American Future : Being Anti-War

Hmmm.

Church of the Masses: Narnia - Deep Magic

Barbara Nicolosi was invited to a screening of the new Narnia movie, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Her posts here and here.

hat tip: The Curt Jester

One government, one cheer - Comment - Times Online

Regarding Angela Merkel's win in Germany, a commentator in The Times (London) notes:

[...]

The two immediate questions are: will this coalition be stable and coherent? And can Frau Merkel push through any of the changes urgently needed to reform Germany’s economy? Smiling wanly, she insisted yesterday that the economy would be her main focus and the new coalition stood for “new policies”. Already, however, she has conceded too much....

[...]

Given these contradictions, the prospects of a stable coalition are slim. It may run without fatal conflict for a few months, as the SPD will want to demonstrate maturity and responsibility and show that the coalition is merely continuing reforms already begun by Herr Schröder. But when real change is contemplated, the SDP will be tempted back to populist politics and Cabinet wrangling will begin. Each side will then want to go to the voters to increase its power. Only the deluded can see a long period of political stability.

Frau Merkel has little time, therefore, to establish herself...

Full commentary

Europe Relieved as German Limbo Ends | Europe | Deutsche Welle |

After three weeks of wrangling following close elections, Angela Merkel has apparently landed on top and will be the next German Chancellor. But she's heading a coalition that appears fractured and contentious from the get-go, and several ministries will stay in the hands of the outgoing Chancellor's party. This could be interesting, as we say around here.

This Illiterate Brazilian's Home Speaks Volumes - Los Angeles Times

Great story. A construction worker in Brazil has started a public library in his home because his community didn't have one. Never mind that he can't afford to buy any books and can barely read himself...

hat tip: A Constrained Vision

"Cycles of Silver: Global Economic Unity through the Mid-Eighteenth Century"

This article by Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez, from the Fall 2002 Journal of World History, pp 391-427, reprinted here in pdf by learner.org, has some interesting perspectives and a lot of information.

The authors contend that to speak in terms of "money" instead of breaking it down into the actual monetary substances - the four main ones in the 16th through 18th centuries being gold, silver, copper and cowries (shells) - gets in the way of understanding the patterns of production and trade and, in their opinion, world history.

This is not a snappy read by any stretch, but it does provide an interesting way of looking at things, plus includes some surprising information. For instance, the authors claim that at the end of the sixteenth century, more Mexican money was circulating in southern China than in Mexico. Also, the introduction of American crops fundamentally changed China's society and economy by allowing heavy population shifts into non-rice-producing areas. They also contend that the founding of Manila by the Spanish in 1571 marks the birth year of global trade.

The "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said" debate

I find it rather interesting that these days many intellectuals - including staunch 'pro-choice' partisans - are publicly debating the merits, faults, and particulars of the United States Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision.

For instance, Jane Roh, reporting for Fox News, Sept. 22, 2005, in an article titled "Experts See Legal Abortion Without Roe" noted:

...Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School, asked some of the nation's foremost constitutional law scholars to imagine how they might have written Roe. The results are compiled in "What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: America's Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision."...

What Roe v. Wade Should Have Said: The Nations Top Legal Experts Rewrite America's Most Controversial Decision

Click on the book cover above for the information available at Barnes & Noble.

Balkin, writing on his blog Balkinization, gave an introduction to the book here. (July 18, 2005). His scholars, I should add, include pro-life voices - and Balkin allows moral objections to be raised, along with the procedural objections, in his book. His eleven scholars come at the debate from every which way, and come to different conclusions about what the Supreme Court should have done, but he appears to let them each have their say. It's a university press book, and therefore a bit pricey, but it sounds like it might be a good resource for anyone interested in this particular debate.

Anybody who has actually read the book, please leave notes in the comments. Specifically, is it understandable to people who aren't constitutional law experts? From the summary in Balkin's blog post I'm thinking that it would be, but I'm making a guess here.

Released this week: My FBI, by Louis Freeh

This book, you may have noticed, is stirring up a bit of fuss here and there, especially amongst the Clinton crowd. The release date is tomorrow. Click on the book cover for basic information from Barnes & Noble.


