A Thinking Reed

  • Friday Metal: Dimebag, R.I.P. (5 years on)

    It was five years ago this month that Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott was shot and killed onstage while performing with his post-Pantera band Damageplan. It’s no exaggeration to say that Pantera was probably, Metallica excepted, the biggest metal band of the ’90s. Their third album, Far Beyond Driven, debuted at number one on the…

  • Marcus Borg’s non-eschatological Jesus

    I found Dale Allison’s book on the historical Jesus stimulating enough that I thought I should get another perspective. I had read Marcus Borg’s Jesus: A New Vision several years ago, but didn’t really remember much of it. So I thought it might be worth re-visiting. Though he comes to different conclusions than Allison (Borg…

  • Whither Anglo-Catholicism?

    I don’t really have a dog in this fight–except insofar as I have a somewhat sentimental attachment to both Anglo-Catholicism and the Episcopal Church on account of being a parishoner for a year at Boston’s Church of the Advent–but here is an interesting meditation on the future of Anglo-Catholics in TEC from the rector at…

  • Those inscrutable foreigners!

    From an LA Times article on plans to possibly expand the drone attacks in Pakistan to large population centers: the CIA airstrikes are highly unpopular among the Pakistani public, because of concerns over national sovereignty and civilian casualties. If drone attacks now confined to small villages were to be mounted in a sizable city, the…

  • Rise of the organicons?

    I guess “Whole Foods Republicans” must be the citified cousins of the more agrarian-minded crunchy cons? What’s needed is a full-fledged effort to cultivate “Whole Foods Republicans”—independent-minded voters who embrace a progressive lifestyle but not progressive politics. These highly-educated individuals appreciate diversity and would never tell racist or homophobic jokes; they like living in walkable…

  • Will the real Reinhold Niebuhr please stand up?

    There’s been much made of the “Niebuhrian” nature of President Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech: its frank recognition that dealing with evil sometimes requires the use of force; its rejection of non-violence; its anti-utopianism with respect to ending violent conflict, etc. And that’s all fair enough. But there was one key Niebuhrian theme that was conspicuously…

  • Friday Metal: Suicidal Tendencies, “Trip At The Brain”

    more about "Friday Metal: Suicidal Tendencies, “T…", posted with vodpod

  • It’s OK to criticize the President

    Really. He can take it. In some ways, the “How dare you criticize Obama!” people are the mirror image of the “I can’t believe Obama betrayed us!” people. Neither seem able to see him as first and foremost a politician.

  • Of wolf and man

    I “tweeted” recently that I head read and really enjoyed Mark Rowlands’ The Philosopher and the Wolf. Rowlands, the eponymous philosopher, has written a bunch of books, including an excellent introduction to animal rights. TPATW defies easy summary, but it’s part-memoir and part-philosophical rumination arising from Rowlands’ experience living with a companion wolf named Brenin…

  • Putting the Chri$t back in Christmas

    I was hoping that this was a bad joke, but it seems not. Has it occurred to any of these folks that there might be something theologically problematic about encouraging retailers to use Christ as a marketing tool?