Inception is an AWESOME movie

I watched the movie "Inception" the other day, and it confirmed my belief that Christopher Nolan is the most interesting director working these days (Batman Begins fame, The Prestige etc.) If you get a chance let me know what you think of the movie. I'm not sure I could have been more entertained at the theaters!

The Sing-Off

Yeah, I really enjoy the television show "The Sing-Off."

My wife and I were floored that Committed won the show last night. America voted and I think they actually chose correctly! I was shocked because democracy rarely works like this. Rarely does the natural aristoi rise to the top. But I guess it does on NBC!

It was also great to see Ben Folds sing one of his songs.

Res Ipsa Loquitur

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTM0MGNmZTEwNTIxNTQxZjE5Yjg1MzY1YzRlOWZjNGI=

I Can't Believe I Missed Equal Pay Day!

There I was, blissfully loafing around like the very pregnant lady that I am, and I somehow managed to miss Equal Pay Day! It's so hard to stay on top of these things when you no longer live on a campus and no one actually cares what the feminists have to say. The official holiday was on Tuesday, and is meant to "'symbolize how far into 2010 women must work to earn what men earned in 2009,' says the National Committee on Pay Equity."

How does the enlightened individual celebrate such a holiday, you ask? Why, with the feminist trifecta, of course: rallies, speak-outs, and bake sales. Nothing says "I deserve a higher salary" like a chocolate chip cookie baked with love. Equal Pay Day is also a great excuse to indulge in some (legal) substance abuse: "NOW suggests women gather together at local bars for “Un-happy Hours” where they can share their dissatisfactions. 'See if a local bar, club, or restaurant (try the women-owned ones first!) will give you drink specials [where] women pay 78% of their tabs and men pay 100%'." Women are allowed to own bars now?! Wow, thanks feminists!

Anyway, Christina Hoff Sommers of AEI takes the feminists to task over the idea that women earn 22% less than men for doing the same work.

Casting Stones

Jimmy Akin does a great job of clearly describing the details of the case that is the focus of the recent sex abuse hysteria.

It is still fascinating to me that publications like the New York Times can spiral downward into the realm of tabloid sensationalism, hardly conducting legitimate research or verifying sources - editors of high school newspapers appear to have higher standards. As Akin notes, the NYT ultimately shoots itself in the foot by providing links to some primary source documents that pertain to the case. Savvy readers of the sources can come to their own conclusions, after sifting through the mud that serves as unbiased reporting in NY.

As disturbing and frustrating as some facts of the case are, and as tempting as it is to bury one's head in the sand and pray that the articles and hysteria just go away, it is ultimately important that Catholics do two things: (1) Pray for everyone involved in the scandal, from abused to abusers to Catholics with the courage to speak out against the mistreatment of the Pope and (2) Make ourselves as knowledgeable about the case as possible because when others ask you about the facts or make rude comments, which they will, we need to be armed and ready.

Let me end by saying that I in no way condone any misconduct on the part of the Catholic Church, especially where the abuse of its youngest members are concerned. I do take umbrage, however, at the way in which so-called journalists, New Atheists, and others of a similar stripe rabidly snatch at any and all things negative that can be associated with the Church and boldly broadcast them as "fact." You can practically hear them giggling with glee at the thought that they contributed to the witch hunt that may finally take down the monolithic Catholic Church.


Also:

• A Woman's Place offers some good articles on the NYT and their litany of lies
• Scroll down for Father Z's continued commentary on the hysteria
• Father Longenecker lets Dick Dawkins in on the debate
• The Curt Jester reminds us of Psalm 52

Bad Catholic Theology on TV

Can a priest withhold absolution from someone in the Confessional?

In tonight's episode of House, Chase visits a confessional. He recently killed a dictator while at work, and his conscience was causing him great grief. He went looking for forgiveness. He asks the Priest, "what do I have to do for God to forgive me?" The Priest answers, "you must accept responsibility for what you have done." This is true - if Chase does not accept responsibility for what he has done, he cannot be forgiven. And Chase does not want to accept responsibility. The television Priest then makes a big mistake! The Priest says Chase's forgiveness is conditional upon his turning himself in to the Police. This is absolutely not allowed. A Priest cannot withhold forgiveness if he thinks the penitent's confession admits a sincere admission of guilt. Requiring Chase to turn himself in to the Police would violate the Seal of the Confessional by forcing him to admit to his sin outside of the Confessional. The Priest could certainly encourage Chase to turn himself in, but he could not make his absolution conditional upon this action.

This episode is also a great illustration of the natural law. Chase thinks that he is doing the right thing by killing the dictator - it is justifiable given the monstrous evil. But he cannot avoid the guilt that comes with actually going through with the deed. Guilt is part of nature. Having transgressed the moral law, he seeks the only thing that could ever give him peace - God's forgiveness. He needs to know that he can be forgiven for what he has done. And not any person will do - he has already told House and received his indifference as justification. This is insufficient, and really, no human person's forgiveness can ever really heal the wounds caused by great sins. This type of forgiveness can only be a gratuitous gift of the Divine Person.

