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Susan Stamberg of National Public Radio recently sent an audio valentine to singer-songwriter Susan Werner of Chicago. Werner’s latest recording is The Gospel Truth, which NPR described as gospel music for agnostics and (in a less accurate headline for its website) “A Songwriter’s View from the Pew.”
This week’s long (2,000-plus words) and much-discussed Wall Street Journal feature about the growing militancy of atheists in Europe raises a lot of questions. Sadly, it is available only to subscribers, but let’s not let that little detail keep us from talking about it.
In the late 1980s, I went to the Roman Catholic cathedral in downtown Denver to cover a rally by Catholic feminists who were demanding open talks about the ordination of women and other changes in Church teachings. It was your basic Catholic progressive gathering, or so I thought.
The big cats on the evangelical right spoke out at a breakfast on Wednesday about two of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination. According to Gannett News Service political writer Chuck Raasch, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said a Rudy Giuliani candidacy would be “a ticket for Hillary Clinton to win the White House.” And Gary Bauer of the 2000 presidential campaign said that the 2002 speech by Sen. John McCain denouncing the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” has already doomed his candidacy.
The iMacs on my desks at home and work share many things in common, including an overflowing (digitally speaking) email folder called “GetRel guilt.”
A few days ago we looked at Russell Shorto’s big New York Times Sunday Magazine piece on Pope Benedict XVI’s first two years in office. I mentioned a few quibbles with it but was overall very impressed. Readers shared their mixed responses.
While interviewing Walter Isaacson on Wednesday’s Fresh Air, guest host Dave Davies raised the point that Albert Einstein has become an icon of unattainable genius. True, but he’s arguably the one scientist who most strongly attracted the affection of Americans. Whether because of his wonderfully untamed hair, his doleful eyes or that photo in which he sticks out his tongue, Einstein also became an icon of the scientist as approachable, and maybe even humble, human being. What other acclaimed scientist could have inspired Walter Matthau’s oddball role in the film I.Q.?
I’m never sure what to make of news articles on Internet-based virtual worlds. This is partially since I have never participated in a virtual world, and while I play the occasion video game, the closest I’ve ever been to a “second life” on the Internet is the rare occasion that I play Halo 2. By no means am I suggesting that there are not legitimate news stories in these second Web lives. It’s just that I’m perplexed that there are enough people out there with enough time to make these genuine news stories.
All together now. Please take out your copy of The Associated Press Stylebook and turn to page 213 (in the edition currently on my desk) or look up the “religious movements” reference.
