North Western Winds

I know that media types run stories like this only to make people laugh and shake their heads. I don't usually waste my time with them. But today I fell for it. Somebody out there wants the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to do away with their traditional winter hats. You see, the hats are lined with Muskrat fur. To which I can only say: it's a rat, it's a rat, its a rat. It's a rat , get it? It's not rare, it's not endangered, it's not even great to look at. I'm not saying it deserves to die horribly, but on the world scale of things to think about... it's really not on my radar. ***** Speaking of not on my radar, how about that MacLean's Magazine, ever the hot source for breaking news in Canada, from sea to sea? That useless bit of trash written for and consumed by the over 50 crowd in central Canada (probably same ones that can't get enough of the Globe and Mail) is warning us that, *gasp* Fox News is coming to Canadian Digi...

It seems that Americans are breaking for Bush in the presidential vote. The closer it comes and the more they tune in and see John Kerry up close, the less they like him. That seems to be especially so for Christian voters , who see right through Kerry's thin veneer of "Catholicism." I tell you, there is nothing thin about it; it's a shockingly intimate religion if you get familiar with it. But Catholics have not traditionally voted Republican, so what is happening here? Kerry's insincere aura and flip flops surely have something to do with it. But there might also be a realization that Catholics and Evangelical Protestants have much more in common than is usually admitted. In a majority Christian culture, Christians could legitimately split over all kinds of issues. We don't all agree on how things should be done, even if we can be close on what our goals are. Christianity is not left or right and this can lead Christians all over the political map. We...

North Western Winds passed 1,000 hits sometime this morning. I have no idea if I'm justified in this or not, but I'm quite happy with that number of visits in one month. The blog was created roughly August 25 but not really promoted until I had a few posts under my belt. You can't invite people over without having snacks in the fridge, right? And I'm still trying to figure this blog promotion thing out. I'll let you know how that goes, ok? Big thanks to everyone who linked or bookmarked this site, especially the guys at Castle Argghhh! (did I spell it right?), Ben at The Tiger In Winter , Kate at The Last Amazon , John Depoe at Fides Quarerens Intellectum (I have no clue what that means). Thanks for your time and encouragement. Thanks also to Flea, who's Red Enisgn Brigade introduced me to most of the people above and lots more. I also have to thank Mark Shea at Catholic and Enjoying it! - his link to my fledgling site gave me my highest single day to ...

Good joke on Wicked Thoughts . Check it out.

Over at Eternity Road , there is a small debate over one of my posts the other day.

A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, you gently guide forces around you while serving as a champion of the light. Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not - for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life greets it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminescent beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you, everywhere. I was surprised by this. I expected to be Sam Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings.

I have a bookmark for an article by Eugene Volokh , published by Slate, and I'm not sure where it came from, although I think it was one of Ben's links over at The Tiger In Winter . If it's not, well, there's a free link for you. ;-) In it, Volokh talks about some of the criticisms that conservative people have about those who are more liberal. I'd like to comment on some of his observations, which seem to be those of a secular conservative befuddled by some of the "inside baseball" stuff that Christians say. 1) Moral absolutes Leviticus is terribly misunderstood. It is frequently invoked to argue that Christians are arbitrary, hypocritical and inconsistent. Well, make that charge if you must, but leave poor Leviticus out of it because it won't help your case. Volokh is not really attacking Christians here, but he does seem to make what is a common error: Leviticus condemns male homosexuality as an abomination, but it also condemns eating s...

This post from the Lazy Logician made me laugh. *sigh* I'm never that funny. At least, not intentionally.

Nice post by Flea . Go check it out! Not everybody's a history buff so this is a valuable link if you are in that category or know someone who is (and who doesn't?). He shows how our "unique" historical situation in Iraq is not so unique, and we therefore have much to learn from how such conflicts were handled in the past. Flea also addresses the impact of new media technologies on war coverage, and how they impact people with no context in which to evaluate what they are being shown. I'll just add that the Nazis did try to create an underground terrorist network called "Operation Werewolf," which was supposed to do the kind of things we are seeing in Iraq. It never really took off. Germany was reeling from the bombing and five years of war. People just wanted normalcy to return as quickly as possible. Even terrorists have to eat. There was also no precedent in German culture to draw on for such a thing. The only thing close was the Nazis themselve...

