The Ark and The Dove

Casualties of War

Am I the only person unable to walk normally after Albert's bachelor party?

Before random over-hearers get the wrong impression, I should mention that we spent the day playing paintball against trained veterans with superior weaponry and tactics.

Not only am I now sporting four bull's-eye like welts across my body, but I've discovered that my "spawn-run-die" strategy is far more physically exhausting in real life than it is in video games. All of that running, dodging, and crouching has effectively disabled my ability to use stairs.

This would also be a good time for people to leave congratulatory comments to Albert (who has returned to his own blog, I see) on his upcoming nuptials.

The Fruits of the Radical Feminism

A good mother is attentive, sets boundaries and makes the world safe for her child. But my mother did none of those things.

Although I was on the Pill  -  something I had arranged at 13, visiting the doctor with my best friend  -  I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don't remember my mother being shocked or upset. She tried to be supportive, accompanying me with her boyfriend.

Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I'd never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.

From the Daily Mail.

I think that people often make a mistake when they judge children based on what their parents are like.  The reverse is far more informative.

This made me laugh

In his Natural History of Religion, the 18th century philosopher David Hume famously derides the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, asserting that no tenet in paganism invites as much ridicule. “For it is so absurd,” he writes, “that it eludes the force of all argument.” In the course of his polemic, he relates the story of the young Turk Mustapha, who had been taken prisoner and persuaded to convert to the Christian faith. The day after his baptism and communion the catechist continued his instruction and asked the young man, “How many Gods are there?” The new Christian replied, “None at all.” “How! None at all!” cried the priest. “You have told me all along that there is but one God,” explained Mustapha: “And yesterday I eat him.”

From Pontifications.

Thumb on the Pulse

Shortly after my post arguing how the best way to make parishioners come to Mass on time is to construct a liturgy that seems important enough not to miss, the former contributor sent me a link to this piece by Jeffrey Tucker on the banality of "contemporary" Church music and how it makes the Mass seem insignificant.

I should put up a run-on sentence warning sign before that last sentence.

Remember Your Rocket Pack...

Drudge linked to this ABCNews article about dire predictions of the future by "top scientists."
You know you are dealing with serious journalism when the article ends with a link to an amateur video contest encouraging readers to submit their depictions of what the world will be like once these predictions become reality in the future.

It's at times like these that we need to stop and ask where our jetpacks are. You know, the ones our grandfathers were promised by the "top scientists" of the past.

And we should ask this question for two reasons:
First, because it suggests that predictions of the future have an uncanny habit of being wrong.
Second, because it reminds us of a time when people looked forward to the future.

The only "science" that news media seems particularly interested in today is the doom and gloom science...the scare propaganda meant to convince us to take action (or, as in the South Park episode that Matt left in the comments below, to convince us to save the planet from Republicans).

According to ABCNews,

In order to avoid this chilling future, we have to first imagine it. In an unprecedented Internet event, ABC is inviting people from around the world to bring the future to life.

I have a better idea. Instead of imagining a "chilling future" (which seems like a really bad choice of words when talking about global warming), we should be imagining a better future. Heck, let's imagine an ideal future where our technology is sustainable, affordable, and provides an even higher quality of life than what we have now.

Let's demand a future that is better than our present...rather than so scaring ourselves with terrifying visions of possible (but not inevitable) devastation that we sell our selves short. Isn't that ultimately what this exercise encourages? Science should be offering us better tomorrows than our todays, not telling us to accept the lesser of two future evils...neither of which is as good as our now.

Oh, Deer Me

Did you know there are deer on UMD's campus?

A deer at least.

I saw it yesterday while taking a walk to the Comcast Center, just to stretch the legs a bit. In all my years here, I think this is the first time I've seen one.

This should also come as a warning for all those bikini-clad sunbathing coeds to start checking themselves for ticks...because I'm sure all of the bikini girls are reading this blog.

Speaking of wishful thinking...I called SMC to complain that my air conditioner has not been making my apartment any cooler than it is outside. The response: "Well, sir, your air conditioner is probably fine. It's probably only hot in your apartment because it's hot outside."

