A sinister conspiracy by the beauty-fashion industrial complex, no doubt. Qui bono? indeed.

Alan Bock makes the case for immediate withdrawal from Iraq (without thinking that it’s actually going to happen). Caleb McDaniel has a good post on the reaction to Pat Robertson’s now-infamous remarks. Camassia and I have been going round a bit on infant baptism. Pr. Frontz writes on “the domestication of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”

One common criticism of President Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq is that the UN-imposed sanctions were “working” – i.e. containing Saddam Hussein’s expansionist ambitions and his drive to acquire weapons of mass destruction. That fact that the U.S. has indeed not found the dreaded WMD seems to confirm this. While the efficacy…

Brandon at Siris posted his list of twenty “must read” science fiction novels. Very interesting. Readers chimed in with their suggestions. I’ve only read about five of the titles on Brandon’s list – looks like I’ve got some catching up to do! Currently I’m in the middle of Gene Wolfe’s novella trilogy The Fifth Head…

Though I was opposed to the Iraq war from the get-go, I’ve been ambivalent, like many people, about what the U.S. should do now that it’s there. After all, whatever the wisdom of going in, Saddam’s regime was truly evil, and I had harbored the hope that it might be possible to help create a…

I never took Pat Robertson seriously before, and I’m not about to start now. A question on usage though: somewhere Robertson’s comments were characterized as a “death threat.” Now, it seems to me that it’s only a death threat if he was intending to carry out the killing himself, which is presumably not the case.…

The latest issue of The American Conservative has an article by Daniel McCarthy comparing the views of Pope Benedict XVI with Catholic “neoconservatives” like George Weigel and Michael Novak on the question of Just War theory. While there’s not much new information here, McCarthy poses the difference between the Pope, who, like his predecessor, opposed…

Sober dove Alan Bock isn’t sure whether we’re seeing the beginning of a grass-roots anti-war movement that “looks like America”: As a war opponent from the beginning, I have mixed feelings. Ms. Sheehan has not confined herself to doubting the war’s wisdom, but has unburdened herself of an array of remarks ranging from personal insults…

Heavy metal may be the Next Big Thing for kitsch-crazed hipsters according to this Slate article. Well, some of us never stopped loving metal! Though, I admit my tastes run more to 80’s thrash at its peak (early Metallica, Anthrax, etc.), punk-metal fusion (Suicidal Tendencies, D.R.I.), and “classic” stuff like Iron Maiden, with an occasional…

When it is said that God is the ground of nature’s existence and order, God is not being used to fill a gap in a scientific explanation that concerns the connections between members of the universe. Rather to speak of God as the ground of nature’s existence and order is to address questions concerning the…