CapitalistImperialistPig

Andrew Sullivan, riffing on the statement of Pope Francis about gays, Lexuses, and other matters. One of the most telling things about Jesus is that he did not elucidate a theology. It had to be inferred by Paul. Jesus merely told stories of great charm and mystery. But he also clearly transformed the lives of those he encountered by the way in which he lived and died. It was that that convinced so many that this human being wasn’t just any other human being, that the divine had somehow transformed him, and he could transform others.

In my debates with the anti-MOOCitariat, one of the most frequent claims made for the in-person professoriat is that they "teach students how to think." I was talking recently to a entrepreneur who had been involved in trying to set up a program in his industry at a local University. He described how the committee of young professors and he had worked out what skills an entry level person in his industry needed and were all in general agreement. At that point the Dean showed up. He pronounced that the University could not be a "trade school" school because that wasn't what they did. What they did do, said the Dean, was teach people how to think. At this point, the entrepreneur gave up in disgust. You can teach people skills, he said, but nobody ever taught anybody how to think. My instinct was to agree, but I had a nagging feeling that there were parts of the thinking process that could be taught. How to analyze a problem or an argument, for example. So...

The modern recourse for anyone (or anyone wealthy enough) caught in public misbehavior is rehab. San Diego Mayor Bob Filner tries it out. If Hitler were alive today he wouldn't kill himself but instead promise to do six months intensive rehab.

G. K. Chesterton is a big fan of the medieval period and of the Catholic Church. He may not be an entirely reliable reporter, but has some interesting ideas. One of them is the notion that medieval times were an age of great human progress, perhaps especially in England. He credits the Church with the major influence in transforming a world of landholders and agricultural slaves into first serfs and later peasant proprietors. He also sees nascent democracy and egalitarianism in medieval institutions of guilds and charters. At the beginning of the Dark Ages the great pagan cosmopolitan society now grown Christian was as much a slave state as old South Carolina. By the fourteenth century it was almost as much a state of peasant proprietors as modern France. No laws had been passed against slavery; no dogmas even had condemned it by definition; no war had been waged against it, no new race or ruling caste had repudiated it; but it was gone. This startling and silent transformation ...

From Josh Marshall : Bizarro fairyland country decides helpless newborn infant will be future head of state.

I've been reading G. K. Chesterton's A Short History of England . It's not so much a history as some idiosyncratic commentaries on English history from an unconventional point of view. One early comment that got my attention: ...the Romans returned and turned Britain into a Roman province, they continued to display a singular indifference to questions that have excited so many professors. What they cared about was getting and giving in Britain what they had got and given in Gaul. We do not know whether the Britons then, or for that matter the Britons now, were Iberian or Cymric or Teutonic. We do know that in a short time they were Roman. Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith) (2012-05-12). A Short History of England (Kindle Locations 93-96). . Kindle Edition. However the Romans found Britain, they left it Roman, says Chesterton. Of course the same is true of much of the rest of Europe, and was true of much of the Middle East and North Africa. Despite repeated invasions f...

Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi let slip to his 26 year-old girlfriend that he and Whitey Bulger were FBI informants. For this, Whitey decided, she had to die, so Flemmi stood by while Bulger strangled her.