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Anthony Sacramone
First Thoughts Articles
That Rumbling Sound You Hear …
. . . is Luther turning over in his grave . . . Well, what difference does doctrine make to the ELCA these days? It’s already in full communion with TEC, which starting taking a blue pencil to the Thirty-nine Articles before the confession’s ink was dry, and with the Reformed Church in . . . . Continue Reading »
Re: Chess and Genius
Funny you should mention Capablanca , Steve. I’m almost finished with Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policeman’s Union , which focuses on the murder of a chess prodigy (who may also be the Messiah; it helps to have a Plan B should the board game thingee not work out). . . . . Continue Reading »
Bobby Fischer Is Dead
He was 64 . If you were a chess obsessive, especially a kid chess obsessive like me, you replicated with robotic obedience Fischer’s wild championship games with Boris Spassky back in 1972. Fischer defeated the Russian champion after a series of famously goofy delays in which Fischer . . . . Continue Reading »
Bin Ladin: Peacenik
Not that bin Laden—his son, Omar, one of the terrorist’s nineteen children. He wants to dispel the myth that all Muslims are terrorists and become “an ambassador for peace .” Fine. Step one: Cough up the old man. We’re not buying that he doesn’t have email: . . . . Continue Reading »
Chinese Fortune Cookies Really Japanese
Film at eleven . Outrageous! Next thing you know they’ll be telling us that spaghetti really comes from China, or that french fries come from Belgium, or that Catherinie d’Medici’s Florentine chefs are really the inventors of French cuisine! Or worse : That the fortunes in fortune . . . . Continue Reading »
Re: Burning Books
Fair enough, Jody, but I did make the distinction between the inchoate form and the finished work, and also the role an artist’s oeuvre might play in granting a special status even to unfinished work. (As for the title: How else am I going to get those RSS feeder readers to click?) As for the . . . . Continue Reading »
Burning Books
Slate’s Ron Rosenbaum has this about his interaction with Dmitri Nabokov, son of the late writer Vladimir Nabokov. It seems that Dmitri was instructed by his father to burn the latter’s index-carded notes for a work entitled The Original of Laura . Dmitri, quite naturally, has had . . . . Continue Reading »
The Mistaken Passion of the Christ
An Iranian Muslim has directed a film about Jesus: Jesus, the Spirit of God . Of course, this Jesus is just one of the many many Jesuses the world has concocted in an effort to circumvent the sin and sacrifice business, and because, well, everyone has to deal with Jesus eventually. So this Jesus is . . . . Continue Reading »
Teen Twins for Huck
Got your attention, didn’t I? Well, it’s not what you think. The twin teens are Alex and Brett Harris , and they’re Web geeks for Huckabee. These young evangelicals have a history of organizing online communities with a focus on motivating a young Christian base to get involved . . . . Continue Reading »
Re: Sprung
Robert: Sorry, ain’t buyin’ it . She couldn’t be impartial because SHE’S AGAINST CRIME? Look, there were plenty of people there who made up some story for the sake of beating jury duty—but no one in that room believed she couldn’t be impartial in that particular . . . . Continue Reading »
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