The Maverick Philosopher has an interesting look at the later George Orwell, as seen by Linoel Trilling : he [Orwell] began to fear that the commitment to abstract ideas could be far more maleficent than the commitment to the gross materiality of property had ever been. The very stupidity of things has something human about it, something meliorative, something even liberating. Together with the stupidity of the old unthinking virtues it stands against the ultimate and absolute power which the unconditioned idea can develop. Curt's shorthand: Top down ideologies suck. Don't be afraid to be "stupid."

For most of my life I considered myself to be a agnostic. I was never an atheist; it was clear to me at a very young age that atheism was a dogmatic view, as dogmatic as an religion could be. I never expected to find an argument that would get me off of that fence. It seemed to me that it could never be answered because our minds were limited by what we saw and heard. If God could not be seen by any sense, how could we know the least thing about him? Then, after leaving university no closer to any answers, and with a diminished view of what a university is and does, I began to read. Libertarian books, such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and books on evolution, such as Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and Matt Ridley's The Red Queen . I was still plagued by what I call the "yes, but" syndrome. These theories sounded fine, but... I was always finding people who read them in ways that to me were too much (or too little, depending on your approach). How could I explain...

The philosophy of the tree, 1909 In a letter from 1909, Chesterton defended traditionalism by comparing it to a tree: I mean that a tree goes on growing, and therefore goes on changing; but always in the fringes surrounding something unchangeable. The innermost rings of the tree are still the same as when it was a sapling; they have ceased to be seen, but they have not ceased to be central. When the tree grows a branch at the top, it does not break away from the roots at the bottom; on the contrary it needs to hold more strongly by its roots the higher it rises with its branches. That is the true image of the vigorous and healthy progress of a man, a city, or a whole species. Taken from Tolkien: Man and Myth , by Joseph Pearce.

YOU ARE MOLY What herb are you? brought to you by Quizilla

Before I turned in last night I agreed with Ben's post on Heather Mallick but drew attention to two things that I saw as watering his points down a tad. Ben overlooked my sleepy English and came back with a comment and new post. Rather than swamp poor Ben's comment section, I'm copying his post here so that I can respond without overlooking anything. Ben said: Here's my take. Till recently, I have been among those who would, like those writers, describe ideas and people I didn't like as being "scary." Scary isn't that. When I have the luxury to sit around and get drunk with my friends and talk about books and horrible politicians (when that's everything, I mean; even in the middle of a world war, I'll find some time for it), I'm not scared. I'm part of a very lucky social class -- those who have not had to work for a living. (Not because I'm wealthy. Quite the contrary. It's because I've been a spoilt only child o...

"Be in the world, but not of the world." Johnny Dee makes the point in two posts, here and here , that Christians cannot simply adopt pop media styles and change the words in the hope of finding an easy way to get their message out. He's right about this. Most people I know, including me, find Christian pop music to be quite boring and not in the least inspirational. John's table is a quick look at how the medium alters the message. Anyone familiar with the work of Marshall McLuhan will recognize this theme and its truth right away. Christians must be willing to stand for their faith, both in its words and in its forms. When people tire of the pop experience, they will look for a truer, deeper, safer mental space, and we can and must be willing to provide it, although this is not an easy thing to do. We need to critique the pop world and stand tall in the face of the flak this will inevitably bring. The Catholic faith has a nice phrase for this - it says we n...

Media gets 44% approval rating overall in new poll According to this story in Editor and Publisher , 39% of Americans say they have say "not much" confidence in the media's ability to report the news fairly, and and 16% say they have "none at all." Joe average isn't so average it seems. The crap war coverage might have something to do with that. The only ones in a "quagmire" are the 60's retreads in the media. Mark Steyn observes about the media's reaction to the Iraqi presidents visit this week: They're six feet from Iraq's head of government and they've got not a question for him . They've got no interest in Iraq except insofar as they can use the issue to depress sufficient numbers of swing voters in Florida and Ohio. Who's living in the fantasyland here? Huge forces are at play in a world of rapid change. As the prime minister said, ''We Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than e...

Paul Martin (PM the PM) says that despite the evidence, other Liberals are not organizing leadership bids in the expectation that he will lose his job when the minority Liberal government is defeated. Which means, of course, that that is exactly what is happening .