I guess coming from the humanities means that I just don't really understand air conditioning technology well enough. Apparently, there is a difference between conditioning the air and actually making it colder.

Late Slips

Hugh McNichol at Pewsitter.com recently went on the assault with people who show up late for Mass.
His argument is, essentially, that tardiness is a scandal because it suggests that you value something very little if you show up late for it.

I'm a bit ambivalent about his approach. I hate it when I end up scrambling in late for Mass. This happens...er...happened frequently for me at the noon Mass on campus (I always seem...that is...seemed to just underestimate how long it takes to walk across the endless quads).
And, Father forgive me, I'm not always the first person at Church on Sunday (unless, of course, I'm supposed to be setting up or something). As with the recursive quads, Isabel and I sometimes underestimate how long it will take to drive to one another's respective abodes early on a Sunday morning.

Mass is extremely important to me, and I suppose that makes it all the more scandalous when I stumble in red-faced and sweaty in the middle of a procession. It's all part of my absent-minded professor character flaws (not to say that I'm not working on it).
Granted, I must have valued something more than getting to Mass on time...maybe I valued an extra fifteen minutes of sleep...maybe I valued an extra fifteen minutes of virtual warfare on the Internet the night before which led to valuing that extra fifteen minutes of sleep. I have no one to blame but myself for that problem, and it's not an excuse. But I wonder if the same is necessarily true for everyone else.
Might it be that some of my fellow latecomers undervalue the Mass because the Mass to them seems undervalued by everyone already there?
McNichol makes the unlikely comparison to a Madonna concert, suggesting that people wouldn't arrive late to an event like that. In certain regards, however, concert organizers make sure that you know Madonna is worth coming early to see. That is, a Madonna concert is going to transport willing audience members into a realm outside of their daily experiences...whereas contemporary liturgy often does quite the opposite. Obviously, I'm not suggesting we start singing Madonna covers at Mass, or that we have lectors simulate kinky bondage acts in the sanctuary. Mass should not be a rock concert. While the Mass certainly offers people something truly transcendent, most "contemporary" Masses don't really leave that impression. The informality of liturgies and "worship spaces" (as opposed to the formality that used to be associated with going to Church) have trained people to be more casual.
People don't value Mass because a) they haven't been taught to appreciate what the Mass is on an intellectual level, and b) liturgists often strip the Mass of its rich signifiers that once pointed to something transcendent.

Rather than scolding naughty children for being rudely late, we should work on building a liturgy that people don't want to miss.

Who Defines Islam?

Apparently, there's a stir over local high school districts adopting a new textbook that only puts Islam in its best light:

Sewall complains the word jihad has gone through an "amazing cultural reorchestration" in textbooks, losing any connotation of violence. He cites Houghton Mifflin's popular middle school text, "Across the Centuries," which has been approved for use in Montgomery County Schools. It defines "jihad" as a struggle "to do one's best to resist temptation and overcome evil."

"But that is, literally, the translation of jihad," said Reza Aslan, a religion scholar and acclaimed author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam." Aslan explained that the definition does not preclude a militant interpretation.

Has anyone out there used this book? I'd be curious how it defines "crusade."

Looks like that Slope was Slippery after all...

Via Pewsitter...

Because suicide is cheaper than healthcare...

Lung cancer patient, Barbara Wagner, was recently notified that her oncologist-prescribed medication that would slow the growth of cancer would not be covered by the Oregon Health Plan; the plan, however, she was informed, would cover doctor-assisted suicide should she wish to kill herself.

Because Heaven Doesn't Have Wi-fi

via FoxNews...

Protestant swept away in the Rapture can now rest assured that they still have e-mail access...one last time. How, you might ask? Why, through a new Website that promises to send an automated e-mail message to less holy loved one's after you've been whisked off by the angels.
What I find most humorous is how the automated system works:

Final e-mails from vanished subscribers will be triggered when three of the site's five Christian staffers fail to log in for six days in a row.

The staff has enough faith that a majority of it has tickets for the Rapture-train (we should call it the Velocirapture), but not enough faith that all five of them will make it.

Makes you wonder what the last two staff members did to make the rest of the team is skeptical about their souls...