If you haven't watched The Hollow Crown series

Then by goodness, you need to change that.  A BBC production - never anything less than stellar - takes the plays Richard II, Henry IV parts 1 and 2, and Henry V (known to scholars as The Henriad), and gives them more than a respectable telling.  It's not too awash in modern PC sensitivities, and the productions try to remain faithful to the telling.  Better for non-Shakespeare types, the text is delivered in a more conversational tone that is often associated with Shakespearian theater.  The guys are squatting in the mud, dirt on their faces, speaking in Shakespeare's English the way Americans Tweet and Text. 

The caliber of acting doesn't hurt either.  With the likes of Patrick Stewart, John Hurt, the always reliable Jeremy Irons, and David Morrisey among others (you've seen him as the Governor on The Walking Dead), you can't go wrong.  And it doesn't.  Again, the pacing, sets, costumes are all a mix of what recent Hollywood productions have made us expect, without going overboard into the Xena, Warrior Princess schlock.  And when there is  key line, or phrase, or speech, even though the intention is to keep the dialogue low-key, the series does a good job of adding just a touch of dramatic flair, as if to say 'we know you've been waiting for it.'  For instance:

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Ah Richard Winters, we miss you.

Wait and see

I always say.  There's a story tossed about that a Catholic LGBT group wrote a letter to Pope Francis, and Pope Francis responded.  Nothing there.  The contents of both letters aren't being revealed.  OK.  The press, with that disclaimer, then goes on to say what some sources say is in Pope Francis's letter, including a "blessing" for the group Kairos.   What that means we're left to guess.

Just who the group Kairos is, I'm not sure.  Last I heard it was a prison ministry, but then the term Kairos isn't copyrighted.  I really don't know.  Based on traditional Catholic teaching, the Pope can't 'change Church teaching.'  That doesn't mean a pope can't suck or take the Church into areas that create no end of problems and give two black eyes to the Gospel.  It remains to be seen with Pope Francis.  In our post-modern app-depth generation, it's probably entirely possible to construct a Church based on clear 2000 year old teachings while embracing the post-Christian secular Left.  After all, not a few Protestant traditions have done just that.  They've not technically changed much.  But in practice they are barely in any way connected to the Faith of their fathers. 

I remember a seminary professor who told us a story.  He was in Germany years and years ago.  It was Easter.  He attended the Easter services.  The preacher that morning was none other than Rudolf Bultmann, champion of the demythologizing of the New Testament.  That is, rather than dismiss everything that sniffs of supernatural in the manner of Jefferson, embrace the fact that the New Testament is just one big, awesome myth. 

And yet, on that Easter Sunday, while my professor watched in awe, Bultmann gave a sermon that would shame Billy Graham.  He opened his arms and proclaimed just how Jesus loved the world enough to die for our sins, only to raise from the dead and give eternal life to all.  Lesson.  In our age, perhaps in any age, it's entirely possible for some to proclaim one thing and really, really - I mean really - mean it within a completely different context than face value might suggest.

Again, we'll see.  Maybe it's nothing.  Maybe Pope Francis did no such thing.  Or maybe it's Francis continuing what the Church began in Vatican II, trying to adjust and adapt to the norms and standards of the victorious post-Christian Left.  But I am reminded of this - possibly the best evaluation of the current 'try to right the wrongs of the West' strategy of the Church:

When the Church is throwing out tools, they should be of less use to her outright enemies than to winnable neutrals.

I can't top that.  We'll see if it's a lesson the Church actually needs, or if it is one the Church has any intention of heeding.

