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“Do Pre-Persons Dream of Algebra?”
Well, look at that, Alphonse (and other attempts at getting at the infinite mystery and fragile pricelessness of personhood through fiction) isn’t kid’s stuff, after all… At least, not if we’re to believe what the esteemed and delightfully grumpy Thomas Fleming has to say about Philip K. Dick…
More good news coming out of Wisconsin…
And just in time for the summer! In a rare display of bipartisanship, Cheeseland politicians came together, pretty much unanimously, in a political climate that is (to put it mildy) contentious. Both the governor and many senators are up for recall this summer; the state supreme court has allegedly come to fisticuffs on at least one occasion, and the Packers lost to the New York Giants in the playoffs.
So this bit of news, reported in the Milwaukee Sentinel, comes as a welcomed break in the tension for all four branches of Wisconsin government: the executive, legislative, judicial and domestic!
It’s Time to Fix the Bill of Rights
“the wrong aesthetic”?
RIP, Andrew Breitbart.
So where does the late AB’s aesthetic fit into Mr. Wolfe’s schema? No, he wasn’t Christian but he didn’t approach politics in the usual way, either.
For all that though did he resist the “preaching and speeching,” or did he play into it?
This line seems deserving of some attention:
Blessed are the poor…
…in America, for they shall inherit a refrigerator, a plasma TV, a DVD player, cable or satellite TV, Internet, video games, a car or truck, a microwave, and air conditioning.
Something to think about in this season of taxgiv- I’m sorry, I mean almsgiving…
Best tip: give to Catholic Charities/CRS, the most efficient domestic/overseas organizations going. BONUS: It’s been run by an organization that’s been in the charity business for well over 2000 years…
In which the Pope cites a novel that takes place at a time near the end of the world
…and various Churchmen and Catholic entities with short views on ecclesiology and long views on themselves shuffle their feet and clear their throats.
Take it away, Father Rutler!
Ars longa, caenum facile: Part II
The frisson between porn and lit continues…
On the face of it, this case pivots on a trivial legal distinction – to wit: “that simply viewing child porn on the Internet is not enough to prove its procurement or possession.”
But it has it’s roots in the deeply inhaled myth that pornography is just another art form – and as long as the perveyor is not directly harming another, well, we all know art has no affect on it’s audience, right?
Sed contra est, what one bloke from Rockford, Ill. has to say about it all:
Libertarians insist that these innocent fantasies do not lead to harm. After all, we know from a series of enlightened court rulings that the state has no interest in banning erotic novels if there are the slightest pretensions to literary merit – yes, an obvious reference to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. After all, moral questions can all be reduced to subjective value, can’t they?
Libertarians put the case directly. We should enjoy the freedom to read or watch anything we like so long as no one has been demonstrably harmed. So, if a father of two little girls becomes aware that his next-door neighbor is addicted to virtual pornography depicting the rape, torture, and murder of little girls, it is none of his business. If people feed their imagination on images of sexual violence – as, by the way, so many sex offenders predictably do – this has absolutely no bearing on what kind of people they are or on the crimes they might some day be willing to commit.
What say you all?