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I’m God – I Can Do It (and All the Trouble in the World)

In New York City a few days ago, a deranged and homeless 61-year-old man pushed a 40-year-old woman directly into the path of an arriving subway train, causing her immediate death. It’s far from an...

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A Prayer for U.S. Soldiers in Kabul

In part simply to try and retain my own tenuous grasp on reality in this ever more deranged world, I’m offering the following review of the situation in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, this August...

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Just a Notion: ABBA, Gratitude, Faith and Forgiveness

I'd suggest that for a pop artist or group to generate the continuing public affection that ABBA demonstrably have done, there needs to be some inspirational quality in what they do. There needs to be...

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Death On Demand (Now with Home Delivery)

“The person will get into the capsule and lie down. It’s very comfortable.” So says Philip Nitschke, he of the organization Exit International, which has developed a device called the Sarco. It is a...

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The Supreme Court, My Father and Roe v. Wade

The leak of Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey has made me think of my father (quite unexpectedly, I might add). This is not because my father served...

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Emmylou Harris and Co. –“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” is a song that just doesn’t get old, and Emmylou Harris is a singer of whom you might say the same thing.

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“Under Surveillance”

We live in an age of near total surveillance. For my own part I live in New York City, where I know I can’t walk fifty feet without being recorded on someone’s camera. But far beyond that, we know that...

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Delicious Insects: Good for You, Good for Earth

Click here for details and easy online ordering.

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Morning Prayer: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Leonard Cohen

A little while back, Mrs. C. came across a prayer by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that we often return to when, as on our better days, we find a few minutes in the morning to stop and pray. It turns out it’s...

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Andy Statman at Charles Street

If you’re ever visiting New York City (or indeed if you live in the area) and are looking for a truly only-in-New-York thing to do, you could most certainly do no better than to check Andy Statman’s...

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Frank Sinatra Sings at the White House (1973 – Complete Film)

It would always be a great time to rediscover this wonderful treasure, but it's especially apt now, in this, Frank Sinatra's centenary year. On April 17th, 1973, Frank Sinatra performed at the White...

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God’s Q & A

A Pew Research Center study just came out finding a decline in the percentage of Americans who say they follow an established religion, and an increase in the percentages who claim to be either atheist...

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Dog Flu is Spreading

The canine influenza A H3N2 virus kicked off its run in Chicago, that toddlin’ town, several months back, and has been spreading across the Midwest. Today a case has been reported in Houston, Texas, so...

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Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours

Consisting of songs which were mostly written many years earlier and by a variety of composers, the album somehow seems to be telling the story of one particular man's love, loss and yearning. Each...

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B.B. King Moves On

Rest in peace, B.B. King, passed on at the age of 89. He essentially did something very simple, but to a very high and dedicated standard, and he kept working with his gift right up until the end. You...

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A Rat in Need …

Researchers at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan have been investigating whether rats are helpful to one another in times of trouble, and to what extent it might be said that they possess powers of...

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Bob Dylan: “Obsessed with Aging”?

Anything Bob Dylan does continues to be grist for the media machine, as if he were a slightly more hirsute Taylor Swift, and the news that he would appear on the second to last episode of the “Late...

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I Like New York in June

52° (F), raw and raining is what it is on this June 2nd; the same as it was on June 1st. Now there are places getting much worse weather, so this is not any cry for sympathy. However, this is a...

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Advice on Tipping: Bono versus Les Moonves

Bella Haig is eighty years of age, and has been a server at Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles for fifty of those years. Early last Friday morning, she reportedly received the largest tip of her career,...

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God: She, He, Or Gender Fluid?

Some female priests of the Church of England are reportedly advocating that liturgical texts ought to be changed to sometimes refer to God as “She,” instead of “He,” on the basis that God has no...

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A Hacked World and the Chinese Takeaway

Following the revelation that private personnel data (including Social Security numbers) for 4 million federal employees was siphoned from government databases by hackers, the Director of the Federal...

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Pope Getting It Wrong on Galileo (Again)

It’s been said both within and without the Vatican that Pope Francis’ encyclical regarding the environment and climate change is an effort to show that the Roman Catholic Church is on the side of...

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Manifestly Wrong: Charleston, the Media, and Nihilism

It’s happened again—it happens every time, and there is no simple obvious solution that would prevent it from happening in the future, but it still needs to be said that the very worst thing that can...

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Racism versus Nihilism

With reference to my previous post (Manifestly Wrong: Charleston, the Media, and Nihilism), Martin R. emails and says: Since when is racism the same as nihilism? He shot those people because they were...

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Inspirational Thought of the Day

Today while re-reading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s great work The Prophets, I came across this passage which put me in a “nothing-ever-changes” frame of mind:

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Tennessee Blues

At this point, we don’t know their names, but four U.S. Marines were shot to death today in Chattanooga, Tennessee. From a news report:

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Crime and Punishment

It’s not easy for a nation to see itself in the mirror. And it’s even harder when the visage in the glass is as misshapen and horrific as this. Forty years ago the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the...

