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According to various journalists who cover the White House, the Dalai Lama told the media who covered his visit there this week not to ask silly questions. That, and the throwing of snow at the gathered press, put a smile on my face.
I’ve spent a good portion of my morning “studying” for a later Olympics party where our curling, half-pipe, and figure skating knowledge will be tested. Sadly, I’m confident that I am woefully unprepared.
Pop star Elton John is featured on the cover of Parade magazine this week. So I guess Parade is still around. He’s ostensibly on the cover to talk about how he’s a better person now than he was before. But he makes news for an unconventional religious idea he puts forth.
I am not an expert on Turkey and I know that. However, I have been to Istanbul twice and, on one occasion, had a chance to talk to some pretty well informed people — Muslims and Christians — about the situation there.
You can make fun of me, but I do, on occasion, watch Private Practice, where attractive doctors magically fix people and cheesy romance abounds. Compared to its sister show Grey’s Anatomy, it appears to be one of the only prime time television shows that consistently deals with serious medical ethics. In one recent show, for example, a Catholic doctor’s 15-year-old daughter gets pregnant. (Spoiler alert: the doctor wants her to have an abortion, but the girl chooses to keep it). Writers use such ethical scenarios for television drama, but people are faced with these kinds of decisions more often than we might think.
Just last month I wrote about the “gospel of easy money,” and in that post were a few links to stories of pastors living unusually lavish lifestyles. If you read that post, and easily discerned my contempt for such behavior, you’d expect that similar stories immediately grab my attention. Stories like this one from WFAA News 8 in Dallas/Fort Worth:
Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent for Western Christians. On this day, Christians have traditionally focused on their utter and complete sinfulness and the necessity of Christ’s suffering and death to earn their salvation.
