A Thinking Reed

  • Link of the week

    7 Most Useless Transformers. I urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to watch the embedded video of the Japanese Transformers cartoon featuring karaoke(!). Via.

  • Highlight of the week (so far)

    Yesterday, on my way to get a cup of coffee, I happened across a film crew shooting a scene right outside of Eastern Market – supposedly for an upcoming Russell Crowe/Leo DiCaprio movie – and got to watch them blow up a car! Pretty sweet.

  • Schumacher on the poverty of economics

    It is hardly an exaggeration to say that, with increasing affluence, economics has moved into the very center of public concern, and economic performance, economic growth, economic expansion, and so forth have become the abiding interest, if not the obsession, of all modern socieites. In the current vocabulary of condemnation there are few words as…

  • Jesus and Hillary Clinton

    This story about Hillary Clinton’s religious convictions at Mother Jones starts out interesting but veers distinctly into paranoia. I carry no water for HRC’s candidacy, but it seems to me that what you see is pretty much what you get: a centrist-to-conservative Democrat, as amply demonstrated by her voting record. She is not the socialist…

  • Subverting sacrifice

    In comments here Rick Ritchie and I were discussing the ways in which the Christian story may or may not subvert or transform conventional notions of “sacrifice.” Part of what I find so appealing about Christianity is the way it turns upside-down our “natural” expectations about the meanings of things like power, glory, love, etc.…

  • The cow-man cometh

    This story reports that the UK has given the green light to scientists to create human-animal ‘chimera’ embryos for research purposes (see here for a bit more background). Essentially this involves combining an animal egg (cows in this case) with human genetic material to create an embryo from which stem cells can be extracted. The…

  • Christ the center

    As I had the day off yesterday with nothing much to do, I decided to spend a couple of hours at the National Gallery of Art, just a 15 minute or so walk from our place. It’s always been one of my favorite places in DC, going back to when I used to come here…

  • Catholicism, vegetarianism and the conscientious omnivore

    Bernard Prusak, who teaches at Villanova University outside of Philadelphia, recently published a thoughtful article on Catholicism and vegetarianism at Commonweal (you can also read it at his website here). Dr. Prusak was a practicing vegetarian for a while, but gave it up partly because he became convinced that meat-eating was, if not necessary, at…

  • Friday metal – Unearth, “Zombie Autopilot”

    Boston hardcore meets Swedish death metal.

  • Sanity from Texas (relatively speaking)

    Texas clemency for death row man The governor of Texas has halted the execution of a getaway driver in a botched 1996 bank robbery that ended with an accomplice shooting a man dead. Governor Rick Perry commuted Kenneth Foster’s death sentence to life after a recommendation from the parole board. Foster, now 30, was convicted…