Sentimental cruelty

Virgil is not a critic of empire, but he’s not quite an unqualified celebrant either. He knows the costs, and mourns them. But neither he nor his hero wishes the conquests away. Sunt lacrimae rerum , indeed, but neither the tears nor the things are going to cease. This is just the way things . . . . Continue Reading »

Postmodern truth

In a review of Harry Frankfurt’s On Truth (a sequel to Frankfurt’s widely read On Bulls*** ), Oxford’s Simon Blackburn offers a neat summary of postmodern notions of truth. He questions the tendency to use postmodernism as a “whipping boy” against whom “many . . . . Continue Reading »

Isidore of Seville

For anyone with $150 of spare change, Cambridge University Press has just published what it’s calling the first-ever complete English translation of Isidore’s Etymologies , one of the most widely studied books in Christendom between 600 and 1600. . . . . Continue Reading »

Eucharistic meditation

Thanks to Chris Morris for suggesting this line of thinking about 1 John 2:28-29. 1 John 2:28: Little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. As I’ve emphasized a couple of times this morning, Jesus comes to . . . . Continue Reading »

Baptismal meditation

1 John 3:1: See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. Throughout this passage, John speaks about two different genealogies, two different families, two different kinds of people. On the one hand are those who are children of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Exhortation

We live out the Christian life, John says, between appearances of Christ. He appeared first to remove sin and to loose us from the works of the devil, and He appears again as judge and to transform us into His likeness. But Jesus comes again and again, not just twice. Jesus came through and in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Pomo politics

In 1991, Jody Williams and two other people formed the “International Campaign to Ban Landmines.” During the following six years, the group had entered into a coalition with over 1000 Non-Government Organizations and got 121 nations to sign a treaty to ban landmines, which took effect . . . . Continue Reading »

VISA World

Dee Hock, founder and CEO of VISA Corporation, describes the rise and size of the company: “In 1968 the VISA community was no more than a set of beliefs and a vague concept. In 1970 it was born. Today, twenty-nine years later, its products are created by 22,000 owner-member financial . . . . Continue Reading »

Global corporations

Peter Drucker notes that “the distinction between parent and daughter [companies] is increasingly blurring. In the transnational company, design is done anyplace within the system. Major pharmaceutical companies now have research laboratories in five or six countries, in the United States, . . . . Continue Reading »

Tech Revolution?

We are living through a communications revolution. Maybe: While submarine fiber-optic cable is being laid under the world’s oceans (according to Anderson, it will be “the largest man-made structure in the world”), about 70% of the people in the world have never made a phone call. . . . . Continue Reading »