Ben over at The Tiger in Winter did a nice round up of what's been happening at the Red Ensign blogs lately. I don't envy him this job, as there are a good number of blogs on the roll and the numbers seem to be growing. Taylor and Co. are to do the next one October 7. How does this work guys? You just ask to give up a night or two of your life and the honour is yours?

After Paul Martin's (PM the PM) regrettable speech to the UN the other day, it seems like a good time to think about what the UN is and who runs it. Fortunately we have Victor Davis Hanson writing about just that in the Wall Street Journal today: the U.N. is not the idealistic postwar organization of our collective Unicef and Unesco nostalgia, the old perpetual force for good that we once associated with hunger relief and peacekeeping. Its membership is instead rife with tyrannies, theocracies and Stalinist regimes . Many of them, like Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam and Zimbabwe, have served on the U.N.'s 53-member Commission on Human Rights. The Libyan lunocracy--infamous for its dirty war with Chad and cash bounties to mass murderers--chaired the 2003 session. For Mr. Bush to talk to such folk about the need to spread liberty means removing from power, or indeed jailing, many of the oppressors sitting in his audience. ... the present secretary-general, Kofi Annan, is himsel...

Mapes an ideologue, says former co worker Dan Rather's producer, Mary Mapes, set up Memo gate because she was ideologically driven, says a former Mapes co worker . John Carlson, a former commentator at KIRO-TV in Seattle says: Mapes was "quite liberal" and disliked the current President Bush's father. "She definitely was someone who was motivated by what she cared about and definitely went into journalism ," Carlson said. "She's not the sort of person who went into journalism to report the news and offer an array of commentary ." Carlson spoke with Mapes about the National Guard story a week ago, and said that he believes she "put so much time into it that she wanted something to come of it." "This was a woman with a good reputation," he said. "The mistakes she made were so obvious. This was a story that was rushed because they clearly believed it was true. They wanted it to be true." One wo...

Which British Literary Period are you? Restoration 1660-1785--Pope, Swift, Johnson. Times they are a changing. You're very cynical and you like looking out for the little guys. You have a sense of humor a lot of people just don't get. Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests. Let's see- French Revolution was 1789 - this sounds about right. Except I don't think I'm cynical. I like to think I'm a realist rather than an ideologue. Maybe that's what they're saying. Thanks to Flea for the link.

Rascal Flatts have a song out called Mayberry , about a longing for the world that television show represented. It has a couplet that has always struck home with me: Sunday used to be a day of rest, Now it's one more day for progress. As someone who is new to thinking about himself in Christian terms, the whole concept of a Sabbath was one I have had to reflect on. I certainly don't spend all of my Sundays refraining from work and studying the Bible, but I have to come to respect the idea of a family and communal day. How often do we complain that we have no time for the people we love? For things we love to do? Who has not rued not speaking to an old friend because "I haven't had time." Who hasn't sighed that the gardening or some other favorite hobby is coming along poorly because "I haven't had time." Who hasn't wondered why their family isn't closer, or that they don't know who their neighbors are? How much could we impro...

Makes room for CanWest to join the majors Kudos to CanWest for calling a terrorist a terrorist . Many, including The Last Amazon , will be happy to hear it. Reuters is among the worst of the major western news services, where I would also place the BBC and the CBC. Unsurprisingly, Reuters is not happy about the changes CanWest made to Reuters wire stories: Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect ...

when they really are out to get you Why is the coverage of Nigerian yellowcake uranium so low key now? I almost missed this update and to my eyes this is a story with the potential for legs: The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France. ... Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent. Why is it that when this guy's story can be used against Bush, it's all we hear about. Now that story takes a turn somewhat in favour of the Republicans - it's not all gravy because the fa...

Have I mentioned that I have a wedding anniversary coming up? I was just digging through my old pictures and thought I'd share one. Weren't we cute? We really did meet on the web you know.

What browser would bowser use? Ach. My inner journalist got carried away with the headline. If you're a pet owner, you'll probably love this cartoon (click to enlarge). If you're not, you'll probably just shake your head. I think they'd use Firefox, which just released a new version, PR1 (preview release number one). It looks like they're getting ready for the release of 1.0. I don't normally rush out and try beta ware but I have found Firefox to be a real joy to use, for too many reasons to list. Its smart layout and uncluttered layout would be at the top though. More and more in the software I use, I appreciate programs that show maturity. They're well thought out and stable. They do not take the swiss army knife or kitchen sink approach that Microsoft is infamous for. I have not yet tried PR1 and am leary to make the jump because at this point it appears that my extensions might not work or carry over (I'm sure that'll be temporary). I...