The media is victorious

Once again, in a clash between two parties unwilling to compromise, the media has been able to cast blame on one party alone, and it appears the public has accepted that version.  The GOP is to blame, according to an NBC/WSJ poll.  It reminds me of the same clash that came in the 90s between the GOP and Bill Clinton.  Today, media pundits admit it was an unwillingness to compromise between both Gingrich's GOP and the Clinton White House.  Then, it was entirely the fault of Ebenezer Newt and the Christmas stealing Republicans:

I don't blame the press.  After all, if something works, why change?  Through selective narrative, distorting facts, and spinning stories, they've successfully convinced Americans that the definition of compromise is getting with the program and embracing the Liberal Revolution.   In the near future, expect America to be left with one political party divided by different spellings.

I am still here

Really.  This week has been more than busy.  The company I work for has enforced mandatory overtime.  That save money of course.  Screws the employees up, but I guess they figure we get more money and that's the important thing.  So time is very, very tight.  I've received a couple articles I'm dying to post on, I was sent a couple interesting links to some sites that deal with the growing extinction of the male of the human species, and of course I want to get around to my reflections on our Williamsburg trip.  Until then, enjoy this little bit of coolness, and the song that ushers in our annual holiday seasons*:

*It's part of Halloween Haunts, and old VHS compilation.  You can find it on Amazon, but not with this at the beginning.  If anyone knows how to get a copy with this, I'm all ears!

But seriously

If you want to know how we could have overturned the common sense understanding of human nature to allow gay marriage, just watch our illustrious leader weigh in on the great Redskin Crisis of the 21st Century.  I mean, many Native Americans don't care, and some want it to stop.  And yet that small, small, small - and I mean small - grain of sand sized group who demands change will get it.  How?  I leave that up to the good readers to figure.  Just know that this trend, not of a group winning the hearts and minds of the masses, but appealing to key institutions of influence and power, is one that has come to define modern democratic processes. Especially by appealing to certain sensitivities.  And one that does not bode well for the future.

Americans rise up to deal with the greatest threat to our nation

Yep, even more stories are flooding that while our country founders, our economy sags, our culture unravels, and our nation falls behind a growing list of others, we are investing important time pushing for a change to the Washington Redskins.  Sometimes I think we've reached the level of idiocy we're capable of.  Then I read the news. 

Scholarship in the world of post modern Internet brilliance

This quote:

the protestants starting with the first pilgrims killed of a whole nation of Indians, it started cause they wouldn't convert to protestantism

Is from a discussion on Yahoo.news.com (I know).  It involved someone diving in and trashing Christians, with the resulting defenses.  Ahem.  I haven no clue who posted the above quote, but in reading his (her?) other posts, he appears to be a Catholic blasting others for being Jewish or not Catholic.  I'm really hoping this is not the type of over the top anti-Semitic radical traditionalist some Catholics insist are out there.  But the statement against Jews, the defense of the Church, the attacks on Protestants (including this charmer), all suggests someone either defending a Catholic perspective, or someone trying to make those defending the Catholic perspective look very, very, very stupid. 

Another take on Pope Francis

And one I've heard mentioned more than once.  This is from Dale Price, a favorite of Mark Shea.  The gist is that we can only defend Pope Francis so many times.  We can only use this or that excuse, accuse everyone of misunderstanding or not liking him, so many times.  The latest excuse is that his words were misrepresented by an 88 year old interviewer who used neither notes nor recordings, but reproduced the interview from memory after the Pope gave him his thumbs up.  OK, that happens.  But really?  I mean, shouldn't Pope Francis be a little careful about giving interviews to 88 year old men conspicuously missing recording or note taking paraphernalia? 

Being Pope is a major responsibility. It's like the Presidency, but with the God stamp of approval.  You're in the history books for the ages and responsible for leading and defending the flock.  The media is hostile.  He has to know that.  The media is not schooled in theology.  He has to know that.  Not everyone who reads his interviews is a Jesuit scholar.  He has to know that.  In the end, there is a limit to how often we can blame the human race, the world, the universe, the media, the stars and the clouds.  At some point, he has to step up and stop the upheaval and misunderstandings.

