Friday, January 25
1) a focus on finer and finer points of minutiae related to matters like the use of conjunctions in Jane Austen and the role of the table leg in Normandy from 1514-1527. Or:
2)The application of obscure and nonsensical theoretical paradigms to the matter at hand...Seeing John Chrysostem through the prism of Derrida, examining the Second Crusade in a Marxian framework, or stringing together disparate characters like Cicero, Clara Barton and Ethel Rosenburg in one fabulous flight of fanciful pseudo-intellectualism.
But you know, you don't even need a real academic journal to get the point. Just go to the Postmodern Generator and watch a unique, totally meaningless, jargon-filled essay appear on your screen with just the click of a mouse!
Cardinal Bernard F. Law yesterday announced that the Archdiocese of Boston will give state officials a list of names of every former priest who sexually abused a minor, reversing his previous opposition to retroactive reporting of clergy misconduct
He's also going to convene a big commission:
The cardinal also said yesterday that he has enlisted the deans of the medical schools of Boston University, Harvard, Tufts, and the University of Massachusetts, as well as the dean of Boston College's social work school and a prominent Harvard psychiatrist, to make up a panel to advise him on establishing what Law called ''an interdisciplinary center for the prevention of sexual abuse of children.''
Good news, but it still doesn't address the important problem of....how do you break the code of mutual protection that exists among those involved in ministry?
-- A POLL of 400 registered voters by Andres McKenna Research asked Americans what they thought would be the most significant obstacle to continuing the war on terror. The largest obstacle, cited by 27 percent of respondents, was the terrorists themselves. But right behind them, at 26 percent, was the news media.
From a column in the Jewish World Review.
Baby's had some bad bedtimes this week. Three or four hours of pretty good sleeping followed by two or three hours of half-waking, just wants to nurse, followed by a couple of hours of dead-to-the-world unconsciousness, which unfortunately usually correlates with the time I have to get up. I think his top teeth might be bothering him. It's all bothering me, but only intermittantly. Why? Welll, I'm 41 years old, and I have the grace of hindsight. Lots of it. In other words, I have a 19-year old who lives a couple of states away whom I see just a few times a year now. I know how quickly life passes, and that before I know it, this little one will be off and running on his own. I'll treasure what I have now, thanks, no matter how much it wears me out!