Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
But only President Obama's left-wing critics: During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough. “I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” …
Continue reading "Robert Gibbs Evidently Isn't Worried About the Right Wingers Taking Drugs"
There's been a great deal of press about the campaign by certain Republican leaders to either amend or redefine the Fourteenth Amendment to exclude the children of illegal immigrants from American citizenship. I don't think it's a winning issue politically, but on a more profound level it's based on the a priori assumption that American …
Continue reading "Why the Republicans' "Fourteenth Amendment" Campaign is a Waste of Time"
When the Telegraph's Nile Gardiner says that "the British press...has a far less deferential approach towards the White House," he's not just kidding: What the great French historian Alexis de Tocqueville would make of today’s Obama administration were he alive today is anyone’s guess. But I would wager that the author of L’Ancien Régime and …
Continue reading "The Ultimate Insult: Comparing the Obama Administration to France's Ancien Régime"
The New York Times informs us that Bush-era legislation will help make it cheaper to find college textbooks: You might call it the college student’s first lesson in exploitation: paying $100 for a textbook, then getting a mere $12 when reselling to the campus bookstore at the end of the semester. College textbook prices rose …
Continue reading "Now They Tell Us: Finding Cheaper College Textbooks"
Like many other things in public education, the New York state Regents' exams for its high school students aren't working as planned: The big story in New York education circles is the further confirmation of what longtime critics have alleged: that the feel-good story of rising student test scores over the last several years is …
Continue reading "To Help the Regents' Exam, Maybe They Should Bring Back the Regents' Prayer"
Oh, yes, it is: In the 1500s, a pestering theologian instituted something called the Marriage Ordinance in Geneva, which made "state registration and church consecration" a dual requirement of matrimony. We have yet to get over this mistake. But isn't it about time we freed marriage from the state? Imagine if government had no interest …
This is the first in a sporadic series on the Catechetical Lectures of St. Cyril of Jerusalem. When we think of people becoming Christians, what term do we associate with this? Traditionally, Evangelicals would think in terms of “born again” or “saved.” It's hard to know sometimes what others call it, because in other cases …
Continue reading "Is It Proper to Refer to Christians as Enlightened?"
I found intriguing Elizabeth Kaeton's piece on priests-in-charge. It was interesting because it's one of those rare posts (in this case from a liberal) which transcends the left-right divide that defines just about everything these days. For my Evangelical readers, if you're interested in the whole business of "priest-in-charge" you'll need to read her post. …
Continue reading "Priest-in-Charge, Pastoral Woes and Authority in the Church"
While New Yorkers fight over the mosque near Ground Zero, some palm trees that graced Worth Avenue are replanted in a 9/11 memorial in Palm Beach Gardens: The Christmas palms that once lined the three-block commercial stretch of Worth Avenue had been offered to any takers willing to pay for their removal by the contractors …
Continue reading "Worth Avenue Palm Trees Go to 9/11 Memorial"
Martin Hutchinson is sanguine about the future of Western civilisation, but every silver lining has a cloud: Provided Western government spending is kept under control so private sectors have room to flourish, and interest rates are fairly quickly restored to levels that encourage saving, the Western advantages of capital, education, technology and favourable business climate …
Continue reading "The Tricky Part in Keeping Western Civilisation Afloat"
Positive Infinity 