A little Political Incorrectness

Courtesy of Ray Stevens.  This isn't the Politically Incorrect of Bill Maher, who doesn't know the meaning of the term.  Maher is the poster boy of Political Correctness, mocking, hating, spewing insults on all the right type of people, and bowing before the appropriate others accordingly.  This is the 'I'm surprised it hasn't been banned' type.  I wonder if Mr. Stevens still performs it.  Part of me secretly hopes he still does.  He was great twenty years ago. It's still brilliant today.

The Six Faces of Halloween

I've said I'm a fan of Halloween.  Partly because in my younger days the Halloween season marked the unofficial countdown to that Holiday of Holidays Christmas.  Partly because it was linked to the autumn, my favorite time of year.  Partly because it was linked to those old school memories.  By now in school, we were moving past the unsure first weeks of the new year, making new friends, meeting new girls, reclaiming old friendships.  Football, apple cider, homecoming parades and bonfires, harvest time and farmers reaping in the fields, cornstalks and haystacks, you name it.  A flood of great memories.

We've tried (and in recent years, I mean seriously tried hard) to keep some level of fun and festivities alive with the kids.  True, they are growing.  True times change.  True, things have sucked royally for the past couple years.  But try we have.  And when I say, despite it all, we still like Halloween, I mean it in the sense of everything it was, and all that it entailed for our kids, our family and our memories.

With that said, I've talked with a few folks who have questioned an open Catholic's love affair with such a holiday.  Certainly in my Protestant days, among conservative Evangelicals, Halloween was a no-no.  Harvest festivals maybe.  But not Halloween.  The reasons being obvious.  Still, some have questioned whether Halloween festivities are consistent with a good, Christian household.  I think yes.  The reasons will be for another post.  But first, let me say that when I say Halloween, there are some things I mean, some things I don't, and some things that are along for the ride that I don't give much though about.  That is, there are several faces of Halloween when you get right down to it.

First, the "Historical Halloween".  Halloween, like Christmas, is a lightening rod for pundits.  Everyone knows where it came from.  Based, of course, on their particular agendas.  Either it was a pristine festival by lovely pagans that the evil Church stole, or it was a subversive attack against the Church by hostile forces of evil, or it was some slowly evolved holiday.  Fact is, we don't really "know".  That's because there is no document out there written in 1489 by Johann Smith that said "On this day, I, Johann, do invent Halloween." The best we can do is guess.  And those guesses, as with all history, are based heavily on what we hope to prove.

Still, we know that there were pagan holidays and non-Christian practices roughly coinciding with this time of year.  We know that the Catholic Church celebrated All Saints Day on November 1st.  And we know that the customs all have their origins somewhere.  Some find solace in leaning on that as a way to give validity to the holiday.  Some, such as the good people at Fish Eaters, see it as a chance to remind ourselves that Hell may actually still exist and be a real possibility.  I'm OK with it.  I like the historical origins, as long as I remember how much we know and how much we only imagine we think we know.  So there is the Historical Halloween, which I always try to remember.

Second, there is the Harvest Halloween.  That's that holiday most associated with Colonial life, and steeped in the harvest season and the oncoming winter.  Borrowing heavily from Irish and other European customs, it really finds itself in our country in later years, but there is still that Harvest link.  That's where the pumpkins and haystacks and cornstalks come from.  It's also that "Harvest Festival" part that conservative Christians are comfortable with.  Truth be told, I'm OK with it, too.  There's something rustic, natural in it that reminds us of more agrarian days, when life was tied to the seasons more than today.  I can't imagine Halloween without these.

