An event

Hrant Drink's funeral has been quite remarkable.

Second Life

The Tablet has a story on the booming phenomenon of avatars (having an alternative self living in an imaginary digital universe). The problem, however, is not how Christianity can be a better "imaginative option." The question is whether Christianity can help us live reality so that don't feel the need to escape from it.

Clueless

A very typical result of contemporary Catholic education.

Oasis

John Allen on the presentation of Oasis yesterday in New York.

Book of the year

Sandro Magister has posted the preface to the Pope's important new book on Jesus Christ.

Not nothing

Charles Krauthammer on the latest stem cell developments.

Exodus II

Spiegel has a good piece on Christians in the middle east.

Exodus

A Saudi journalist realizes that there is a problem.

Nation vs. revolution

A helpful update on Iran.

Intolerance

An unusual column for the Guardian.

In flux

For those interested, the National Journal has a long and informative story on federal funding of the so-called faith-based initiatives (social works started by religiously-motivated groups).

Incurious people

It is true: the recent wave of atheists seem to be at the same time more ignorant and presumptuous than their predecessors. This partly due to the shallowness of what passes for "scientific" education.

Santa attack

Santa Claus boldly shows up in Kabylie. We hope nobody shoots him down.

Angry ghosts

The pervasive, moralistic anger in our public life is an obvious sign of a weak human fabric and of progressive detachment from reality, in which the person becomes

a ghostlike figure, perpetually in search of “something solid against which it can prove its own existence.” New Anger, Wood concludes, “is the desperately intense effort of these ghosts to feel real.”

For good examples of dogmatic, unquestioning, utterly moralistic and irrational anger, you can always rely on the editorial page of the Boston Globe. The possibility that people who disagree with them may have motives other than bigotry and ignorance never, ever arises. No fundamental questions (What are "rights?" Where do they come from? What is marriage?) are ever asked.

Antropomorphism

This has a few good lines, especially the "Great Big Professor Dawkins in the sky" one.