Return of the Native Son

NH native son P.J. O'Rourke has written a wide-ranging column analyzing the election results. In his free wheelin', humorous and traditionally spunky style, he makes many great points.

I bet there is some push back on this point:

In how many ways did we fail conservatism? And who can count that high? Take just one example of our unconserved tendency to poke our noses into other people's business: abortion. Democracy--be it howsoever conservative--is a manifestation of the will of the people. We may argue with the people as a man may argue with his wife, but in the end we must submit to the fact of being married. Get a pro-life friend drunk to the truth-telling stage and ask him what happens if his 14-year-old gets knocked up. What if it's rape? Some people truly have the courage of their convictions. I don't know if I'm one of them. I might kill the baby. I will kill the boy.

The real message of the conservative pro-life position is that we're in favor of living. We consider people--with a few obvious exceptions--to be assets. Liberals consider people to be nuisances. People are always needing more government resources to feed, house, and clothe them and to pick up the trash around their FEMA trailers and to make sure their self-esteem is high enough to join community organizers lobbying for more government resources.

If the citizenry insists that abortion remain legal--and, in a passive and conflicted way, the citizenry seems to be doing so--then give the issue a rest. Meanwhile we can, with the public's blessing, refuse to spend taxpayers' money on killing, circumscribe the timing and method of taking a human life, make sure parental consent is obtained when underage girls are involved, and tar and feather teenage boys and run them out of town on a rail. The law cannot be made identical with morality. Scan the list of the Ten Commandments and see how many could be enforced even by Rudy Giuliani.

Also, yesterdays RCP page was a winner: from P.J. to Hitchens to Will to Brooks, etc.

saturday night

And now for something different. A local amusement park has a ride called the Frisbee. It was far and away the best ride I have ever been on - exactly the right amount of horrifying. It feels like jumping off of a bridge, only over and over and over again, while simultaneously spinning in circles.



The company that makes this thing says this of the ride:

- Sensational giant swing movements combined with thrilling spins
- Impressive visuals offered by the ride
- Gondola swings 90ƒ up to the horizontal position
- Moments of weightlessness possible for all passengers
- Change spinning direction of disc for added thrill
- Especially well suited for attractive decoration and theming ideas
- Passengers experience forces of up to 4gs!
- Proven technology and a very stable construction make it absolutely safe

Now I'm no amusement park enthusiast but this thing was absolutely crazy and a lot of fun. A video of one of these things in action is available here.

Twelfth Night?

Now, I'm no Shakespeare scholar. In fact I'm quite the philistine, hardly being acquainted with even a small selection of his corpus. But I am working to improve my situation. This Friday me and my fiance are going to see a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. In an attempt to prepare myself, I've read through the play. Shakespeare plays with gender roles and offers what seems to be a simple love triangle story that resolves itself in a humorous way. But other than that, I can't seem to get much out of the play. I did not notice any especially profound insights or passages that were extraordinary in greatness, but I think this is because I do not have the eyes to see such things if they are indeed there. SO that brings me to my question: Is anyone familiar with Twelfth Night? If so, could you explain the particular greatness of this play, or at least point me to someone who could?

**Turns out Harold Bloom has some very helpful essays in his work Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Mr. Bloom has informed me that the play is about the abstract and possibly arbitrary origins of love. That is, the play skewers those who would be "in love with love", rather than actually in love with a person. Light dawns over marble head!

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

" “He had a mind that was constantly working on more cylinders than most people, but he was amazingly gentle and kind,” Mr. Pietsch said. “He was a writer who other writers looked to with awe.”"

call me sentimental, maybe cheesy.

I found Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters to be heart-wrenching. It is, among other things, a profound argument for the natural law. It shows us, quite effectively, that justice is not the interest of the stronger.

abyssmal

I think this is one of the worst movie scenes of all time:



Garden State occasioned my favorite line of movie criticism ever, issued by Jonathan V. Last, I believe:

"Never before has a film tried to dive so deep into so shallow a pool."

Batman is not Machiavelli

The new Batman movie is excellent. Thomas Hibbs, writing for First Things, provides the most perceptive review I've read yet.

Contrary to Vox Nova's Morning's Minion, I do not think the film is an advertisement for the moral philosophy of consequentialism. Morning's Minion's desire to condemn evil is so great that it blinds him. He expects total perfection from his heroes. Batman is a good man, but like all other men, he is not God; he is not perfect. In his quest for justice, he makes mistakes - just like any other human being would. The director of this great film, Christopher Nolan, excels at portraying the great struggle a good man undergoes in facing off with evil. This does not justify the evil Batman does; rather, it makes Batman more human and more realistic. As a result, we can identify with him. More importantly, we are made aware of the dangers of pursuing justice with passion.