Third, there is the Hollywood Halloween.  This is the part of the holiday that gets its cues, not from tradition or folklore, but from Hollywood.  What does Universal's Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolf Man to do with Halloween?  Nothing in the historical sense.  Nor do ghosts and spirits have everything to do with Halloween.  When we watch our annual 'Halloween Haunts', we're reminded with Lonesome Ghosts that it was Winter, more than Fall and the Harvest, that many old timers associated with ghosts and the spirit world.  Sometimes around either solstice.  But ghosts and ghost stories were every bit at home around the Winter solstice as they were in the Fall (there'll be scary ghost stories, and tales from the glories, of Christmases long, long ago...).  But thanks to Hollywood, and some select twists on old tales, many seem to reserve the Halloween season for that time when ghosts walk among us, in addition to walking corpses and vampires and other things never historically confined to the Halloween date.  Scary.  It's OK, and a fine part to a season worth remembering there's more to think about than terrorists or serial killers.

Fourth, you have the Commercial Halloween.  That was the Halloween tied to American commerce that enjoyed a boost in the bountiful years following America's victory in WWII.  Money was everywhere, and commercialism was taking off.  Buying stuff and things was all the rage. Plastics and cheap materials were making things available like never before.  Costumes abounded, and pretty soon there was a costume with a plastic vest and mask that allowed kids to be everything from Superman to the Devil to Howdy Doody.   Other paraphernalia also began to be common, and decorations, cut outs, cardboard skeletons and other fun things could adorn a house for only a few dollars and make it as festive as the most holly and ivy bedecked home during a Victorian Yuletide.

Fifth, we have the modern Halloween.  This is the Halloween that, like so much else in our culture, is a giant hangover from the drunkenness of decades of materialism and commercialism.  Gaudy, cheesy and tacky statues, gravestones, blinking lights, fake webbing, neon signs, strobe lights.  And keeping with the post-Christian media saturation of our culture, most costumes reflecting the latest in the same way that Dracula and Frankenstein became part of the Halloween mix of yesteryear.  But now that contribution is in the form of puss dripping zombies ala The Walking Dead, or ax wielding killers in hockey masks, or gore and violence and heads with axes through the middle.

Following close on the heels of this, of course, is the sexed up cultural influence.  If little girls once dressed like a princess with a plastic tiara, now they dress like girls on the make waiting to bed the boy (or girl) dressed like a Power Ranger down the street.  Entire costume lines exist to help add a pornographic element to the holiday, and aren't reserved for those over 18.  Gore, tacky and sex.  That's what Halloween has become.

Finally, you have the occult.  You have that element of Halloween associated with the supernatural, the forces of Darkness.  Satan.  Hell.  Sabbats and a Night on Bald Mountain.  In some corners, it's deliberately used that way.  In others, it's lifted up to mock the Church in a sort of 'ha, in your face' sort of way.  Ironically, perhaps the worst part of Halloween isn't in those drawing pentagrams in the dirt of a crossroads at midnight, but in the cheap plastic devil masks that make light of the reality of Hell and the demonic.  I don't care for dressing up as demons.  Nor do I care for my boys dressing up in silly devil costumes.  Both, IMHO, are not healthy attitudes when it comes to grasping the powers of darkness that war with The Light.

Those are the different approaches and takes on Halloween.  For me, a dose of historical nods, harvest celebrations, and a healthy respect for the spirit world and even the realities of eternity all come to play their parts.  Fallen leaves and bare trees point to the fact that we are all dust, and to dust we will return.  As long as it isn't too much, there's not a whole lot about Halloween I don't like.  It doesn't bother me that some customs might be Celtic, or that the Invisible Man really isn't tied to the historical roots of the holiday, whatever they may be.  But I draw the line at uber-violence, gore for gore's sake, sexed up floozy girls, and boys walking about with knives through their throats.

In fact, in recent years, I've begun to settle on a less-is-more approach.  For some reason, remembering my home growing up, where a couple cut out skeletons and some cardboard witches and pumpkins were all that decorated our home, apart from a couple pumpkins, seems to bring about a stronger connection with the feel of the 'season'.  For season it is.  And like my oldest pointed out, it's the season that's as much fun as the holiday itself.  So while we'll still have the decorations, I think we're done with trying to out-gaudy the neighbors; though in truth, we see less of those houses than we used to - probably economy as much as anything.  A houses overflowing with flashing lights and giant dummies in the yard now looks cheap and fake, commercial and superficial.  But a house with a few cornstalks, a couple cutouts in the windows, and a jack-o-lantern* to me, at least, hearkens back to a festivity that, if not an actual holiday, at least deserves its place in the lineup of enjoyable links to the past and future memories.

