ethicists from Australian universities, in a recent article in the Journal of Medical Ethics, newborns should not be considered persons, and therefore doctors and parents should be allowed to determine if “after-birth abortion” is the best possible option for the family and society as a whole. According to the article, Read More »
February 29, 2012
BRUCE writes:
I recently (inadvertently) overheard a long conversation between a group of upper middle class, full- time mothers who had met in a cafe.
Naturally, children were a major topic – since this was apprently the main factor bringing them together.
Aside from this, the first 20 minutes was mainly occupied with discussions of diets and exercise regimes. The strongest approval was given to extreme long distance running exploits and thinness, the strongest disapproval to examples of obesity. Read More »
February 29, 2012
JEANETTE V. writes:
As you can see from a photo of Barbara Johnson, anyone can tell she is a practicing lesbian.
This woman is using her mother’s death as a launching pad for a political statement. I find her actions especially vile.
February 28, 2012
ALAN writes:
I envy you the good fortune of glancing out your window at precisely the moment a green fireball appeared in the night sky.
Many brilliant, green fireballs were seen in New Mexico in 1948-’49. They prompted speculation about whether they could have been Russian devices or probes launched from interplanetary spaceships. Those green fireballs form an early chapter in the history of the Flying Saucer Myth, which I studied years ago when I was an amateur astronomer.
A sketch of a green fireball was featured in a 2-page spread in LIFE magazine in April 1952 ( it can be seen here).
The night sky is one of the most majestic yet unappreciated sights in life. Astronomer Terence Dickinson wrote in 1998 that children today “are the first generation in the history of civilization to live in a world where the stars are almost certain to be the last thing noticed at night instead of the first…” (in his Night Watch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe [1998]).
An entire way of life has disappeared in recent decades, a way of life in which an essential part of growing up was for children to sit among their parents and family on summer evenings in their backyard or on their porch, listening to the grown-ups talking about their lives and telling their stories – not competing with radio, TV, or any other such distractions – and glancing up occasionally to notice the beauty of the night sky as their elders pointed out the identity of this or that star, planet, or constellation. Read More »
February 28, 2012
A Maryland priest who denied Communion to a lesbian at her mother’s funeral last weekend has not received the full support of the Diocese of Washington, according to WUSA9. com. Diocesan officials said the priests should not have withheld Communion without talking to the woman privately. But the Rev. Marcel Guarnizo did not learn the woman was lesbian until a few minutes before the funeral. He had no choice but to openly refuse her once she placed him in this bind.
The lesbian, Barbara Johnson, says she is still angry because her mother’s funeral was ruined. I’m sure much more than her mother’s funeral was ruined by her daughter’s preference for voluntary sterility and girl love. Perhaps this priest expressed what her mother never could.
February 28, 2012
JESSE POWELL writes:
The New York Times recently ran a series of two articles by Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernese on out-of-wedlock births and single parenting among middle class whites in Lorain, Ohio. “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage” and “Young Mothers Describe Marriage’s Fading Allure” convey a grim picture of family breakdown. More than 60 percent of all births to mothers under 30 in Lorain County are to unwed mothers.
The city of Lorain is characterized as “a ragged industrial town on Lake Erie” and is further described as having “lost most of two steel mills, a shipyard and a Ford factory, diminishing the supply of jobs that let blue-collar workers raise middle-class families.”
A few words about the demographics. The county of Lorain excluding Lorain city is 87% white but Lorain city, the main focus of the interviews in the articles, is 55% white. The children of Lorain city are 37% white, 36% Hispanic, 23% black, and 13% racially mixed (a child may be Hispanic and racially mixed at the same time). Among whites in the city of Lorain, the Married Parents Ratio is 60%; for the county of Lorain (excluding Lorain city) it is 78%. In Elyria, also in Lorain County, the white Married Parents Ratio is 65% and 62% of the children are white. Data comes from the 2010 Census.
