Uncategorized

John Cleese Goes on Tour to Pay for Divorce

Leave a comment

John Cleese is touring England soon to pay off his third wife–or something like that.

John Cleese is to embark on his first-ever UK tour next year at the age of 71. The comedian, who recently agreed a divorce settlement believed to be in the region of £12m, has dubbed it the “Alimony Tour”.

Cleese, who rose to fame with Monty Python, promised the show would be “an evening of well-honed anecdotes, psychoanalytical titbits, details of recent surgical procedures, and unprovoked attacks on former colleagues, especially Michael Palin”.

Religion

The white churchman's burden

Leave a comment

Over at The American Spectator, Mark Tooley examines the continued pattern of condescension and patronization demonstrated by mainline Protestant denominations, in their dealings with their more conservative (and soon to be more numerous) African counterparts.

Liberal church activists are reluctant to acknowledge that African Christianity has a firm mind of its own, preferring condescendingly to portray it as primitive and easily manipulated by conservative U.S. religionists. It is true that much of African Christianity is new, somewhat similar to fast growing, early American frontier revivalism in its earnest faith, populism, and strong sense of the supernatural. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia of 2001, Africa was less than 10 percent Christian in 1900 but was over 45 percent Christian by 2000. (This compares to Islam’s growth in African from 32 percent to 40 percent.) About 20 percent of the world’s Christians now live in Africa, and rates of active church attendance are higher in Africa than in much of old Christendom. One Congolese bishop estimated that more Congolese are in a United Methodist Church on a typical Sunday than in all the United States.

Authors

From C. S. Lewis

Leave a comment

C S Lewis

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” (From “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” paragraph 8, from God in the Dock [Eerdmans, 1970]. p. 292.)



Picture credit: Getty Images.

Religion

The Gospel Is Words

Leave a comment

S.D. Smith asks whether the gospel can be given all the well without words, as the saying goes. “But the Gospel is words. It is news, Good News. It is not anything, it is something. It is particular information. . . . The victory is sealed. The Victor is enthroned.“

Uncategorized

Jobs: No Porn Apps for Apple Products

Leave a comment

I’ve often said (to myself in imaginary conversations with people who care what I think of public issues) that pornography isn’t everywhere online, but sometimes it feels as if it is. That’s why the best web filter is your own mind, which doesn’t help our kids who don’t have minds yet.

Steve Jobs shocked some Net-citizens by saying Apple’s iPad and iPhone won’t have porn apps. He said in an email, “Yep, freedom from programs that steal your private data. Freedom from programs that trash your battery. Freedom from porn. Yep, freedom. The times they are a changin’, and some traditional PC folks feel like their world is slipping away.”

As Eric Felton points out, Jobs may be promising more than he can deliver. “As long as one of the Apple Apps is an Internet browser, the bawdy side of web will still be accessible on iPhones and iPads. Still, just because Mr. Jobs won’t be able to purge his devices of blue content, that doesn’t mean he’s obliged to distribute it himself.”

A Gawker.com reporter accused Jobs of imposing his morality on us, to which Mr. Felton writes: “What a peculiar—and peculiarly modern—controversy. Is it really such an affront to the rights of those who would buy and sell pornography that someone might want the right to choose not to?”

In slightly related news, a jobs bill from the Democrats in Washington, intended “to increase investments in science, research and training programs,” was scuttled after Republicans amended it to hold back on some of the funding and to deny any funding “to salaries to those officially disciplined for violations regarding the viewing, downloading, or exchanging of pornography, including child pornography, on a federal computer or while performing official government duties.”

Fiction

The Brontes Are Returning to Hollywood

Leave a comment

Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights will be adapted for film again.

“Austen’s characters achieve their greatness through a kind of sideways movement toward happiness, (while) the Brontës hurtle themselves headlong into the maelstrom of emotions and situations,” says James Schamus, head of Focus Features.

Writing

Poor Writing Skills, If U Can Call'em That

Leave a comment

What is the purpose of public education? Is it only to employ teachers? If I was were an English teacher with hopes to achieve certain goals with my class, I would scrap those goals if my kids couldn’t write. See another sad example: failure to communicate. The writer observes, “Many of the students whose work I correct are smart, motivated, and quick to incorporate suggestions. But they have either forgotten the rules of writing, or they never learned them in the first place.”

Blogs, Socials, Religion

Call it a draw

Leave a comment

I got into a disagreement with the gang over at Threedonia today, and found myself decidedly in the minority. They are participating enthusiastically in “Draw Mohammed Day” today, and I said I couldn’t support that.

The odd thing is that, unlike most instances where I find people I like disagreeing with me, I remain pretty sure I’m right.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean I think they’re wrong.

I think we’re dealing with essentially different goals.

I believe I see the point of “Draw Mohammed Day” pretty well. In fact, for a short time I was considering participating. I can see it as a line drawn in the sand against Islamic noodgery, the constant “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine too” mindset that says they are free to insult our religion, but we have to keep our unclean hands off theirs. “This is America,” the Mohammed Drawers are saying. “In America, we may not like it if somebody insults our religion, but if somebody does, we don’t kill them. They don’t even go to jail. If you want to live here, then get used to our rules. Otherwise, go back to the Sharia paradise you came from.”

If promoting Americanism is your primary value, I entirely understand.

But my primary value is not Americanism. It’s the Kingdom of God. I want to win the Muslims for Christ, and Christ’s commandment is to love our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us.

I don’t want anybody to insult my faith. So I won’t insult theirs. Even if they started it.

Seems pretty simple to me.