*While working as an editor, we had a book of editing 'suggestions'.  These were terms that were to be used in light of modern sensitives.  Rather than Jack-O-Lanterns, we were told Halloween Lanterns.  Jack, after all, it explained, was gender specific and potentially offensive to certain (read: women) readers.  You want scary?  If that doesn't scare you, I don't know what will.

For the offended Indians who want to change the Redskins

Has Thomas McDonald have a post for you!   I'm as sensitive to the screwing that the Indians got at the hands of the US government as the next guy.  My great grandmother was full blooded Cherokee.  My wife is descended from no less than three lines of Indian.  Probably there is enough to claim some benefits in a grant or scholarship there.  But I also don't buy into the Dances With Wolves notion that Indians were pure, beautiful, godlike beings of utter perfection.  In fact, like most things, the more actual hard evidence we find, the more a balanced take on the history of the period unfolds.

Perhaps what happened was inevitable.  The Indians lost.  Their culture was such that it was incompatible with living next to the encroaching Europeans.  After all, we've all heard about the White Man and his armies sweeping in and razing an Indian village and killing the women and children.  But we seldom hear of the Indians doing the same.  Perhaps we figure the white men and their families had it coming.  It wouldn't surprise me.  But nonetheless, what little evidence we pick up seems to suggest that, in the end, the Indians were as varied and as complex as the Europeans, and they waged war with one another and against the intruding immigrants from across the ocean.  And they lost.

We can make amends, but not at the expense of ourselves.  At some point, unless we just don't care, we will have to stop disassembling the Civilization that the Church built as a way to make amends since, in the end, I doubt it will do much to assuage the anger anyway.  And furthermore, I will have to believe at some point that such bickering has little to do with making amends, and a lot more to do with putting as many bullets in the dying leviathan that was the West.  A second and final last stand you might say.

In praise of farming

Our county jail as I remember it

I'm no expert on farming or the various issues that no doubt plague it today.  I grew up in a small, rural farming community in north central Ohio.  We were in the County Seat, which meant many of the county's professionals and leaders were in our town.  In fact, we had one of the highest median household incomes for the state when I was there.  So it was a strange mixture of well-to-do suburbanites surrounded by fields and farmlands.

Of course, it wasn't always pristine.  It was smaller farms than, say, in Iowa or Kansas.  As often as not, they were fields broken by hills and woodlands.  Winding country roads with old, dilapidated houses and rusting farm equipment, sitting year after year, helping to reduce taxes on the annual submissions.  At times, truth be told, it looked downright dirty out there.  Junked up yards, old vehicles.  Every now and then a farm house itself looked good, but only until you drove a little and saw this or that rundown, abandoned building with boards over the windows and doors.  Again, tax shelters agricultural style.

Sometimes, at night, it could be downright scary.  One night when I was little, my Aunt and Grandma were visiting and we were coming home from nearby Marion.  It was pouring rain, and the car got stuck near home.  My Mom got out and went to a nearby farmhouse.  It was old, the wood grayed and the porch

buckled.  She knocked on the door, and an old woman with stringy gray hair answered.  She invited my Mom to use the phone.  Mom went into a room decorated in serious 19th century farm deco, with old dusty furniture and a single lamp lighting the entire downstairs.  A staircase ascended into darkness.  Mature as my Mom was, she got the shivers.  My cousins visited with my sister once, and they stayed the night at a neighboring farmhouse.  The next morning they swore they had stayed in a haunted house.

Still, there was something about it.  Our school area sat in the middle of the older neighborhoods in town, with the high school and its sports fields the farthest north, flanked by houses, woods and a corn field.  Football on Friday nights just doesn't seem the same without looking at the buildings along one side and the field to the north.