Thomas Hibbs gets it:

The title of the Nolan’s latest Batman film calls to mind medieval chivalry in a postmodern key. The dark knight embraces extraordinary tasks and fights against enormous odds; his quest is to restore what has been corrupted and to recover what has been lost. In so doing, he takes upon himself a suffering and loneliness that isolate him from his fellow citizens and inevitably court their misunderstanding and scorn. He is a dark knight, in part, because the world he inhabits is nearly void of hope and virtue, and, in part, because some of the darkness resides within him, in his internal conflicts between the good he aspires to restore and the means he deploys to fend off evil. Of the many filmmakers designing dark tales of quests for redemption, Christopher Nolan is currently making a serious claim to being the master craftsman.

"When one is enough"

A heartbreaking story from the New York Times:

When we saw the specialist, we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one. Before the procedure, I was focused on relaxing. But Peter was staring at the sonogram screen thinking: Oh, my gosh, there are three heartbeats. I can't believe we're about to make two disappear. The doctor came in, and then Peter was asked to leave. I said, ''Can Peter stay?'' The doctor said no. I know Peter was offended by that.

17

Congratulations to the Boston Celtics!

"Magic Johnson Shares 'Thoughts' On Lakers-Celtics Finals"

BOSTON — Appearing on ESPN's SportsCenter Wednesday, former Lakers point guard Magic Johnson provided his "thoughts," "insights," and "analysis" of the NBA Finals matchup between the Lakers and the Celtics, assuring viewers that the series will hinge on "whoever team does its things better more." "I think this, I think, this is really going to come down to basically overall game play and which team can win four or five games, and do it first," said the three-time NBA MVP, adding that scoring could also be as much of a major factor on the outcome as total points. "There's also a possible definite possibility of matchups occurring. Could happen, yeah. And we can't overlook the influence that—that that effect or effects, might have on something." When pressed by SportsCenter anchor Rece Davis as to which team was favored, Johnson responded by saying "the one that's going to win...Win the NBA championship."

bahah... I love the Onion, but poor MJ.

go Celtics!

perceptive Nietzsche

"I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar."
- Twilight of the Idols

i.e., We will not have killed God until we have killed grammar. Think modern linguistics and literary theory, eh?

technology and education

I am highly sympathetic to the argument advanced by "The Dumbest Generation", mentioned in the Wall Street Journal

Adults are so busy imagining the ways that technology can improve classroom learning or improve the public debate that they've blinded themselves to the collective dumbing down that is actually taking place. The kids are using their technological advantage to immerse themselves in a trivial, solipsistic, distracting online world at the expense of more enriching activities – like opening a book or writing complete sentences.

Mr. Bauerlein presents a wealth of data to show that young people, with the aid of digital media, are intensely focusing on themselves, their peers and the present moment. YouTube and MySpace, he says, are revealingly named: These and other top Web destinations are "peer to peer" environments in the sense that their juvenile users have populated them with predictably juvenile content. The sites where students spend most of their time "harden adolescent styles and thoughts, amplifying the discourse of the lunchroom and keg party, not spreading the works of the Old Masters."

Technology is not an unqualified good. A good conservative ought put their foot down and say something about this, eh?

some quick recommendations

I have recently had the great pleasure of reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The book is a resounding testament to the deleterious effects arrogance can have on science. If you want to be entertained, I recommend reading it along with David Berlinski's The Devil's Delusion, a highly entertaining book that assesses the argument at hand. Finally, I must mention the movie Iron Man: it is awesome.

intellectual empathy

A dispiriting essay from Alan Charles Kors at the New Criterion

The academic world I so loved revealed itself best in an undergraduate course I’d taken on the history of Europe in the twentieth century. When the professor, a distinguished intellectual of the Left, returned the midterms to the hundred plus or so of us who were in his course, he said that we’d saddened and embarrassed him. “I gave you readings that allowed you to reach such diverse conclusions,” he explained, “but you all told me what you thought I wanted to hear.” He informed us that he would add a major section to the final exam: “I’m going to assign the book I disagree with most about the twentieth century. I’m not going to ask you to criticize it, but, instead, to re-create its arguments with intellectual empathy, demonstrating that you understand the perspectives from which he understands and analyzes the world.” I was moved by that. The work was Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and it changed the course of my intellectual and moral life. It also showed me immediately how I wanted to teach as an intellectual historian. Each year, I teach thinkers as diverse as Pascal and Spinoza, Hobbes and Butler, Wesley and Diderot. I offer courses on intellectual history, and the goal of my teaching is to make certain that my students understand the perspectives and rich debates that have shaped the dialogue of the West. I don’t want disciples of my worldview. I want students who know how to read deeply, how to analyze, how to locate the essential points of similarity and divergence among thinkers, and, indeed, how to understand, with intellectual empathy, how the world looks from the diverse perspectives that constitute the history of European thought. I know that I am not alone, but I also know, alas, that I am in a distinct minority in my pedagogical goals in the humanities and the so-called social sciences.

Imagine a professor doing that today? Intellectual empathy! What a great concept.