Thanks to pressure from the Catholic League, Manhattan’s Lab Gallery has removed the 90 Kg chocolate sculpture titled “My Sweet Lord” by artist Cosimo Cavallaro.
Category: Spleen
The category, Spleen, is for posts that make us angry.
Barbara Gowdy Pushes Helpless
The April issue of The Walrus ships with a promotional DVD from HarperCollins — an interview with Barbara Gowdy about her new novel, Helpless. In the interview we learn the secret of how an author finds inspiration for writing fiction.
Paleontologist Marcus Ross an Early Earth Creationist
On Monday, the NY Times published a piece titled “Believing Scripture but Playing by Science’s Rules” about Marcus R. Ross who successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in paleontology notwithstanding his belief in “early earth creationism.” He wrote about events which occurred (according to him) 65 million years ago but simultaneously asserts that the universe is at most 10,000 years old.
DOD Unveils the Heat-Beam
Yesterday, at the Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, the U.S. Department of Defence revealed a prototype of a heat–beam weapon which it plans to place in the hands of troops by 2010.
The Popular Science of Weed
My son likes … well, what are some of his interests? Playing table tennis with kids in Japan, & Gears of War on his Xbox (I can’t believe I allowed a Microsoft product into the house), capturing sequences of Halo and making his own movies from them, hunting down the Frag Dolls online.
Church and the Gay Question
In my continuing online exchange with Fr John Boyle [a gay-hating priest from Kent], he points out that we use the same mode of analysis. It’s curious how two people using the same approach can arrive at opposite conclusions.
The Magi Today
This Christmas, more than usual, people have been crying foul over issues of political correctness. The most notable instance of this arose around the decision by Seattle’s Sea–Tac International Airport authority to remove from its premises all Christmas trees and related paraphernalia.
War Toys, Video Games & Imagination
My dad hired my son to scan all his slides, because nowadays no one ever sets up the projector and screen and bores the dinner guests to tears. Every so often I’d hear laughter, and when I asked Mitchell about it, he’d say: “Just another picture of you.”
Death by Pepper Spray
On September 26, 1995, Zdravko Pukec gained the distinction of being the first person on Canadian soil to be asphyxiated by pepper spray. The debate continues regarding the effectiveness of pepper spray as an alternative restraining measure, and periodically the fatalities are paraded in the media.
Does bad religion produce bad writing?
Does bad religion produce bad writing? If we use Jill, by G.R. Spiecker, as a gauge, then the answer is yes. Jill is a tract of dubious Catholicism masquerading as dubious fiction. One can forgive an author his religion since, however it comes to him—whether by upbringing, cultish coercion, or even by grace—it lies beyond his control (at least in theory). But the sin of bad writing is unpardonable.
The Terror of America
Since there is a war on terrorism, has anyone bothered to ask how we will know when we’ve won? What will winning look like? Will it be an interminable peace where people sit around gazing at their navels, sometimes getting up to wander through beds of roses?
Convergence, yes, but my cell phone still sucks
Before Christmas, Rogers was advertising 6 months free on a 2 year family plan. With 2 teenagers who are getting harder and harder to keep track of, maybe it was time to join the 21st century and equip the whole family with cell phones.
What’s A Memoir Supposed To Remember
When I first heard that Oprah Windy was going to interview James Frey, author of the memoir, A Million Little Pieces, that she was angry and felt betrayed because Mr. Frey’s account appeared to deviate significantly from the truth, that she was going to haul him onto the carpet and call him to account in a million little living rooms across America—when I heard all this righteous indignation rising up from the south—I chalked it up to another instance of maudlin-sappy-slightly-self-indulgent-Oprah-strutting.
©opyright ©oming to ©anada
As election day in Canada approaches (Jan. 23rd), voters have had their sensibilities assaulted by the usual carping that comes from candidates who have nothing substantive to work with. The current liberal government has stumbled—and will probably fall—not because it took a stand on an important issue (since that would be an honourable defeat) but because of corruption.
Being There First
The greatest opportunity of the blogosphere (according to an army of self-proclaimed, twenty-something pundits) is its democratization of front-line journalism. Anybody with a phone cam and some server space can, by virtue of being there first, break the next big story.