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Paying God Back (in Oregon)

So there has been another act of nihilistic mass murder in America, this time at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, where nine people were shot to death yesterday before the murderer himself was...

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The Concern of a Canine

Yours truly is not a particularly friendly guy, as his friends would readily attest. My dog, a fourteen pound mutt named Billie, is quite different: a friend to anyone who makes eye contact with her....

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“In Flanders Fields,” read by Leonard Cohen

Marking Remembrance Day in Commonwealth nations, Canadian poet, songwriter and singer Leonard Cohen recites “In Flanders Fields,” a poem written in 1915 by John McCrae. (Below via YouTube, courtesy of...

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Bob Dylan Chooses Hired Guns Over Cancellations

The U.S. State Department has warned Americans abroad to steer clear of numerous sites in Italy that are apparently threatened by jihadist attacks. These include in particular the Vatican in Rome, and...

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I Wanna Be Sedated

The harbingers of civilizational collapse and impending apocalypse have become so very common as to encourage a serious case of the old ennui. There is little to generate surprise in the latest...

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Sacrifice in Afghanistan

Reading the newspaper summary of the life of Joseph Lemm—who was killed with five other American troops in Afghanistan two days ago—makes for a devastating reminder that the people we lose on these...

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A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra

There’s a communal feeling about most Christmas music. Maybe this is because we generally hear the songs in the company of others, whether it’s as we’re elbowing our way down the aisles of the...

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Frank Sinatra’s 1957 Christmas Special (with Bing Crosby)

Directed by Frank Sinatra himself, and sponsored by the good people of Bulova and Chesterfield, it’s surely one of the classiest Christmas specials ever to go out over the airwaves: twenty-five minutes...

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Three Score and Ten

It was a passing thing, the merest of blips in the constantly gushing torrent of news, if even by chance one happened to have noticed it at all. It was simply this: Two widely reported celebrity deaths...

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One Day in America

It’s all in how you look at it, isn’t it? “Oh, a few people got stabbed in Ohio. Big deal.” Or this: In Columbus, Ohio, yesterday (Thursday) evening, a man entered a restaurant named Nazareth, armed...

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Bob Dylan, “Melancholy Mood”

It is (in the sense of those things these days) Bob Dylan’s hot new single: “Melancholy Mood.” The song is best known from its recording by Harry James and his Orchestra, with brand new boy singer...

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Karma Comes Up Short for Robert F. Kennedy School

A few years back I wrote in this space about a public school in New York City that was utilizing the Hindu concept of karma to teach good behavior to its students, as evidenced by prominent signs both...

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Happy Passover

The Bible tells stories, that’s all; except that these stories cause tidal waves and earthquakes: the mountains leap, the mighty fall. (You just need to have the patience to watch it unfold.) There is...

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The Dog in the Mirror

Do dogs lack "self-awareness" because they don't look at themselves in mirrors - as compared to chimpanzees and people?

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Unknowing the Enemy

Seven months ago, in the Paris jihad attacks, 130 people were killed. Then there were 14 killed in the jihad attack in San Bernardino in December. In the Brussels jihad attacks, three months ago, 32...

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Bob Dylan – Fallen Angels (and Rising Prayers)

There's so much one could say about this album, precisely because it was designed to have endless depth. That depth is in the songs, the singing, the playing, as well as the gorgeousness of the...

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Leonard Cohen: Religious Alchemist [First Things]

Yet one more appreciation of the great Leonard Cohen, this one from yours truly at First Things: Leonard Cohen was a Canadian, but he was the poet laureate of another nation: a nation of souls by turns...

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Age of Light Update

Back in the year of our Lord two thousand and eight, on November the fourth, Barack Obama was elected to the presidency of the United States. Bob Dylan happened to be playing a show in Minnesota that...

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Murder Most Foul

It seems apt that amidst the ruination, Bob Dylan drops a new song. And also apt in that it strikes a lot of us initially as a non-sequitur in today’s context — this worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. What’s...

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Paul Westphal, rest in peace

I was deeply saddened to hear that Paul Westphal passed away yesterday, at the age of 70, having been diagnosed with brain cancer last August. He was a legend in the world of basketball, but, as the...

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Mourning Rush Limbaugh

Maybe the world’s always been divided between those who’ve actually listened to Rush Limbaugh on the radio and those who never have. Today, however — the day of his death — this feels dramatically...

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Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom

For about a month now fans have been awaiting this somewhat mysterious “exclusive broadcast event,” a pay-per-view-type online streaming performance by Bob Dylan, and now it has aired, and will...

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The Philosophy of Modern Song – Bob Dylan

Zany and sometimes enlightening conversations with Bob.

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