And you had the FFA - that's Future Farmers of America to us, a select subgroup of the high school culture, snuff in cheeks and able to take apart a tractor with one arm tied behind their backs.  Those kids had been driving grain trucks before most of us were playing with toy soldiers.

And then there was the harvest time.  The house my Dad rebuilt, when I was about two years old, sat outside town in the inner-skirts of the farming regions.  He had - at the time - 20 acres.  Most of it was woods.  Nearby was a field to the west.  Against the recommendations of nearby farmers, he had a large garden next to that field.  It grew wonderfully.  Corn, beans, tomatoes, cantaloupe (the best anyone ever ate), pumpkins - he even tried watermelon once.  And at harvest time, back then, you still saw cornstalks and haystacks, old scarecrows in fields and sincere pumpkin patches.

And the creme de la creme of small town living, farmers in the fields at night, harvesting the fruits of their labor.  To this day, there is something about driving home at night and seeing tractors - or more likely today combines - in the fields, depositing  the grains and cobs into a nearby wagon.  The lights illuminate the scene every time in a way that just tugs at something inside, something that makes you think about a life on the land, near nature, bound to the harvests and the seasons.  Even with half million dollar combines with televisions, computers and central air, there's a natural connection.  It evokes.  It reminds me that for all the benefits of technology and industry and the latest smartphone app, we've lost something.  In those lights in the night, I think every time that there is something to be said about a life with nature and nature's God.  Not that no farmers are atheists, but there has to be something that connects you in a way that the tech savvy cosmopolitan could never understand.  Not that I'm ready to do an Oliver Wendell Douglas, but it is something I think on every harvest time when I see those farmers working until the wee hours of the night.

My life as a Catholic Clergy Convert

All in good seasonal humor of course.  But it needs to be told, especially to Protestant clergy considering Catholicism.  The pearl is worth it, but in this day and this age now, could cost you everything.

Ross Douthat on Pope Francis

Across the Catholic blogosphere, holy wars are raging.  It's all about Pope Francis.  Is he a radical liberal or subversive revolutionary?  Is he awesome?  Is he trying to right some wrongs in the recent Church governance and reach out to a world no longer bound by Western European sensitivities?  At this point, it's hard to say.

As is typical in the Blogosphere, it can get nasty.  Name calling, copious doses of Raca and Fool, insults, self righteousness.  And entering into the battlefield comes Mr. Douthat with his customary level headedness.  His take?  What the Pope is trying to do is understandable. He's trying to reach out to the masses in a way that circumnavigates some of the obstacles that, rightly or wrongly, the Church is blamed for erecting.  He sees Francis as trying to break the trend of the modern Faith, where one is stuck either holding firm against the winds of change, or just tossing the Faith out the window and embracing the latest, hippest.  The third group, those in the middle who gradually lose their zeal and desire to care, are also targets - perhaps the targets.

In fact, Douthat names the challenge.  Pope Francis is trying what has failed in every major Western faith that has attempted it: that is to find that happy middle between post-Christian revolution and traditional orthodoxy.  It's true.  And those Catholics who are hailing Francis for putting aside the Culture Wars, are sometimes the same who have mocked Evangelical leaders who have done it in the past.  After all, Francis isn't the first leader in recent years to make that statement, that we have to move beyond the Gay, Abortion, Culture issues and get to the Heart of Jesus.  It's just that in those churches where the strategy has been attempted, many have concluded something was lost.  Whether the infamous 'Seeker Sensitive Churches', or Rick Warren, or Joel Osteen - let's face it, most Catholics don't look to those as stellar examples of firm doctrinal moorings.

And yet that is precisely what Francis is trying to do.  In many ways, he is being the "Seeker Sensitive Pope".  He's trying to figure out what people don't like about the Church, and overcome it.  He's trying to reach that vast middle ground and grow it.  My prayers are that he becomes the first leader of a Biblical Faith to succeed where so many others have failed.  Where the Church has failed.