February 27, 2012
THE REV. JAMES JACKSON writes:
One often hears of the importance of respecting national customs. This respect is demanded by immigrants to Western countries, over anything from foot washing facilities to honor killings. General Sir Charles Napier, the British Army’s Commander-in-Chief in India in the mid-19th century had quite a response to this sort of thinking. The response was to a contingent of Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of sati by British authorities. Sati was the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband. Read More »
February 27, 2012
ACADEMICS setting up interdisciplinary programs in pizza studies would be well advised to add child psychology to the mix. A story in The Daily Mail confirms my long-held suspicion that juvenile delinquency is related to pizza consumption. A pizzeria in Georgia has posted a notice on its menu telling parents to take misbehaving children outside. The notice was prompted by numerous instances of unruliness by juvenile patrons. One child threw a toy at a customer’s head.
The restaurant is on to something. These children were probably in the advanced stages of pizza dementia, which is caused by consuming pizza more than five times a week. The extremely dangerous condition may also be caused by eating pizza in more than three forms, such as cheesey-gooey pizza toppers or double-crusted pizza frisbees, over the course of several days. The bloodstream can handle only so many fake-mozzarella enzymes before it sends disturbing messages to the developing brain.
Nothing short of drastic measures will correct the resulting behavioral disorder. These parents should not just take their uncontrollable offspring outside, they should put them in pizza detox immediately.
February 27, 2012
I WAS lying on our living room sofa last night at about 11 p.m., reclining full-length on the couch and facing the front windows, which look out through tulip poplar trees and over a hill. I have been recovering from a shoulder injury and have been unable to sleep in bed because it is too painful. I was planning to stay in that spot for the night. In the distance, I could see the twinkling lights of the local mall. The retail behemoth was also in a state of quasi-slumber. The mall never really sleeps but it does rest, with its doors locked, its retail clerks dispersed along the highways and byways, its vast continent-sized parking lots empty of cars.
It was very pleasant lying there, gazing out through the trees. I said to my husband before he went to bed how much I liked falling asleep before the windows. When he left, I continued to look at the sky. Read More »
February 27, 2012
THE MURDER TRIAL of Stephanie Lazarus, the former Los Angeles police department detective who is accused of slaying her ex-boyfriend’s wife 26 years ago, continues this week. Lazarus was charged with the murder of Sherri Rasmussen in 2009. The victim’s family had unsuccessfully pleaded with detectives years ago to consider a former girlfriend of their son-in-law as a suspect. Read More »
February 25, 2012
BARTHOLOMEW writes:
It’s funny that you’re posting about pets as replacements for people. Before I saw your posts on the subject, I was thinking of writing to you about something that happened to me today that well exemplifies your point.
I was walking down the street in a wealthy, urban neighborhood and I saw an exceptionally striking dog on a walk with its owner. I complimented the owner on the dog’s beauty, and he thanked me, genuinely, I think.
As I walked away, I thought that I, a younger man walking alone, would not have complimented, say, a parent on an exceptionally cute child passing by. Read More »
February 25, 2012
AS DISCUSSED in the previous entry, energies once directed to the human race are now lavished on cats and dogs. It’s not that cats and dogs don’t deserve human kindness and attention. They just don’t deserve so much of it. Call it the sublimation of maternal instincts. Call it cultural suicide. Call it what you will, but it’s a real observable phenomenon, the extreme manifestation of which is the animal rights movement.
In this piece, an Australian writer, Ruby Hamad, argues that feminism and animal rights are virtually the same movement. Women can identify with animals, she says, because both have suffered historic oppression at the hands of men. Read More »
February 24, 2012
DARREN R. writes:
Simple question: At what point can I honestly say modern liberal society worships women?
Laura writes:
Do you think a society that requires women to negate their femaleness worships women?
Excuse my language, but modern feminism is penis envy writ large.
February 24, 2012
THE DISCUSSION on the excessive love of dogs (and cats) continues in the previous entry. By the way, the painting above, A Boy with Dogs and Kittens, by the artist Claude Joseph Bail, who died in 1921, does not portray anything remotely decadent. It conveys the pure joy to be found in relation to animals.
February 23, 2012
CATHERINE H. writes:
I just wanted to bring up the two Catholic presidential candidates’ lack of ashes during last night’s debate. While Santorum attended Mass that morning and was photographed with a smear of ashes later in the day, I was nevertheless disappointed to see that he did not retain them for that night’s television appearance. Read More »