Saturday night my wife and I went to the symphony. One of the pieces we heard was Symphony no. 4 by Sergei Prokofiev. In the program notes, one of the things we were informed about this symphony was that it borrowed heavily from an earlier work, which was a ballet entitled The Prodigal Son. . . . . Continue Reading »
Let a student announce that law and morality are separate things and that morality can’t be legislated. Many heads will dutifully bob up and down expressing agreement. Bumper sticker philosophy rules. Normally, one would resort to some great Christian master or other purveyor of natural . . . . Continue Reading »
Underdogs triumph! Round 4 proved to be stunning and scandalous series of upsets: The Brothers Karamazov —heavily favored to win the tournament—was felled by The Lord Of The Rings, To Kill A Mockingbird murdered David Copperfield , and The Scarlet Letter prevented Pilgrim’s Progress . . . . Continue Reading »
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the press has been attempting for over a week now to find something—anything—that mentions the pope in the context of the bishops’ deplorable and disgusting failure to act, for decades, on sexual-abuse charges. The attempt to draw the . . . . Continue Reading »
A pretty good debate was held today at Columbia University Law School between David Levin—head of New York chapter of Compassion and Choices—and yours truly. As I recall it, it hit some hard point on both sides. Check it out at this podcast link:That was this morning. This . . . . Continue Reading »
No, that’s not one of my all-time favorite movie lines. Those are listed below. But it is one of the Top 100 movie quotes of all time as determined by—well, I’ll let them tell it: AFI distributed a ballot with 400 nominated movie quotes to a jury of over 1,500 leaders from the . . . . Continue Reading »
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Norman Podhoretz emerged from semi-retirement to express his approval for Sarah Palin . No, I don’t propose to revisit the Sarah, pro- and con- debate, which will remain sterile and tedious until she actually, like, runs for something (or not). But I . . . . Continue Reading »
While it’s still unclear how LOST will ultimately end up, some recent developments seem to provide a good illustration of one way people have chosen to resolve the problem that has plagued humanity throughout history: Deep down, we know we deserve justice from God, but we want grace. How can . . . . Continue Reading »
Sean Curnyn reviews the new, posthumously-released Johnny Cash album, American VI: Ain’t No Grave : We may forget, because of his tremendous presence, both on stage and in the arena of memory, that he was a man practicing a profession. If anyone ever seemed like the proverbial force of nature, . . . . Continue Reading »
Amidst all the fury over the Bush stem cell funding restrictions, every once in a while stories would appear indicating that the field was really being stifled not by funding problems—I’ll say—ESCR received more than $2 billion in private/public funding during the Bush . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
