Friday, January 31, 2014
Francis Criss's artwork
I like, I like. I must get myself some of this elevated artwork.
Labels: art
Why abortion is a public issue
And not one of private concern. For example:
Second, there are some acts that are, though interpersonal, matters of mutual consent. They can be considered private, and are thus not a matter for law. Injustice is always done against the unwilling, and so consent vitiates claims of injustice. But here again abortion fails the test of privacy, for abortion is always done without the consent of the human being who suffers most from it, the unborn child.Obvious stuff, but often ignored.
Monday, January 27, 2014
Mark Shea's prolife roundup
Including a reminder to be against the death penalty.
Meanwhile, the Church is calling for the abolition of the death penalty because it is consistent. All life is sacred, including guilty human life. If it weren’t, we’d all deserve death since we are all guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Labels: prolife
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Professor Unger's latest on democracy
He's angry and making some good points. And what a great class he taught.
Why using images of aborted fetuses is usually, but not always a bad idea
Simcha Fischer explains, quite well, why this is the case.
If you are, I’m begging you to reconsider. Fr. Pavone famously said, “America will not reject abortion until America sees abortion.” Most pro-lifers understand that Americans are tragically ignorant about what abortion really is — what it really does to real babies. Many of us remember seeing those bloody images for the first time, and can recall being shaken out of a vague, fuzzy support for the pro-life cause into the realization that this is a life-and-death struggle — real life, and real death.
But a public place is not the place to use these images — ever, I’m convinced. These images are like a terrible weapon which should be used with fear and trembling, and only as a last resort. Why?
Labels: prolife
IBM sells the server business
And so ends IBM's presence in x86 hardware. Interesting. A mistake, I think, but we shall see.
Labels: computers, technology
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
A history of London coffeehouses
I do wish the modern coffeehouse was more like the London one. Slave to the Grind comes closer than most, I think, as a place where ideas can be debated.
Labels: food
In house health care
And economic reasons why it's a good idea.
Labels: economics, health care
In the Super Bowl, I'm rooting for the Seahawks
Thursday, January 16, 2014
A Real Women's Agenda
As Helen Alvare writes:
It is no longer contestable that women embrace the pro-life label and positions as much or more than men, and that poor women are somewhat more pro-life than wealthier ones. A terrific and quite detailed study issued by the Rand Corporation in cooperation with the Packard, Hewlett, and Rockefeller Foundations, after calling abortion an “enduringly divisive issue” in the American political landscape, reported stable attitudes on abortion over decades. According to their cross tabulations, females survey a few percentage points more pro-life than men. This figure is within the margin of error, but its persistence over decades demonstrates its significance. Also, the less educationally privileged are more pro-life than the privileged by margins of up to 45 percent. And the poor are more pro-life than the wealthy by between 16 and 25 percent.
Friday, January 10, 2014
Anti-GMO is sometimes an anti-science religion
I'm not too familiar with Grist, but it seems, as NPR reports, that a dude at the site did an in depth study of GMO crops and concluded that there are pros and cons. He got to this conclusion by reviewing scientific literature. The response from some:
"I've got news for Johnson," Claire Robinson, from GM Watch. "Misleading the readers of an until-now respected publication like Grist doesn't make him exciting, creative or cool. It just makes him an unreliable source." Instead of being, as Grist's slogan promises, a "beacon in the smog," Robinson accused the site of "operating more like a smog machine."Science - unreliable. Your preconceptions - reliable.
Anti-Catholicism and the HHS mandate
Because Justice Sotomayor is all about imposing religion on people. There are many fiskings and whatnot floating around of this awful article, I've linked to just one.
Labels: catholic, HHS Mandate, politics
Vanishing places to eat
Gray's Papaya is down to one location in NYC, after the one by NYU closed. And Cafe Mozart by Lincoln Center closed, leaving just the one in Westchester. I really am running out of places to eat. At least Cafe Reggio is still around.
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
The pope is still Catholic!
As Mark Shea points out.
Defend the unborn against abortion, even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court, or kill you.
Does life have meaning without God?
Only if you render the word "meaning" meaningless.
If consciousness is just a mirage produced by chemical reactions in our brains, and if the mirage permanently flickers out on the day those reactions cease, then do any of our conscious thoughts really matter? Sure, you can have an impact on others who will live on after you die, but one day they will disappear into thin air too. To my mind, all this talk of valuable life experiences adding up to something meaningful is like talking about how to make X add up to something meaningful in the above equation. In the end, it’s all for naught.
Labels: philosophy, religion
Friday, January 03, 2014
Put in your reps
Don't try to be perfect, just try to do it again and again, getting a little better each time.
It’s not just art studios where repetitions matter. Whenever you put in consistent work and learn from your mistakes, incredible progress is the result.
This is why I force myself to write a new article every Monday and Thursday. I can’t predict which articles will be useful, but I know that if I write two per week, then sometimes I’ll hit the bullseye.
Labels: a full life, work
Why I lift weights
70s Big gets into what it's all about.
Whether you realize it or not, your training and lifting means something. Are you experiencing an eternal struggle of personal growth and introspection? How will you respond in a moment in which all of the odds favor failure? Can you summon the courage and intensity to finish that pull or to stick the jerk? Or is your training a reminder that success comes with not only a price, but a slow, grinding process that leaves your sweat and blood behind you as you step towards your goal. Or is the end product what matters; that you stand at the top of the mountain and revile in the days, the hours, the minutes that it took for you to squat 405, or 500, or 600 and so on. Or is it a tool that improves your self confidence, letting you be more bold at work or with the opposite sex? Or is it something that effects your gender role and exhibits masculinity or a powerful woman?Also includes some discussion of Camille Paglia, which is always excellent.
Labels: a full life, feminism, strength training
Treat people with whom you disagree with respect
It's very important.
This was posted on the comments box of another blog over 4 years ago, which I just discovered today--one in which I and 4 or 5 other commenters objected to condemnatory, harsh language used by the blogger which could send anyone seeking healing from their abortions back into secrecy out of fear, and in which I--post-abortive myself, and they knew this--was condemned as dehumanizing and forgetting the unborn children. I was going to excerpt the difficult discussion that led up to this remarkable comment, but it could do our readers more harm than good to dredge up the hurtful things that blog and its defenders were defending saying.
Every time I hear about the war on women
I think how the US has abortion laws in the top three or four most "liberal" in the world, with China, North Korea, and Canada. What a happy bunch we are.