Douthat reminds us that the more traditional Catholics are not just blowing air out their butts when they express concern.  It wasn't too long ago that many extremes in the Church, in light of Vatican II, had pushed it to becoming a mockery that everyone used to dismiss the Church in the modern world, including not a few Catholics:

[Conservative Catholics'] anxiety is not that the new pope is about to radically change church teaching, since part of being a conservative Catholic is believing that such a change can’t happen. Rather, they fear that the center he’s trying to seize will crumble beneath him, because the chasm between the culture and orthodox faith is simply too immense. 

And they worry as well that we have seen something like his strategy attempted before, when the church’s 1970s-era emphasis on social justice, liturgical improvisation and casual-cool style had disappointing results: not a rich engagement with modern culture but a surrender to that culture’s “Me Decade” manifestations — producing tacky liturgy, ugly churches, Jonathan Livingston Seagull theology and ultimately empty pews.

That's about the best take I've seen.  That and Charlotte Allen's that I linked tot he other day.  What the Pope is trying to do is fine.  Whether he succeeds, or creates a problem that has sucked many another Western Faith into the drains remains to be seen.

That was close

Jerry Lai-USA TODAY Sports

The Buckeyes squeaked, and I mean squeaked, past Northwestern last night.  I've never understood coaches.  Urban Meyer stuck with Braxton Miller even though Miller was clearly not on top of his game.  Two fumbles and an interception, not to mention a disastrously thrown ball to an open receiver in the end zone that killed the chance for a touchdown.  Yet he would not even take him out for a while to cool.  Thankfully, two very close (and reviewed) calls went for OSU and we barely made it.  The score suggests differently, but that was due to the Wildcats' attempt to a multiple-lateral move to make a desperate touchdown in the last seconds.  One of the players threw it past their own and into the OSU end zone, allowing the Bucks to add six after the clock stopped.  If Mr. Urban says we will sink or swim with Braxton, that's up to him.  But if we play that way against any team with any serious credentials, we won't have a nut of a chance.  And that's not to take away from Northwestern.

Kudos to Northwestern BTW.  Had it been any other team they were playing, I would have rooted for them. They played with grace, style, and cleverness.  Their dual quarterbacks were nothing short of awesome - and logged one of the most hilariously cartoonish plays I've seen in years, as the quarterback dove under two attacking Buckeyes, only to make the play while they dove and collided with each other over top of him.  Since nobody was seriously hurt, it's the stuff that makes football not only great, but at times funny.

Ross Douthat is a credit

To Catholics, Conservatives and Americans.  Here he points out what many are figuring.  For those who scratch their heads and wonder how after 20 of 28 years of Republican control, we can be in a state in 2008 of electing perhaps the most openly and radically liberal president in history, here's the answer.  I knew a fellow who was a Catholic convert.  He was from Argentina (and had some pretty strong words about the Left's answer to illegal immigration).  He had also worked with the government for several decades.  He explained that it didn't matter who was in the White House, or Congress for that matter.  The overwhelming majority of government workers he had associated with were far to the Left, avid Democrats, and more liberal than most of the liberal Democrats the media interviews.

There are other reasons of course.  Many Republicans aren't much better.  And as for the presidents, at least two of the three last GOP executives had wives that would fit alongside of any MSNBC host.  And a few others would either embrace all the glories of liberalism completely, or at least, alongside most of the American mega-multinational corporations, promote everything from liberalism that leads to hedonism and debauchery, as long as it winds up lifting the bottom line.  Nonetheless, like it or not, we are and have been for many generations, a liberal society.  Douthat calls it like it is.  Perhaps others may begin to listen.

