A Thinking Reed

  • Friday metal – As I Lay Dying, “Within Destruction”

  • Not bad for week one

    Obama gives military’s interrogation rules to CIA (More here from NRCAT.) Obama orders CIA prisons, Gitmo shut Obama blocks some of Bush’s last-minute environmental decisions More of this, please.

  • Girard on war and apocalyptic

    Via bls comes this review of a new book by Rene Girard (not yet translated into English, it appears) wherein Girard critiques Von Clausewitz’s On War and discusses the prospects for humanity’s self-annihilation. Girard turns to the Revelation of John, the apocalyptic passages in the Epistles, as well as the “little apocalypse” of Mark 13…

  • MLK was unserious

    I was offline for most of the day yesterday and missed this good post from Matt Yglesias on King and nonviolence (via Marvin).

  • Congrats, President Obama!

    Despite living six blocks from the Capitol, the wind chill and a bug that I’m trying to fend off kept me inside watching the proceedings from the comfort of my sofa like a real American. I’m not a fan of the imperial presidency and all the pomp that has grown up around it, but only…

  • Saved by theology

    So, today at church I was roped in to assisting with communion at the last minute, something I’ve never done before. I was distributing the wine, which we do by pouring it from a chalice into tiny plastic cups that people take from a tray on their way to the altar rail. However, if, for…

  • Hmmm…

    Via Derek: You’re St. Justin Martyr! You have a positive and hopeful attitude toward the world. You think that nature, history, and even the pagan philosophers were often guided by God in preparation for the Advent of the Christ. You find “seeds of the Word” in unexpected places. You’re patient and willing to explain the…

  • 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…