Forgiveness is learned only by him who considers himself to be guilty.
– Nikon of Optina

“Is it too soon for movies to be released about 9/11?”
That’s the headline of a front page story in the St. Joseph News Press. It’s a local story asking whether people can deal with the upcoming release of “Flight 93,” a movie drawn from all the factual info that exists about what happened on September […]

… thanks, Tom. What a great guy.

I was hanging out in a Barnes & Noble coffeeshop last week when a guy sitting with his buddies started to happily pontificate on the greatness of “The Gospel of Judas.” I had been hearing the ads for National Geographic’s show about this — I was particularly careful not to set the timer to record […]

This story by science-fiction writer, Dan Simmons, has been making a bit of a splash — for good reason. Long read, and a style I found a bit unwieldy at times, but worth the effort.
I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.
“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.

I blinked […]

I admit I’ve taken a bit of delight watching secular Big Government proponents wrestle with how it is you get people to do things that are considered bad for them. The crusade against smoking had all the religious fervor of any other crusade, but since those leading the charge are the same ones who urge […]

The idea that it is brave to stand up for gays in Hollywood, to stand up against Joe McCarthy in Hollywood (fifty years after his death), to say that rich white people are bad, that oil companies are evil — this is nonsense. All of these are mainstream ideas in Hollywood, always have been, always […]

An acquaintance of mine is a serial e-mailer. I’m guessing that everyone has at least one of those in your life, and women seem to collect more of them than men. These are the people that pass on the occasional joke or Letterman list or series of wacky photos of kitties that fell asleep in […]

Bill Cosby’s advice to New Orleans: Clean up your act.
“It’s painful, but we can’t cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound,” Cosby told the rally of about 2,000 people in front of the city’s convention center.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. […]

You’ve probably gotten used to hearing movie industry types say, as George Clooney basically did with his “proud to be out of touch” Oscar speech, that they’re groundbreakers when it comes to hard-nosed social commentary. Their usual explanation for why movies like “Brokeback Mountain,” “Munich,” “Syriana,” and “Crash” don’t do well (the Narnia movie has […]