On this Feast of St. Francis

A story about Pope Francis.  Much is being made about our new Pope right now.  In this story, American Catholics are overwhelmingly happy with him, especially his statement that it's time to put the fighting over gay marriage and abortion and such things aside.  Two possibilities there.  Either they are misreading what he's said, or those who are worried have reasons to worry.  I say this since there's not a reasonable person in the world who doesn't know that, on the whole, the majority of American Catholics use contraception, support abortion rights, and now support gay marriage.  The majority numbers vary per topic, but that thing known as liberalism wouldn't have made it this far without the crucial support of American Catholics.  At least in the United States.  Not all of course.  But poll after poll after study after poll says the majority.

So time will tell.  It might be, as Charlotte Allen of the L.A. Times suggests, that Francis is simply the first Pope of the Post-Western age.  As we watch the sunset on the civilization that Catholicism built, and the origin of industrialization, science, enlightenment, liberty, Democracy, Mozart, Shakespeare, Film, Light Bulbs, Technology and an endless list of things we enjoy and take for granted, Pope Francis may simply be pointing to a world that no longer cares about such things, or at least the civilization that brought them.  What that means, I don't know.  Is he a reformer?  A radical?  A revolutionary?  Only time will tell.  But on this feast day of that Saint of Saints that even atheists and fundamentalist Protestants tip a hat to, it's worth taking a step back and watching a man help remind us of why the name Francis was so special to begin with.

Confession is good for the student

Apparently, according to this link sent by a reader, confession sites are becoming common on college campuses.  How common?  Don't know.  This is the first I've heard, though I'll keep my ears open.  I believe it, since it tailgates on the rather well documented trend of colleges cracking down on speech that doesn't conform to certain dogmatic definitions of diversity.

Heck, I experienced similar ideas back in the 80s when I was in a state college.  A proud, agnostic liberal, I nonetheless was taken aback by the outright contempt and hostility aimed at me when I suggested that reverse discrimination could be bad since, you know, discrimination was seen as a bad thing.  I made that argument once in a report for an education class.  The girl I was teamed with literally backed away, pointed and said she had nothing to do with my opinions.  The class pounced.  The teacher wrote, on my written page, asking why I was 'so scared of women and minorities'?

My only point was that if a system, like Affirmative Action, is broken, it needs fixed.  No matter how noble the idea, things can always go wrong.  And if it ends up doing something like promoting discrimination, it could end up coming back at it down the road.  We could end up losing the whole thing.   Better to tweak it and make sure all are given equal chances  no matter what their race or gender.  Bam!  All hell broke loose.

Ironically, the only person to defend me was the only middle aged black woman in the class.  She got my point.  She said she wanted a job because she deserved it, not because she was black or a woman.  She alone saw what I was saying.  But I never forgot how I was lambasted that day, by people I considered my own ideological allies.  Simply because I dared.  So count me skeptical, but I'll assume there is truth to this story, and only clear evidence to the contrary will turn my mind.

If you have ever wondered what the Proto-Indo-European language sounded like

Wonder no more!  In one of those 'cooler than accurate' scholarly projects, we have a recording of what the best and brightest think might possibly have been the sounds of that eons old language.  Of course, like most things, I have a feeling if someone from that period heard the recording, their first response would be 'what the hell did he say?'  In PIE of course.  Still, fun stuff.  And the stuff that makes you ponder all that historical studies have to offer. 

Comments have no place in science

Popular Science.com, the internet extension of one of the older scientific magazines, says so.  Really.

Comments can be bad for science. That's why, here at PopularScience.com, we're shutting them off.

Yep.  Concluding that Pure Science (TM) has been hijacked by politics and other vile things, the articles will no longer have a place for comments and debate. I know, it's the Internet and sometimes the comments sections can get nasty.  But welcome to one more result of scientific and technological breakthroughs.  Like everything, there is good and bad.  In fact, in an unintentional bit of irony, PS might be missing the obvious lesson.  When it comes to scientific breakthroughs, you seldom get anything good without opening a whole new box of bad.  Welcome to Popular Science.