Home Run for Hispanic Humanist reviews the work of Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa as “that rare specimen who is both an academic and a man of action, an artist and an activist, a complex, passionate personality and a hard-headed politician. In the dark days of tyranny, he stood for democracy; when the literary world was agog over the post-modern dissolution of the person, he stood for humanity.”
Beautiful Me! reports on the new fad in China for magazine-quality wedding photographs. The production “can cost from $450 to more than $15,000, a huge expense in a country where the average per capita income is roughly $3,000 (about $10,000 in Beijing). But it’s increasingly seen as a must-have for China’s image-conscious middle class, now some 430-million strong.”
The French Catholic bishops are taking a much greater role in political affairs. Having spoken “forcefully against a government crackdown on illegal immigration, and particularly the expulsion of the Roma (gypsy) migrants[,] now the bishops are gearing up for a national debate on bioethics.”
Though the gods described in The Illiad are “petty, lecherous, jealous, and venal,” writes Thomas Howard, “Nevertheless, sacrifice, which should bespeak the precincts of the holy, is required.” As is glory. But where are they found today?
Though on the other hand, The Onion reports that historians admit to inventing the ancient Greeks.
The contingent of Southern Baptists in Congress changed noticeably in the last election. For one thing, Congressmen John Boozman and Roy Blunt moved to the Senate, where Tom Coburn won reelection.
“We are mistaken if we think that the recent attack on Christians will be the last,” says an Iraqi priest serving in Mosul in a traditionally Christian area of Iraq. “The ‘nucleus of misunderstanding’ and ‘discrimination’ is contained in the very articles of the Constitution, he pointed out,” as the Constitution makes Islam the country’s religion and forbids laws that Islamic principles.
Although considerable evidence links abortion and hormonal contraception with increased rates of breast cancer, writes Jenn Giroux of HLI America, affiliates of the Susan G. Komen Foundation have given $3.3 million to Planned Parenthood.
November 7th, 2010 | 3:31 pm
About the Komen-Planned Parenthood link – ironic, isn’t it?
Another dirty little secret about oral contraception is that >5% of women of northern European decent carry a genetic mutation which puts them at greatly increased risk of thrombosis (blood clots) if they take oral contraception.
Another one of those nasty, potentially fatal complications the doctors never tell you about when they had you that prescription for unmother’s little helper.
November 7th, 2010 | 4:28 pm
Having recently returned from La Belle France, I am entirely sympathetic with President Sarkozy’s policy of deporting illegal Roma back whence they came. Those who have not experienced the extremely aggressive form of panhandling and petty crime perpetrated by many of these people have no idea what it is like.
For instance, in the course of one very short walk from my hotel near Place du Carousel to Les Invalides, I was accosted no less than four time, including one with the classic “beggar woman with baby” scam, in which a woman comes up to you pretending to be a homeless mother asking for money. If you don’t fork over, she tosses her “baby” in your direction, and when you reflexively move to catch the infant, an accomplice lifts your wallet. Fortunately for me, I had seen this before.
Then I saw a mother and son team doing the “found ring” trick: the gypsy pretends to see a gold ring on the ground (actually, he palms it and places it there), picks it up and asks if it is yours. You say no. He presses it on you ‘for good luck”. You accept. He then asks you for money. You give him ten Euros to go away. He demands twenty. You start looking around for a Gendarme. He runs off.
These are some of the more benign activities in which they engage, and it is making public life in France’s larger cities impossible.
Now, there are “good Gypsies”, who have settled down, become respectable, send their kids to school and want nothing more than to make a life for themselves and be left alone. But there are far too many “bad Gypsies” who have no desire to assimilate, and whose may preoccupation is grifting and petty larceny, and occasionally darker crimes. And France is perfectly within its rights to deport those who come into the country illegally, break its laws and disturb its public order.
By the way, I’ve seen Gypsies do the same sort of things in other European cities, but never as shamelessly as in Paris. Even in Bucharest, they are more circumspect, perhaps because the people are more aware of them and have a lot less tolerance than the French. When I mentioned that I wanted to go see the Old City, the concierge at my hotel shook his head gravely and told me, “You do not want to go there–there are many Gypsies”. And my daughter, who spent a summer in Romania when she was all of sixteen, gave me three very good pieces of advice when I had to go there: “Don’t eat the meat. Don’t drink the water. Don’t talk to Gypsies”.
November 8th, 2010 | 4:06 am
I’m of Italian descent. I had a Greek-American friend who told me, “The Romans stole everything from the ancient Greeks.”
Replied I: “Then Rome fell.”
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