Month: March 2005

A Comment-Requesting Request

The other day I posted a request for folks who send me news stories to blog to please be sure to include a link to the story to make it easier on me to point people to the original source.

I’d like to make another request that I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of days. It also would make it easier for me to respond to questions folks have. Here’s the situation:

  1. Sometimes in the comboxes people will raise an issue and say "maybe Jimmy can address this."
  2. I see most of the comments that get posted (though a few get away from me), and so I (usually) see these requests and make a mental note to respond, BUT–
  3. I usually can’t compose a response at the time. There are only certain hours of the day I have free to actually compose posts (though I have more liberty in reading what people are saying or posting my own comments).
  4. Therefore, I end up forgetting either the request itself or where it is located. As a result, despite my best intentions, I end up not responding.

Therefore . . .

If you raise something in the comments box that you’d like me to respond to, could you send me a quick e-mail and do one of two things:

  1. Include a link to the comment (which you could get in the Recent Comments sidebar), or
  2. Paste the text of the comment into the e-mail so I’ll have the text of the request handy.

Thanks much! This should make it much easier for me to respond to such requests, it being easier for me to keep track of what’s in my (single) inbox than in (numerous) comboxes.

The Gravity of Cohabitation

A reader writes:

Hi Jimmy,

Didn’t want to post this question in the comment box in light of rule #20 —

Regarding cohabitation without conjugal relations — is this a mortal sin in of itself, or a near occasion of sin?  I had thought the latter, but I’m really unsure..

Don’t worry. This wouln’t be a Rule 20 violation. It’s just a question.

The moral disorder of cohabitation is twofold:

1) It puts the parties (assuming they are normal heterosexuals who are not closely related to each other) in the proximate occasion of sin. Depending on the degree of temptation they experience, this evil is more or less grave. If (theoretically speaking) there is zero temptation then there is no proximity to the occasion of sin and thus (theoretically) no evil in this regard. On the other hand, if the temptation to physical or mental unchastity is grave then the evil in this regard is grave.

2) It can be the cause of scandal. The example that the couple sets may lead others to suppose that what they are doing (living together) or what they are perceived as doing (having conjugal relations outside of marriage) are morally licit–or sufficiently morally licit that others are more inclined to do the same thing(s). The gravity of the evil in this case is determined by the likelihood and the intensity of the scandal that may result (e.g., how many people will be affected by the couple’s example, how likely it is that they will be tempted to do something they shouldn’t, and what precisely that is–whether it is cohabiting or having conjugal relations, which may lead to STDs or pregnancy, which may lead to contraception or abortion, etc., etc., etc.)

MSM Misses Major Story!

Here’s something that happens sometimes:

  1. You got to Drudge or another Alt-Media news source (e.g., a blog) that provides links to stories on MSM sources.
  2. One particular link is really intriguing.
  3. You click it to get to the story on the other side of the link.
  4. You find out that the headline, and most of the story, is not at all what was suggested by the link.
  5. What’s happened is that the linker picked something out of the story that he considered the most important point, even though it was buried in a longer piece.
  6. You agreed with him: This was the most important point. So you’re disappointed that the whole story isn’t about it.

This is happening more and more, and it’s a reflection of a new Internet reality: The MSM is no longer in charge of headlines.

Sure, they are in charge of the headlines that they give stories on their own sites. But they’re not in charge of the headlines given to the same stories when they are linked on other sites.

TAKE THIS STORY, FOR EXAMPLE.

The MSM headline for it is "Dearborn resident helped terror group." As it’s written, it’s about a Middle Eastern man who lives in Dearborn, Michigan who has admitted to helping Hezbollah and who has now gone to jail.

That’s not the real story, though.

The real story is buried toward the end of the piece:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Kourani bribed a Mexican consular official in Beirut to get a visa to travel to Mexico. Kourani and a traveling companion then paid another man in Mexico to be smuggled across the southern U.S. border Feb. 4, 2001, the government said.

WAIT A COTTON-PIKKIN’ MINNIT!

We have VERIFIED PROOF that terrorists (like this yahoo) have been sneaking across the Mexican border???

THAT’S the story!!!

People have been concerned about this for a long time, but if we’ve actually CAUGHT somebody who DID it, THAT’S the fact that need to be trumpeted from the housetops!

It’s what needs to go at the top of the "inverted pyramid" that journalists are supposed to use in writing their stories (whereby the most important fact is mentioned first, then the second most important fact, then the third, and so on).

Drudge got it right when he headlined this story as terrorists sneaking across the southern border.