My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror

Update: For whatever reason, the book cover link is going to the Barnes & Noble front page instead of directly to the book in question. I've redone the link, but to no avail. I'll keep working on it, but for now you'll have to take the extra step of typing in the book info and doing a search. Sorry about the inconvenience.

The Anchoress : Chesterton on a Rainy Day

A collection of quotes, from Chesterton. Gems, as usual. (Use title link.)

In honor of 1492...

My kind of sale -- for Columbus Day, the Coldwater Creek Outlet is selling clothes for $14.92 or less. Yay! (Title link is to the outlet generically. Sale prices and stock will change with time.)

Against a dictatorship of relativism: New blogs!

Dev Thakur is expanding his blogroll, and shares some of his latest finds.

Mark Mossa: Finally, "Silence"?

Mark Mossa is excited that one of his favorite novels - about 16th century Portuguese missionaries to Japan - might be coming to the big screen. The novel is Silence, by Japanese Catholic novelist Shukasu Endo. (Use title link for Mossa's post.) Click on the book cover below for information on the book from Barnes & Noble.


Silence

Mossa, a Jesuit steering toward ordination in 2008, hosts the You Duped Me Lord blog. I keep meaning to ask him about that blog name...

Update: He left an explanation in the comments, which I'm bumping up here:

Check out Jeremiah 20 in the New American Bible translation. That's where the name comes from. I love it because expresses the frustrating and wonderful truth about vocation that it never is quite what you imagined it would be, because God knows that if he told you what was going to happen, you probably wouldn't have done it. We have to grow into our vocations, and sometimes we might get a little angry at God in the process! But read on in that chapter and you'll see that Jeremiah has been inescapably captured by God in spite of everything. I can relate.

Peace,

Mark

I'm well traveled (at SiteMeter)

I hadn't checked my stats in a while, so I headed over to see where in the world my visitors are coming from. And I found, to my surprise, that I appear to be moving around considerably. Of late, at one time or another I've been pinpointed as being in three different towns in Oregon (none of which being the one I actually live in), and some place in Washington state, and now I'm supposedly in Monroe, Louisiana. I guess it just depends on how CenturyTel has things routed? Maybe?

Hmmm. If I remember right, the last time I got listed in the stats as being in Louisiana a gopher had cut phone lines up here in the Northwest. I hope we're not having some other problems like that.

In case you're wondering where my most recent visitors (supposedly) come from, the list includes Kalamazoo, Michigan; New York; Camarillo, California; Alameda, California; Woking, Bracknell Forest, UK; Houston, Texas; Hawaii; Plattsburgh, New York; Deschnes, Quebec, Canada; San Leandro, California; London, Lambeth, UK; Spain; Seattle, Washington; Lancaster, Blackpool, UK; Springfield, Virginia; Ellicott City, Maryland; Lewiston, New York; Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Federal, Entre Rios, Argentina; Hehlrath, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany; Arlington Heights, Illinois; Trenton, New Jersey; Dover, Massachusetts; Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK; Montville, New Jersey; Bloomington, Indiana; Jamestown, North Dakota...

Slobokan's Site O' Schtuff :Yep, I'm Chillin

Yesterday, Slobokan set himself to the task of finding some of the best non-hysterical posts of the day about the Harriet Miers nomination to the United States Supreme Court. He has joined the Coalition of the Chillin': SCOTUS Division over at Patrick Ruffini's blog.

Ruffini had some interesting posts on Harriet Miers Oct. 3 and Oct. 5.

Bookworm Room: Technical help requested

Bookworm is looking for technical help with Technorati tags and with categorizing posts in Blogger. Go here, if you can help.

Baby names

We have received an e-mail in which we learn that a shirt-tail relative, connected to us in some way through a cousin of my husband's, has just had a baby girl, who has been named Gracie Allen Last-Name-Withheld-By-Me.

On the one hand, I'm delighted that there are young people out there who know and admire one of the funniest performers America has ever produced. (Full disclosure: one of my cats is named after Gracie Allen - another after her husband, George Burns.) On the other, to give the poor child the entire moniker instead of, say, naming her Gracie Something-Else (or naming her Grace Something-Else and calling her Gracie) seems a bit much.

