A Thinking Reed

  • Saturday metal – freezing cold pre-Inaugural edition

    Some very cool animation in this video from French enviro-metallers Gojira: All The Tears

  • All creatures great and small

    I just noticed that the Humane Society has put together a rather nice page on Animals and Religion and produced a 25-minute documentary called “Eating Mercifully.” The HSUS’s approach to religion is similar to its approach to the public at large: it assumes that principles of compassion and merciful treatment are already embedded in our…

  • “Sea kittens”?

    Stentor at debitage has some worthwhile thoughts on PeTA’s latest campaign, which he aptly describes as “merely silly, not offensive and progressive-coalition-fracturing,” in contrast to some of their others. Seems PeTA wants people to start calling fish “sea kittens” in order to create more empathy for them. Recognizing that fish are sentient creatures with their…

  • Earthbound and down

    Also from the Atlantic–a primer on Battlestar Galactica (may contain spoilers for the uninitiated). The anecdote about Dirk Benedict, who played the original series’ “Starbuck” (and “Face” on the A-Team!), being outraged that the character was re-imagined as a woman is pretty funny. I’m really looking forward to the new season starting this Friday (or…

  • Fixing the imperial presidency?

    Here’s an interesting piece in the new Atlantic arguing that the Founders messed up in designing the presidency and offering some suggestions for fixing it. Despite the author’s suggestion that the abuses of the last 8 years might get the public interested in this, I’m skeptical, not least because it wouldn’t serve a particular institutional…

  • God is love: a workable theology

    A few days ago bls at The Topmost Apple posted a critique of this First Things article by Philip Turner on the “unworkable theology” of the Episcopal Church. In Turner’s view, liberal, mainline Protestantism prizes “inclusion” above all else and thus has reduced God to “love, pure and simple.” In response, bls pointed out that,…

  • Adventures in brown liquor

    I’d been hearing for a while that rye whisky was making something of a comeback. It seems that it was the preferred whisky of pre-Prohibition America and in fact many classic cocktails (e.g. the Manhattan, my fave) were originally made with rye. Happily, we’re not far from this place, so I went this weekend and…

  • Return of a blogger

    I’m happy to see that Andy of Sinning Boldly has returned to blogging after a lengthy hiatus. Right now is looks like his focus is a little more on the devotional/spiritual side of things. Welcome back, Andy!

  • One world?

    I recently read Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization, which was originally delivered as a series of lectures in 2000. I had a longish post in the hopper about national loyalties and obligations to strangers, but it didn’t really go anywhere so I junked it. Suffice it to say, I don’t always agree…

  • Just war at the JLE

    Always a timely topic (unfortunately): the Journal of Lutheran Ethics has a review symposium of Gary Simpson’s War, Peace & God: Rethinking the Just War Tradition.