Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
The recent call by Bishop John Lipscomb, Episcopal Bishop of Southwest Florida (a neighbour for the diocese I grew up in,) for a "40 day fast" from blogs will fall on deaf ears here at Positive Infinity. We don't claim to be high on the list of Anglican/Episcopal blogs. We do carry Virtue Online's news …
Continue reading "No, Bishop Lipscomb, We Are Not Going to Shut Up"
Last year, I documented some of my encounters with a Sudanese friend of mine who was a Sunni Muslim imam. We went back and forth on a wide variety of subjects in our conversation. One day, we reserved a graduate study room in the university library and covered the waterfront on a wide variety of …
Continue reading "9/11: Learning Little, Forgetting Nothing"
Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's decision to get out of politics reminds us of the closing poem from the Chinese author Wu Ching-Tzu's novel The Scholars: For love of the Chinhuai River, in the old days I left home; I wandered up and down behind Plum Root Forge, And strolled about in Apricot Blossom Village; …
Continue reading "Ayatollah al-Sistani: Getting out of Muslim Politics is Easier Said Than Done"
We find al-Qaeda's attempt to reach an American audience by convert Adam Gadahn interesting in one important respect: his appeal for Americans to convert. He tells us, "It is time for the unbelievers to discard these incoherent and illogical beliefs...Isn't it the time for the Christians, Jews, Buddhists and atheists to cast off the cloak …
During my first trip to China in March 1981, I had no idea that one of the great figures of twentieth century Chinese literature was passing away: Mao Dun, the pen name for Shen Yanbing, novelist and author of Midnight, the social realist novel of Shanghai in the 1930's. Long a place of interest, going …
Last year, when Hurricane Katrina did her destruction on the Gulf, we spent a good deal time on the subject, as we had spent a good deal of time in South Louisiana in years past. Some of our postings were as follows: When Your Metairie is Wiped Out Prayer and the French Quarter Reflections on …
The end of August represents this site's ninth anniversary. It was in 1997--right about the time Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed careened into eternity in Paris--that we started this page's predecessor. Many things have changed since that time, not the least of which is the advent of blogging. In a sense, this page has been …
Continue reading "A Ninth Anniversary, and a New Face for Our Blog"
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