This recasting of The Lord of the Rings with present day politicians is amusing.

1874- 1936 It's a very rainy day on the wet coast of Canada today; a good day for blogging. Sadly, our summer ended quite early and abruptly this year -about mid August. I wanted to put up a quote from G.K. Chesterton's book, Orthodoxy , about the virtues of being married (my anniversary is coming up quickly; see #5). But as usual with this book, I could not put it down. It's probably one of the best books I think I've ever read. So instead of one, you can have twelve. Quotes from "Orthodoxy": 1) The modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but also the doctrine by which he denounces it 2) It is easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in a village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. 3) Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant olig...

Also, Bush looks like a chimp and is a bad man Ratherbiased has 50 cartoons on memogate. Some of them are great. If you can't read it here, the full sized version is at Ratherbiased .

Warning: Sarcasm and Irony ahead There's some funny stuff at Communists for Kerry.com . Love the .com at the end of that. Kind of a giveaway. Shoulda been .org ;-)

Johnny Dee has a good, smart little series of entries on his blog, Fides Quaerens Intellectum (say it three times fast) on Meta Ethics, and he concludes beautifully : Supernatural essentialism avoids the Euthyphro dilemma entirely by suggesting that God is essentially good in his being, so he does not have to measure moral standards by something outside of his being. Thus, God wills moral properties to exist, and yet he could not have willed just any moral values. This is no real limitation on his power or goodness though, just as God's inability to lie is not such. The main objection to this position is the inquirying mind who wants to know on what basis is God considered to be good. But asking this question misses the point of essentialism. God by his very nature is good , so nothing makes him good; he simply is good. This is parallel to the divine attribute of aseity --that God's existence is not supported by anything else; he simply exists. These are, for me, "b...

Everything looks like a nail In doing this blog I have come across a larger number of blogs than I ususally do, and it has been a pleasure to find a few jems. Bill Vallicella's Maverick Philosopher is amazing. I will leave one quote, from the many I could have used: There are other people for whom truth counts for nothing, but power for everything. They interpret every type of interpersonal transaction as a power struggle. Thus if you calmly try to persuade such a person of the truth of some proposition by appealing to facts and reasoning correctly from them, he will interpret that as nothing but an attempt to dominate him psychologically. Such people are utterly blind to the fact that truth can sometimes be attained by dialectical means. They project their own lust for power into everyone else interpreting everything that is manifestly not a power-move as latently a power move. Every Marxist professor I even had spoke and thought just like this. My Union acts like this. The...

More light material here. Recognize these folks ? I Thought you might. Their schtick is getting mighty old, mighty fast.

From National Review : On Thursday it was announced that guitarist Johnny Ramone , one of the great independent-minded rockers, died in his sleep after battling prostrate cancer for the last five years. He was 55 years old. Born John Cummings, he was one of the founding members of the legendary American punk-rock band the Ramones (named after an alias that Paul McCartney used when checking into hotels). ... Johnny Ramone, was indeed, an unforgettable character. While the Ramones were being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, Johnny took his opportunity at the microphone to make his allegiances known. "God bless President Bush," he said, "and God bless America." Bedecked in his trademark torn jeans and black leather motorcycle jacket, he understatedly thumbed his nose at he lockstep orthodoxy of the rock establishment. Now, that is punk rock. ... Ramone had an eclectic collection of friends who included shock rocker Rob Zombie, provocative fil...

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

I've been meaning to point out this column by David Warren , who's stuff is always very good. It just dawned on me that I can use it to further explain my post yesterday on the controversy at the Toronto Film Festival. A big quote follows (emphasis mine): A great advantage of this Christian worldview -- on which our State and nation were founded, and which was once taught in our schools and upheld in law -- was its internal coherence. The greatest minds through twenty centuries had thought through the legal implications, but more profoundly, "discovered" layer behind layer of morality, written into nature. There is a moral order in the world, a law behind human law, and indeed all the "great religions" allow that good is good, and evil evil. Today, none of this is possible, for Christian or any other religious reasoning is ruled out of court, and all judgments must stand or fall on "pure reason". Which is a problem, because pure reason is ...

