An interview with Matt Baglio, author of The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, made into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins.
Claire Berlinski finds her financial salvation in GM’s example.
Mark Blackham ponders the difference “between the instincts of ordinary people in a hardy provincial town and the high-minded health-and-safety culture of modern authority,” as shown in the Pike River coal mine disaster.
Catholic clergy in Congo warn of a “genocide in the making”.
Retailers see Hanukkah as a growth category.
And NASA shows us what the earth looks like when seen from far away.
Finally, scientists discover the blazingly obvious: Dogs are smarter than cats. And wonder about the unexplained: Why are bees in Brooklyn red? And in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders they’ve eliminated five of the ten personality disorders listed in the last edition.
Thanks to Mary Ellen Kelly for links.
December 1st, 2010 | 3:23 pm
Mr. Blackham’s article perfectly expresses the frustration that I’ve felt as an employee of a large utility in the U.S. The “health-and-safety” mantra is pressed on us in policy, meetings, posters, and random inspections from day one – and I work in the corporate center, where the worst thing that could possible happen to someone is getting their finger stuck in a stapler! We’re encouraged to be busy-bodies and worry-warts, and, in a real emergency, to leave our injured co-workers behind in order to let “the proper authorities deal with it.”
It seems we’re being bred to be cowards.