Culture in all its manifestations, high and low
I like Penn and Teller. I looked at an interview with Teller talking about his film “Tim’s Vermeer”. I had often wondered what his voice sounded like so I listened. His film so intrigued me I looked for a clip. Here is a clip from the film.
... [Read More]
OK, here’s the drill…
You may or may not know what it is, those that do, sit back for a while and see others fumble at it. I am open to “private” guesses via messages….... [Read More]
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A few weeks ago, in my “New religiongeschichtliche Schule” post, Hypatia made an observation that prompted this post. She observed that many people think that Jesus appeared at the time he did because God had devised a world in which the Gospel could spread rapidly and far and wide:
Christianity could not have arisen except out of the Jewish scriptures. Nor, I learned in my Bible class, could it have spread across the globe if it hadn’t arisen within the far-flung empire of Rome. That period was “ the fullness of time”.
I absolutely agree with this thinking, and want to make a few observations on point.
Continue reading “The Fullness of Time and Diaspora”
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As the author of that most notorious document, “The Use of the Apostrophe in the English Language”, I’m always on the lookout for how that most humble of punctuation marks humbles the high, mighty, and pompous. One of these days I’m going to make a “meme” (yes, I know that this is a corruption of the original meaning of the word) which shows the apostrophe key on a keyboard with the legend “The apostrophe key: its there to show readers if your an idiot.” Indeed, nothing so distinguishes slapdash scribbling from words worth reading than confusion between “its” and “it’s”. That’s because the rule distinguishing them is so easy to remember: “If you mean ‘it is’, or ‘it has’, write ‘it’s’. Otherwise, write ‘its’.” In particular, the use of “it’s” when the possessive “its” is intended, which I call an “idiot ‘it’s’ ”, is the signature of the sloppy writing of a muddled mind.
Imagine my surprise when reading the official transcription of the U.S. Constitution published by the U.S. National Archives to find, in Article I, Section 10, paragraph 2, the following text:... [Read More]
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How long has it been since you saw any news or discussion about the global persecution of Christians? (I mean, besides my posts.) The churches are under attack all over the world, with dozens or sometimes hundreds killed monthly. This carnage goes unnoticed by American mass media. In fact, American mass media seem determined to keep this information hidden. American Christians are not acting to help Christians around the world because they do not know the extent of the plight.
Other religious minorities experience persecution. This also gets neglected by the purveyors of “news.” But the one clear thing about religious persecution is, it mostly affects Christians, and it is overwhelmingly attributable to Muslims and Communists.
In recognition of the extents of religious persecution, the United Nations declared August 22, 2019 to be an “International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.”
Continue reading “Celebrate Religious Persecution Day”
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To tell the truth, I never saw the early episodes of this somewhat famous TV series. I was perusing YouTube and I stumbled upon this; The Clampetts Strike Oil TV was much simpler back then. Somewhat funny, but enjoyable never the less.
I invite you to take it in, this so called first episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. Enjoy the trip down memory lane to September 26 1962.
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I added baby to the title just to get the alliteration.
I was hassled by a friend to make bone broth. Up to a few months ago I never thought about bone broth or ever thought I would want it if I did. I thought broth was something in a can made by Swanson’s. It turns out it is something you can make at home and I did it.... [Read More]
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Just win, baby. 😎
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I write a weekly book review for the Daily News of Galveston County. (It is not the biggest daily newspaper in Texas, but it is the oldest.) After my review appears on Sunday, I post the previous week’s review here on Sunday.... [Read More]
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In a number of comments on various posts here over the last year or so, and asides in main posts, I have discussed my conclusion that there is an organised mechanism, akin to a public relations firm, which is generating the “narrative” that seems to occupy the minds of the legacy media and politicians associated with them at any given moment. I have no concrete evidence to back up this belief, but the existence of JournoList between 2007 and 2010 (which was shut down after its public exposure) indicates that prominent media figures are interested in and willing to co-ordinate their efforts in favour of the causes they advocate.
My conviction that the narrative of the moment is actively manufactured, disseminated among top-level figures in the media and “progressive” politics, and then passed down through the ranks by a mechanism akin to an old-time “phone tree” (in which most of the ultimate recipients are unaware of the origin of the themes and specific phrases they parrot), is that the way each new obsession simultaneously appears within hours to days on the lips and in the printed works of hundreds of supposedly independent players simply doesn’t fit the model of the organic diffusion of information. Further, when precisely the same phrases are used by widely-separated speakers, and a neatly packaged interpretation of an unexpected event is presented a day or two after it happens, that doesn’t look like a bottom-up process. And finally, when you observe this phenomenon again and again, with precisely the same pattern, that reinforces the suspicion that something is going on to make it happen. As Ian Fleming had his supervillain Auric Goldfinger say, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”... [Read More]
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It’s a good interview. https://ricochet.com/guests/dc-mcallister/
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OK, here’s the drill…
You may or may not know what it is, those that do, sit back for a while and see others fumble at it. I am open to “private” guesses via messages.... [Read More]
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Stalin said, “The writer is the engineer of the human soul.” One of the characters in the film The Lives of Others slightly misquotes Stalin to include all artists as engineers of the human soul. It seems that Stalin was a few decades ahead of Andrew Breitbart’s politics is downstream from culture. Totalitarians know their stuff.
This is not a movie review but I do recommend this film. It’s about the Stasi in East Germany, set a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s in German with subtitles, streaming on Netflix. I enjoyed this joke from the movie:... [Read More]
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In these times of frenzy, whimsey and complete lack of serious thought by our betters, a serious person who takes responsibility and soldiers on despite regret for being so stupid in such an age, must decompress now and then.
The Red Headed Irish Wisecracker and I paid a visit to the northern grandchildren last weekend, and decided to do a minimum vacation on the drive home. We drove the circuit at Mount Rainer National Park , stayed at a friendly motel off the interstate and then paid a long overdue visit to Mount Saint Helens.... [Read More]
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What do you think of Chris Cuomo’s ranting video?
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-cnn-chris-cuomo-fredo
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