I'm new to Catholicism and one of the most puzzling things I have learned since becoming interested in the old Church is how some other Christian groups accuse us of worshiping Mary. It's pretty plain that there is only one triune God and that Mary is not part of God or God-like. She is revered, however, as being first among humans. John Paul II says that the sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary are a source of inspiration and consolation for believers facing the difficulties of everyday life: Father Stefano De Fiores, professor of Mariology at several pontifical universities, explained on Vatican Radio that the liturgical memorial of the Our Lady of Sorrows is much cherished by Catholics because "people identify with Mary and see in her the expression of their pain." "However, it is salvific, not desperate, pain -- a pain that, despite the harshness of the suffering, is mitigated by faith in the Resurrection, as Mary precedes others in faith," the the...

Minority of One is a pretty ice blog. Quote : Paul Martin Jr is well on his way to becoming the worst prime minister in Canada's history . Worse than Joe Clark. He committed political regicide, lost the Lib majority and has already shown he is incapable of governing. Perhaps Jr should just go back to running CSL, where he can bark orders to flunkies and know they will be obeyed. As a prime minister, he is a total washout. The only remaining question is whether the Libs will have time to dump him before the next election. And the author lives in Ontario. In Ottawa . Go figure. I think it might be a bit early to call PM the PM , the worst PM in history, but I can't deny that the signs are tending to point that way. I love it when he turns all red and throws his hands around and says things like "let me very clear...." And then proceeds to spew liberal gibberish that amounts to "please like me, please like me, I'll be your friend, I'll buy us all ice c...

New polls and new woes for the Kerry campaign: The Fox News poll asked Kerry supporters if their vote for the Democrat could best be described as motivated by support for Kerry (41 percent) or by opposition to Bush (51 percent). By contrast, Bush voters emphatically say, by 82-13, that they are voting for the president rather than against the challenger.

Leading up to the film festival, animal rights activists had demanded that "Casuistry" be pulled from the program. ... [Toronto Film] festival co-director Noah Cowan rejected the calls. "Film festivals exist, in part, to generate intelligent, reasoned discussion, not to stifle it," he said in a statement before the festival began. Bless the kind souls who are pushing to take a discussion of the possible glories of animal torture off of the screens of Toronto. Because if they succeed we may be able to delay cinemas showing films discussing things that are even worse. These kids committed an act of that was utterly horrific and pointless, which they then tried to justify by using the relativistic crap they learned in "art" school. Is it any wonder "art" schools and "artists" are so widely held in such disrepute?

There is a raging debate in Canada over the legal status of marijuana, and no where more so than in Vancouver B.C., home to some of the most loud mouthed and aggressive potheads in the country. Now, I don't care for drugs, but I will allow that there is room for debate over how such substances ought to be handled. The usual methods of debate should be good enough - flyers, newspapers, political debates, and so on. There have been some changes to our laws recently, notably the change to allow the consumption of pot to relieve pain, on a doctor's orders. The changes we have seen to date are not good enough for many of those who want full liberalization. Many of them want what they want right now . Which brings me to the subject of the Da Kind Cafe in Vancouver, and Mark Emory of the Marijuana Party, who is currently residing in a Saskatchewan jail . Both the cafe and Emory have taken their debates over the line. They are offside. Emory, in a dumb stunt, intentionally got h...

Dan Rather says : If you can'’t deny the information, then attack and seek to destroy the credibility of the messenger, the bearer of the information. And in this case, it’s change the subject from the truth of the information to the truth of the documents. This is your basic fogging machine, which is set up to cloud the issue, to obscure the truth. Since when is the onus on anyone to believe Dan Rather and 60 Minutes? You have an accusation, back it up. Or shut up . Somebody - let's say it's me - types a document in MS Word to the effect that Dan Rather is full of crap. Ok Dan, answer the question. I have the documents to "prove" it.

