28 May 2010

Coffee Bowl Browsing

Check out the new theology blog run by Sean DeWitt (a former student of mine) and Paul Bechter.  Sean and Paul are seminarians at Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving, TX. 

Finally!  That preachy-leftist courtroom drama, Law and Order, is being canceled

Is B.O.'s dream dead?  "The new world order as envisioned by Obama in January 2009 was, I think, supposed to look something like the following: A social-democratic America would come to emulate the successful welfare states in the European Union."  Unfortunately, for Obama, the E.U. experiment in socio-economic engineering has failed miserably.  The one economic truth that wealth-redistributionists can't quite seem to grasp is that in order to give The Many the wealth of The Few, The Few have to be able to generate wealth.  But redistributive economic policies discourage wealth generation.  No wealth, no redistribution.
Thoughts on our legal drinking age.  I was 19 when the age was raised to 21.  I think 21 is too high.  When U.D. students come to Rome for a semester in their sophomore year, they are legally old enough to drink in Italy.  They seem to handle it quite well. 

Peggy Noonan"The president, in my view, continues to govern in a way that suggests he is chronically detached from the central and immediate concerns of his countrymen." 

The New Atheists make a lot of ideological hay with the Church's handling of Copernicus and Galileo.  Mark Shea helps us with some of the myths.  I would also recommend the book, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion.  This is a serious academic anthology published by Harvard Univ Press but written for an educated general audience.

If you are Catholic and subscribe to TIME Magazine. . .it's probably time to cancel your subscription.  Yet another hit piece on the Holy Father. 

Bill introduced in Congress to repeal ObamaCare.  Will the GOP leadership screw this up?  Probably.

University faculty unions?  Academic faculties harbor some of the most pampered do-nothings in the universe!  Why would they need to unionize?  Prediction for fifty years out:  the only place students will be able to get a serious liberal arts education will be small, independent Catholic colleges. 


Dissecting the Sestak/White House job offer scandal. . .crime and cover-up?

Italian police arrest notorious gay activist priest on charges of child sex abuse.

"I'm spiritual but not religious" is relativistic nonsense disguised as profundity. 

This sad, then funny, then sad again. . .

Grand Unification Theory of Cutlery. . .I hope Burger King doesn't see this.


Kids answer the tough questions about romance, marriage, and parenthood.

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1 comment:

  1. Tenured academics have it cushy, but the problem is that universities are essentially cutting tenured positions by not hiring tenure-track faculty to replace retirements. Now, I'm a bit ambivalent about the implications of tenure so that wouldn't necessarily bother me except that what's going on is that the universities are hiring adjuncts to pick up the slack. Adjuncting is a really terrible gig; it pays less than being a graduate teaching assistant around here, and if you spend more than a couple of years post-PhD adjuncting you can kiss your chances at EVER being hired to the tenure track goodbye. I know of people who stitch together work at multiple institutions just to be able to contribute to their families.

    There is so, so, so much wrong in the American academic job market. I don't think unionization is the answer, but I do think that there are legitimate grievances and I can understand that faculty are alarmed. I think part of the movement toward unions has to do with the fact that it is hardly ever the department's choice not to replace a retiring tenured professor with adjuncts; it is dictated by the university and the budget. And of course we're looking at massive financial crisis in the universities like in other sectors.

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