This is not to say it can't be worse. See what the actor Nicholas Cage did to his son recently, for a sad example.

Then there are friends of ours, who, being not the least Greek as far as I can tell, named their baby girl Anakhoreo Ilona Last-Name-Withheld-By-Me. And, no, I'm not entirely sure how to pronounce it. (And I had to go back to an e-mail to make sure I had the spelling right.) The friends and relatives were (and are) a bit flummoxed. Plan A, amongst some of us surprised friends and relatives, was to call the dear child Anna. As it happens, though, she is usually referred to as Oreo, as in the cookie. Some people think this is cute.

I appreciate not wanting to go with the crowd on names. There are real problems with naming a child with an over-popular name. I'm 49, which means I was born during a "Kathy" glut. All the way through school, I was never the only Kathy in any given classroom. All through grade school, there were three of us, and we were required to use our last name initials at all times. In junior high and high school, where the grade schools converged, it got worse. In college, I got lumped with the other Kathys, particularly the one in the room next to mine, under the classification "The Kathys," and was introduced, as often as not, simply as "One of the Kathys." When I lived briefly in a big city, my fellow apartment dwellers dubbed me Kathy 27 (I think it was 27) the day I moved into the complex. It was not that I was the 27th Kathy to live there - oh, no, there were far more than that. I got the Kathy slot that had just come open, when the previous Kathy 27 moved away. Everybody thought it was funny. Except me. It's hard enough feeling like an individual in a big city without the neighbors refusing to learn your last name because your first name is part of a local running joke.

My sister had the opposite problem. She was given an unusual-looking and unusual-sounding name based on a last name, with a "De" in front of it. Teachers had to ask for instructions before teaching her how to write it. In databases, it winds up with a space and without one. Until the Internet came along, my sister was convinced that she was the only person in the world with her particular first name. Now we find that although it's uncommon, it is used as a first name, and has been used as such since colonial days. Especially in the South. (Particularly in Louisiana. Usually for guys. Not what she wanted to know.) In her younger days, she defiantly refused to answer to a nickname. In recent years, she has insisted upon one. (Her new husband, she tells me, is rather fond of the full, formal name, and may undercut her on her nickname quest.)

I expect that child naming is something of a lose-lose proposition. No matter what you come up with, the kid will almost certainly be upset about it at some point or points, for one reason or another (too common, too strange, too much someone else's name, too old-fashioned, too trendy, not trendy enough...). But sometimes I wonder what some people are thinking when they name their children. At the one time in their lives when they should be having their eyes solidly on the future, why is it that so many parents seem to have 'cuteness attacks' that make them give a cute or 'clever' or babyish name to someone who, barring catastrophe, will be a baby only a short time before launching into adulthood, when such a name will probably be jarringly out of place?

Reasoned Audacity: Politics in Real Life: Celebration!

Blogging News: Charmaine Yoest's blog, Reasoned Audacity, has burst through the 100,000 visits mark. Congrats!

Commentary: Afterthoughts on the Aftermath of the New Orleans Flood

D. Eric Schansberg, professor of economics at Indiana University Southeast and an adjunct scholar at the Acton Institute, looks at the lessons to be learned from the response to Hurricane Katrina - one of which, in his opinion, is "Private charitable activity is always better."

hat tip: Jonathan Spalink at PowerBlog

Coming in November: John Paul the Great, by Peggy Noonan

John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father

Click on the book cover for particulars from Barnes & Noble. (And, yes, I'm an affiliate, so I'd get a little commission money if you happened to order anything from Barnes & Noble on that visit. I guess I need to say that from time to time to fulfill the full disclosure requirements?)

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan : The Miers Misstep

In a column revolving around the nomination of Harriet Miers to the United States Supreme Court, Peggy Noonan makes a proposal which sounds good to me:

I find myself lately not passionately supporting or opposing any particular nominee. But I'd give a great deal to see Supreme Court justices term-limited. They should be picked not for life but for a specific term of specific length, and then be released back into the community. This would involve amending the Constitution. Why not? We'd amend it to ban flag-burning, even though a fool burning a flag can't possibly harm our country. But a Kelo decision and a court unrebuked for it can really tear the fabric of a nation.

Full column