This is the 200th edition of Weekly Meanderings,
and we get this nice greeting from a Snow Leopard baby!
(And I must be crazy.)
John Frye sees Jesus as a discernment artist. This is a good read and a big idea.
Andy Stanley at his best.
David Dunbar nails it for many of us. Time to get off the bus.Allan Bevere posts a map of the most and least religious States.
Chaplain Mike, at iMonk, leads a writers’ roundtable.
A good chart on motherhood. (HT: RJS/MK)
The sex life of college students (on one campus).
Sarah asks “Do you do denominations?”
The skinny on diets.
Meanderings in the News
1. From The Washington Post: “These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.”
2. Robert Marquand, at CSM, sums it all up with this: “Vatican officials today said the attempt to ordain women in the Roman Catholic church is not an equal crime to priestly pedophilia – even as critics point out that in practice, the ordination of women is dealt with more harshly inside the church than are charges of priests abusing children.”
3. Russ Reno: “But even Benedict’s renewal can only do so much. The Vatican also needs a more flexible central command, one capable of coordinated, intelligent responses to challenges. Her governing structures and bureaucracies are superannuated forms of a system originally designed to run a Church thoroughly intertwined with European society, not a vibrant, active, and counter-cultural Church. The Church needs a leadership that know they are always at a disadvantage, and that they can no longer rely on deference or favors if she is to meet the storm, and it will be a storm, of social disestablishment and elite hostility .”
4. E.J. Dionne Jr., on Obama’s centrist ideas: “But this should not be seen as an alibi for Obama as the moderate, misunderstood progressive, though this is more or less what he is. The president’s most important tasks include convincing the public that he’s doing the right thing and improving the standing of the politicians who support him in doing it. Here is where Obama has fallen down on the job.”6. David Brooks: “When historians look back on this p
eriod, they will see it as another progressive era. It is not a liberal era — when government intervenes to seize wealth and power and distribute it to the have-nots. It’s not a conservative era, when the governing class concedes that the world is too complicated to be managed from the center. It’s a progressive era, based on the faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems. This progressive era is being promulgated without much popular support. It’s being led by a large class of educated professionals, who have been trained to do technocratic analysis, who believe that more analysis and rule-writing is the solution to social breakdowns, and who have constructed ever-expanding networks of offices, schools and contracts.”
eriod, they will see it as another progressive era. It is not a liberal era — when government intervenes to seize wealth and power and distribute it to the have-nots. It’s not a conservative era, when the governing class concedes that the world is too complicated to be managed from the center. It’s a progressive era, based on the faith in government experts and their ability to use social science analysis to manage complex systems. This progressive era is being promulgated without much popular support. It’s being led by a large class of educated professionals, who have been trained to do technocratic analysis, who believe that more analysis and rule-writing is the solution to social breakdowns, and who have constructed ever-expanding networks of offices, schools and contracts.”
8. Ross Douthat on university admissions: “If such universities are trying to create an elite as diverse as the nation it inhabits, they should remember that there’s more to diversity than skin color — and that both their school and their country might be better off if they admitted a few more R.O.T.C. cadets, and a few more aspiring farmers.”
9. This has to stop… the sooner the better. (HT: JT)
10. Who is surprised by this? Just sayin.
Meanderings in Sports
Sports writers are all over Tiger Woods these days, with a recent spate of journalists saying Tiger’s days are over. Well, here’s my own take: I’ve not seen Tiger strike the ball as well from tee to green in a long, long time. His putter was bad. Which means this: some modest gains in putting and Tiger will again win. Tell me, when was the last time you saw Tiger hit the fairways so well and be so long as he has in his last few tourneys? It’s been awhile. A long while.
Lou Piniella will retire at the end of the season, three months later than some players.
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