The Arrow's Path

"So today I ask you to also think of that. We are a people of faith. We have been so secure in that faith that we have enshrined in our Constitution protection for people who profess no faith. And good for us for doing so. That is what the first amendment is all about. But let us never believe that the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some responsibility to run from our convictions. Let us instead respect one another’s faiths, fight to the death to preserve the right of every American to practice whatever convictions he or she has, but bring our values back to the table of American discourse to heal our troubled land." -Care to guess which President said this and on which occasion? Answer here .

Yeah, like half the states already have these laws , and they are all based on existing Federal legislation enacted by President Clinton.

I haven't had a good chuckle from Garfield for a long time, but today's was pretty good .

"But perhaps most dangerously of all, speech policing advocates forget that there is incredible value in knowing what people actually think, unfiltered. Believing you can conquer racism, bias and bigotry by rooting out microaggressions and enforcing self-censorship and uptightness is like taking Xanax for syphilis -- sure, you'll feel a little better in the short run, but your disease will continue to take its toll." - from here  (The Huffing Post of all places).

This following Baby Blues comic strip was in the paper a few weeks ago. It's usually not as biting as this, but I have not been able to forget it because it in a humorous way manages to capture in a nutshell a very serious thread in modern American culture:   March 17, 2015 This comic captures something that I have been nebulously toying with in my mind a little but brought home to me in a very poignant way. After this comic, I have been more intentional about listening in to dialogue on what my daughter watches in terms of cartoons. We don't let her watch anything unsupervised or age inappropriate, and we only have Netflix not cable TV. So, we can watch things like Thomas the Train (from way back), Arthur (from the mid-'90s)  more modern PBS series like the Cat in the Hat, Peg + Cat, and Curious George. (Don't even get me started on the princess phenomenon in Disney films post-Lion King.) I have noticed that all the more modern stuff, with perhaps the possibly exce...

Look what I just found online:  The History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist by Oxford scholar Darwell Stone. This is bar none the best historical overview I have ever read on the theology of the Eucharist. In this two part tome, Stone traces the church’s beliefs about the Eucharist from New Testament times through the late nineteenth century. The book is arranged chronologically with copious quotations from the various theologians. Both editions free and full online. Spectacular. Volume 1 Volume 2

Beginning on Page 7 of the CNEWA monthly magazine.

I mean, look at this quote from here . "wRC+ is conceptually simple to understand: 100 is league average (based on all non-pitchers), and the difference between a player's wRC+ and 100 is how many percent better or worse than league average the player's offensive performance clocks in as." I mean, good grief.

This isn't really anything philosophically new. This is basically Thomas Aquinas' "First Things" Ontological Proof that God exists with modern science attached. Interesting to think about.  

In a conversation on another forum with a convert who was having issues with his conversation and was thinking about going back to the simplisticty of his former Protestant denomination, he made the following comment: "I struggle with a lot of things in the Church. Maybe I will list some of those later. Right now I'm off to work.  Once I started to study theology, I had this feeling that I have to figure everything out... and be certain. But that seems to be impossible for me. Theology has become a burden!  "I miss the days of simply knowing who Christ is and what he has done for us... and just having that simple faith and following Him. I feel like this whole journey has tainted that childlike faith." Theology is a deep well that seems like it has no bottom-and if it is a study of God, then that is true as God is infinite. Perhaps a page from the theology of our Eastern Brothers and Sisters might be helpful. They theorize that we can't know God in His essence...

We are apparently negotiating a deal with Iran  (listen carefully to what John Kerry actually says) that is 'not legally binding,' Iran get breathing room for whatever nuclear shenanigans they want to cook up, we get nothing out of the deal whatsoever, all because the United States does not have any diplomatic relations with this terrorist state, but we're negotiating with them somehow but not with diplomacy. I am utterly speechless.

Sorry, you can't change your chromosomes .

"When we violated the commandments of Him who in baptism regenerates us, we separated ourselves from God and lost our conscious awareness of Him and our union with Him. Sundered from that union and estranged from God, the intellect is led captive everywhere; and it cannot regain its stability unless it submits to God and is stilled by Him, joyfully uniting with Him through unceasing and diligent prayer." -St. Gregory of Nazianzen.

"But second, and worse, students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both." Failure to teach logic  is exactly what the problem is.

I believe they are called ' junk bonds .'