Episcopal Churches Breakaway in Va. Evolved Over 30 Years – washingtonpost.com Speaking in tongues? Getting slain in the spirit? There ought to be room under the big Anglican tent for charismatic Episcopal churches. But anti-rationalism and "mass" hysteria? Most un-Anglican.
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Cloudbait Observatory – January 4, 2007 Fireball A large object, thought to be a Russian second-stage rocket from a launch last week, broke up over the West in a spectacular display this morning may have been visible from Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico in addition to Colorado. It made the morning news in Denver because commute-report news helicopters managed to capture good video images of it. It passed very close to Grand Junction, my home town and a fairly large population center. If you saw the object, you can file a report at the Cloudbait.com site. I don't know if it would…
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Jefferson on Politics & Government: Governed by Reason Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." –Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787. ME 6:258 Papers 12:15 I can't believe that no one has ever used this as a book title; there are plenty of books that reference it. What a perfect image, and a most timely and reassuring quote. Ran across it in a couple of comments at Faithful Progressive, where WWDTM's Roxanne Roberts is quoted from her Washington Post…
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NPR : Ellison to Use Thomas Jeffersons Quran in Ceremony Newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison announced last month that he planned to take the oath of office with his hand on the Quran. The decision by the Minnesota Democrat, the first Muslim elected to Congress, drew criticism. But now Ellison says he plans to use a copy of the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Michele Norris talks with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, who helped Ellison locate Jeffersons Quran. You know what? This is all right. All right.…
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NPR : Harrison Ford Returns As Indiana Jones Another graying action star is reviving an old role. Harrison Ford will once again crack the whip, 18 years after Indiana Jones' last adventure. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are also back, directing and producing. Excited fans do wonder if, at 64, Indy can still do the stunts. I'm wondering, too. I'll never forget the time I saw the first Indiana Jones movie, which was around New Years when I was still in college. I've been a fan of Harrison Ford's since American Graffiti and Star Wars (okay, yes, I've had the…
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Wondermark by David Malki – 261: In which James Brown is … well, you know I listened to an NPR retrospective on James Brown the other day. I didn't know his songs were always in the same key. I hadn't realized how repetitive they were until I listened to several full length songs during the course of the show. And now I know that he's an artist best heard sampled on other people's tracks, because the funk should never be boring. There. I said it. Via Joey, whose new site redesign is lookin' sharp, but why is the accordion player headless?
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NPR : Notes on the Real Gerald Ford Just now on MSNBC's coverage of President Ford's funeral, an old Washington pol was trotting out the "Nixon and Ford had a deeper friendship than previously thought" meme. According to DeFranco on NPR this morning, it's utter bunk. Nixon used to say to anyone in hearing that Ford was stupid, while Ford was much, much smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Apparenlty, he's the only President who was able to conduct his own budget briefing, a complicated affair usually left to experts. Bet Bush leaves it to people with higher math skills.…
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Boing Boing: Grand Canyon bookstore still selling Creationist myth Unbelievable. BoingBoing reported years ago that the official bookstore at the Grand Canyon was selling a book that claimed that it was the result of Noah's flood and was therefore explicable in a fundamentalist, Bible-based world-view. I once had the distinct displeasure of arguing with someone who actually believed this kind of thing; the sciences of geology and stratigraphy were dismissed as some sort of side-effect of the first day of Creation. All the embedded fossils were held to be tricks of the Devil, meant to distract us from the Biblical…
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Caveat Lector » Trafalgar and Westminster Despite my mother’s enthusiastic recommendation, I found Westminster Abbey a difficult place to visit, and should I return to London, I don’t believe I will return there. The church itself is well-built and handsome, but its graceful old bones are impossible to see for all the plaques and busts and sculptures and coats-of-arms and regimental flags and inscriptions and decorated tombs and every other imaginable memorial created by the hand of man tumbling all over each other and fighting for attention. Many of them would be quite beautiful, were there enough negative space around…
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In the sky A bird? A plane? A … UFO? | Chicago Tribune It sounds like a tired joke–but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously. A flying saucerlike object hovered low over OHare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon. Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the worlds second-busiest…