Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
I've spent the past several weeks going on about social and political things, but this week I'd like to discuss a pet peeve of mine in the glorious church Church of God I'm a part of: the issue of honorary doctorates, and the calling of their recipients "Doctor."Â Fortunately our Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. …
Continue reading "About Those Honorary Doctorates in the Church of God…"
We always talk about the old Soviet Union as an inspiration against socialism, but for Ronald Reagan that journey may have started in a more familiar setting: Maybe the single biggest surprise is the couple of pages devoted to the four months spent by American actor, Ronald Reagan at Elstree Studios making a war movie …
Continue reading "Did Ronald Reagan’s Journey to the Right Begin in England?"
I posted this piece before WordPress times and thought it could use reposting now, with a few modifications. On 4 July 1911, the citizens of Houma, Louisiana, in Terrebonne Parish, gathered together to celebrate the 135th birthday of the United States. The concept of a Fourth of July celebration in South Louisiana is interesting in …
It's not often that Vox gives a voice (which is what they're supposed to do) to a Baptist, but one John Thornton, Jr., a youth pastor in North Carolina, has written an intriguing article about why millennials are so anxious and burnt out these days. As a college professor who teaches in a state which …
Continue reading "Running Scared: My Response to a Baptist Pastor on the Millennials"
It looks like the Democratic nomination race for 2020 (not in 2020, it's already started) will be a crowded one. Like the Republican race in 2016, a large field makes for an unpredictable result. Last week we looked at Elizabeth Warren, that resentful Scots-Irish (and just about the last one in her party.) This week …
Continue reading "Beto O’Rourke, the Party Animals Favourite"
Visits from grandparents are the joy of many families. For us, it was usually the other way around. After we we bounced from Chicago to Chattanooga to Palm Beach, we lived on the other side of the Palm Beach Country Club from my father's mother. With my mother's parents, we usually went to Arkansas to …
Continue reading "Elizabeth Warren and the Resentful Scots-Irish"
I recently got an email from one of my visitors which went as follows: came across the hashtag #straightouttairondale in some of your posts and wonder what it refers to ... My response: It refers to trad (traditional) Catholics, who frequently (unless they're TLM (Traditional Latin Mass) diehards) take their inspiration from EWTN, whose headquarters …
It's another New Year, an opportunity (hopefully) to do better than before. I'm taking the opportunity for new beginnings to do something I've thought about for a long time: leave Facebook. After nearly a decade on the medium (with the enormous amount of time to show for it) I've had enough. I'll be leaving shortly. …
Tom Jacobs at the Pacific Standard finds himself surprised at the way voters conflated prosperity and morality, which eased their way to vote for Donald Trump: The findings suggest the Trump campaign's emphasis on the candidate's success in business—which has subsequently been shown to be based largely on smoke and mirrors—increased the perception that he …
Continue reading "The Shocking (to Some) Truth About Prosperity and Morality"
One of the surprises I've gotten is that, even in conservative American churches, there are those in positions of influence who are pacifists. How can this be, especially since their core ethnic group is the bellicose Scots-Irish? But life is an education. Although it's tempting to regard Eric Patterson's Just American Wars: Ethical Dilemmas in …
Positive Infinity 