The MSM missed the REAL story in trying to slavishly viewing these events through "the local angle."

JAPAN: Maybe We Should Build A Moonbase?

Japan is thinking about building a moon base.

GET THE STORY.

I’m kind of apprehensive, though.

Sounds too much to me like the beginning of Gamera vs. Zigra.

What will be interesting to see is what happens when several nations have bases on the moon and we start using its resources and things get . . . territorial. The Antartica treaty may make a useful parallel for a lunar exploitation treaty for a piece, but then things will get . . . competative.

N.Y. YAHOOS: Let's Make Fun Of The Pope's Death

Nyp As you may know, there’s a free paper in New York called the New York Press that has run a list of the 52 "funniest" things about John Paul II’s eventual death.

I’ve been asked to comment about this but other than saying that I’m sickened by the very idea, I have been hampered by the fact that I can’t read the list. The web page containing it has unfortunately (fortunately) been Drugealanched and may have even been taken down.

HOWEVER, HERE’S SOME COMMENTARY YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: A kindly reader (cowboy hat tip to him) sent THIS LINK, which appears to be the original article in an un-lanched form. WARNING! Highly offensive from the get-go! (#47 is mild compared to some, including #52).

N.Y. YAHOOS: Let’s Make Fun Of The Pope’s Death

Nyp As you may know, there’s a free paper in New York called the New York Press that has run a list of the 52 "funniest" things about John Paul II’s eventual death.

I’ve been asked to comment about this but other than saying that I’m sickened by the very idea, I have been hampered by the fact that I can’t read the list. The web page containing it has unfortunately (fortunately) been Drugealanched and may have even been taken down.

HOWEVER, HERE’S SOME COMMENTARY YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHECK OUT.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: A kindly reader (cowboy hat tip to him) sent THIS LINK, which appears to be the original article in an un-lanched form. WARNING! Highly offensive from the get-go! (#47 is mild compared to some, including #52).

3 . . . 4 . . . 5 . . .

It’s a numerical day!

Or one with a special (if trivial) numerical significance.

I just had to sign a dead tree form (something I rarely do these days), and needed to fill in the date. I realized that, numerically, today is 3/4/05 (at least here in the U.S.).

3 . . . 4 . . . 5 . . .

A moment’s reflection revealed that only one such day would occur each year, and only in the first twelve years of a century.

So: Cherish these meaningless numerical days while you can! They won’t last!

The Post-Atheist World

Y’know how we’re always hearing about the post-Christian world?

Well, there’s an element of truth in that–at least when it comes to Europe and to a lesser-extent the English-speaking world.

But Christianity ain’t the only religion that’s having its troubles.

So’s atheism.

CHECK THIS STORY ON THE DECLINE OF ATHEISM WORLDWIDE.

Excerpts:

There seems to be a growing consensus around the globe that godlessness is in trouble.

"Atheism as a theoretical position is in decline worldwide," Munich theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg told United Press International Tuesday.

His Oxford colleague Alister McGrath agrees. Atheism’s "future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its habitat," he wrote in the U.S. magazine, Christianity Today.

Two developments are plaguing atheism these days. One is that it appears to be losing its scientific underpinnings. The other is the historical experience of hundreds of millions of people worldwide that atheists are in no position to claim the moral high ground.

A few years ago, European scientists sniggered when studies in the United States – for example, at Harvard and Duke universities – showed a correlation between faith, prayer and recovery from illness. Now 1,200 studies at research centers around the world have come to similar conclusions, according to "Psychologie Heute," a German journal, citing, for example, the marked improvement of multiple sclerosis patients in Germany’s Ruhr District due to "spiritual resources."

Zulehner cautions, however, that in the rest of Europe re-Christianization is by no means occurring. "What we are observing instead is a re-paganization," he went on.

As for the "peril of spirituality," Zulehner sounded quite sanguine. He concluded from his research that in the long run the survival of worldviews should be expected to follow this lineup:

"The great world religions are best placed," he said. As a distant second he sees the diffuse forms of spirituality. Atheism, he insisted, will come in at the tail end.

I found especially interesting this bit:

John Updike’s observation, "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been is drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position," appears to become common currency throughout much of the West.

When you think about it, atheism is startlingly uninteresting an flat as a worldview compared to either theism or polytheism. It also makes the world a horror show since mankind would be a cosmic accident with nobody up there caring about him.

Hence, if you’re an atheist, like H. P. Lovecraft and you think the world is a big horror show due to being God-less, you might do something like . . . write horror stories.