I made the mistake of perusing the local paper tonight (and it was the "good" one too) only to see the letters section still debating Michael Moore's idiotic 9-11 movie. For heavens sake, why ? The guy who liked the film had a paranoid list of U.S. Atrocities and falsehoods that was missing only the fake moon landings and the UFO parts being kept in Roswell. The letter writer in question also knew - for a fact - that the U.S. sunk it's own ship, the USS Maine , as a pretext to start the Spanish American war. They also killed only black sailors in doing so. Don't ask how that's possible, or how the nutjobs come to know these things. They just know , y'know? Moore's questioning of the president is not a bad thing. But his line of questioning is so weak it must be dismissed. If you can call the president a fascist in the media and not go to jail, you are rather obviously wrong on that point. Why is no one asking questions about U.S. overreach? Abou...

Like any blog that is trying to establish itself, NWW has been seeking out well placed links, in an effort to get people to come and have a look. That means I've been adding myself to blog rings and directories, among other things. One of the major blog directories in Canada appears to be Blogs Canada . It's a useful site and they did give me the little "thumbs up" symbol when they listed me under What's New . But what is wrong with this picture ? You guessed it. Under Politics, they have two categories - Politics General and Politics Right. Why are they separating right leaning blogs from the others? That's ok, but why not call the other category Politics Left? As it is, the directory structure suggests that there are "normal political views" and then there are those, ugh, right wing people . I'm not going to honour the modern Canadian tradition and ask for a CRTC review or anything like that. Blogs Canada can set themselves up however the...

Dan and John go boom Things are not going well for dear John Kerry and now the Fake Memo story is making his odds even longer. Unless you think some Republican planted fake memos at CBS, to make the Dems look bad. And if you think that, you need to refresh yourself with Occam's Razor . Am I the only one who thinks it is very odd that no major Canadian news outlet is reporting on this story? Nothing on The National Post this morning and nothing on Canoe News as of 4.20pm Pacific. Maybe they really are all on Kerry's side. Memo to major Canadian media: You suck. Imagine the surprise in Canada the day after the Election, and Bush wins by a decent margin (not a landslide). Canadians wake up and ask, "How did that happen? We didn't see it coming." Dan Rather is being such zero about the whole thing too. As Jonah Goldberg at National Review points out, ... it seems impossible that [Rather] can prove they [the Killian memos] are real. Indeed, Rather...

A big red Hello! to anyone visiting from Catholic and Enjoying it! and also to anyone from the Red Ensign Blogs . And thanks to Mark and Nick for helping me to gain a wee bit of attention. This is my first attempt at blogging, so I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions. I am a Canadian guy who completed the R.C.I.A. program this past spring and I am awaiting, along with my wife, the results of an annulment tribunal. As new Catholics to be, we are interested, motivated, and a bit unsure about all of the details of our faith. So we read and we share with the blogosphere. This blog is the more political and philosophical one, my wife's, Doxology , is more personal. Make yourselves at home... and don't forget to bookmark us.

Canada, the first country in the EU A bit of Canadian history, from February 15, 1965 : The Canadian Red Ensign, bearing the Union Jack and the shield of the royal arms of Canada, was lowered and then, on the stroke of noon, our new maple leaf flag was raised. The crowd sang the national anthem O Canada followed by the royal anthem God Save the Queen. The following words... added further symbolic meaning to our flag : "The flag is the symbol of the nation's unity, for it, beyond any doubt, represents all the citizens of Canada without distinction of race, language, belief or opinion ." The Red Ensign was the product of 250 or so years of Canadian History, as was, it should be noted, the constitution as it exited prior to Trudeau. The old flag remarks on Canada's British and maritme roots and had a bit to mark each province as they were added. Then, poof . We get this red and white abstraction that means nothing, says nothing, is nothing . Because i...

Film Review I was reluctant at first to see Cold Mountain . The war in Iraq was getting hot and I was hearing about how it was a critique of American "Yankee" militarism. Geez. That's a brave and usual stance these days. It's not that the U.S. is beyond criticism, it's just that most such criticism is so stupid, especially if it is coming from Hollywood. Then I learned that Anthony Minghella , who had done The English Patient , was the director. I really enjoyed The English Patient and decided to give the new effort a whirl. I was not disappointed. It is a somewhat dark film, but not nearly as dark as it might have been. If you watch the cut scenes on the second disc, especially the one with Natalie Portman, you can see that there was a danger of the film falling into an unintended comic morbidity. As it is, the film is quite good, beautiful to look at, well cast and well acted. Rene Zellweger steals the show, with the best performance I have ever seen ...