THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

 Update 9/14/07: Per Caritatem has a new post on the Orombi’s article here.

So much has happened this week in several blogs that we all frequent, not to mention outside or prodigious circle. Moreover, several noteworthies from the summer escaped my mention one way or another. Take this posting as my unofficial and abridged “I Don’t Know What You Did This Summer, But Here’s What You Should Have Been Reading.” I reserve the right to add to this list, to expect you all to follow up on the items herein, and to mock the many, dare I say most, of you who don’t. We’ll start with this week and work backward.

August 8. Fr. Edward T. Oakes published a charming and timely piece on the First Things blog on Wednesday called “On Canons”. If you’ve been keeping up with Janet and the most recent discussion over at Deep Grace of Theory, or you’ve been following the discussion on the nature of Christian philosophy or the comments under the Balthasar podcast, or you haven’t had your head buried in the sand, you might find his article illuminating. You’ll at least be tickled by such lines as: “No one disputes Hegel’s status as a canonical philosopher; but anyone who has tried to work through his rebarbative prose quickly comes to see how little literary merit counts when it comes to admittance in the ranks of canonical philosophers.” Ok, that’s hilarious to me. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what “Rebarbative” means. Hell, my spell checker doesn’t even recognize it. So, for all you playas out there -

Rebarbative: adjective; from French rébarbatif, from Middle French, from rebarber to be repellent; REPELLENT, IRRITATING

Continue reading ‘Friday Wrap up’

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My last post today… I promise.
Salon has a really complex but helpful interview with four bee and polination experts discussing the recent drop in bee population and the relating factors. Apparently, there are a number of factors, all of which have been proven to affect the health of the population, but none of which can account for the scale of the problem.

I think we are facing a series of problems like this, problems that are environmental in nature, and this has been a real eye-opener for me as to how poorly prepared this country and countries around the world are in taking note of how climate change or global change will impact our ecosystems. Humanity is affecting our ecosystems, and it’s very complex to determine whether this is due to environmental change or some disease. You can see now that it is very difficult to pull these things apart.

The fact that Christians aren’t leading the charge in issues like the catastrophic decline of the honeybee and other polinator population is crazy. For me, it all boils down to the really poor to non-existent doctrine of creation and ensuing experience of the world many of us have. The experts are right; if the bee population can’t sustain the polination demand, it’s not like we’re going to get our produce somewhere else. We’re screwed. Hopefully someone will write a sequel to Assault on Reason and call it Assault on Hunny in my Tummy.

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