Paper Clippings The Blog of The Crossroads Cultural Center

Paper Clippings, more than a classical blog, is a service providing valuable reading material in order to help readers reach a judgment about current affairs. Comments and discussion are more than welcome.

Wednesday
Apr262006

Redesigning the Intelligent Design

What's going on with the Intelligent Design movement? After a federal judge in December stopped Intelligent Design from being taught in a Pennsylvania school district, the Seattle think tank that promotes the challenge to Darwinism is struggling.

Wednesday
Apr262006

The Judas Code?

A lot of people out there have a dream: To become the next Dan Brown. Maybe all the buzz around the Gospel of Judas can help them...

Saturday
Apr222006

Tap-tappity-tap

An obituary for Muriel Sparks.

Saturday
Apr222006

Paralysis

This summary of the European situation is unfortunately accurate.

Monday
Apr172006

Ideological folly

According to these analyses in the Daily Telegraph and the New Republic, the odds of Iran starting a world war are extremely serious.

Saturday
Apr152006

Losers

This article on the contemporary dance scene in New York is somewhat interesting because it points to a simple fact: contrary to all romantic notions, art is not a spontaneous, self-supporting enterprise that springs eternal from the genius of the artist. Instead, art reflects the depth of a civilization and the education of a people. If people are not educated, art will wither away, regardless of all the hype in the New York Times.

Saturday
Apr152006

Getting worse

More attacks on Christians in Egypt.

Wednesday
Apr122006

Grace

If this ends up in the New Republic it may be a sign of something.

Wednesday
Apr122006

Elections in Italy

The Times gives a fairly correct assessment of the Italian political situation.

Monday
Apr102006

Promising young man

Ross Douthat is one of the more intelligent young observers of the US political scene.

Sunday
Apr092006

Big yawn

Philip Jenkins discusses why the Gospel of Judas does not tell us anything new about early Cristianity. It does say something about the agenda of its promoters...

Thursday
Apr062006

Old heresies...

A new gnostic apocriphal gospel that was condemned by St. Ireneus has been found. The NYTimes is all excited for the usual silly reasons...

Saturday
Apr012006

Good sign

This lead article in American Educator is excellent. It talks about teaching to read, but what it is really about is the Deweyan ideology that has devastated American education since the 1920's. It forcefully makes the astonishing point that education is about transmitting knowledge. And that you cannot learn any method ("skills") separate for facing some object ("content"). The whole issue of the magazine is about teachers who discovered that kids like to be introduced to reality ("gain knowledge") as opposed to be taught tricks like circus dogs ("developing strategies"). If this points to a larger shift in the educational establishment, it would be one of the best things that happened to this country in a long time.

Thursday
Mar302006

Hard to tell

The big question about politics in the Middle East is: has 9/11 so changed the American public that isolationism is no longer an option?

Thursday
Mar302006

For love

Fr.Samir has a forceful editorial on freedom of conscience in Islamic countries.