Maybe I just don't comprehend the attachment of some men to their cars, to the point that they call it a 'relationship'--but Eric Bana's latest does seem to be a vanity project. (C'mon, Dr. Phil giving him advice? Is there any other red flag that would be bigger?) I'd rather watch something like The Objective, even though I can't stand most horror movies. (Sarge thinks the SF team in the movie looks authentic.)

AU website for Love the Beast; US.

[HDTV] Korean Karaoke - Flight of the Conchords

Flight Of The Conchords Season 2- Oh, Dance Baby


Flight Of The Conchords - Oh, Dance, Baby (Best Version, High ... [TRANSLATED]

GL, Pole Beans Need Better Public Relations

Pole Beans Need Better Public Relations
Gene Logsdon, Dave Smith, OrganicToBe.org
I suppose it’s because pole beans require some kind of scaffolding to climb on that they aren’t as popular as bush beans...But if you have tasted Kentucky Wonder pole beans cooked with bacon grease or a slab of real country-cured ham fat nestled among them, you know that they are so much more delectable than any bush bean that the extra work is worth it.

(original)

Last night the OD and his wife had xiao Jimmy, his wife, and me over for dinner. It was nice... I wish we could do things like that more often. Xiao Jimmy asked me if there were free dating sites, and I thought of Craigslist, but he reminded me about Yahoo Personals. So I took a look at it again last night, and stayed up quite late. Alas, I was not called for work this morning. I note that it, like Match.com, has a limit on the number of profiles you can save. I suppose the creators thought 100 saved profiles would be enough for anyone. hahaha. I think I saw one or two faces at YP that I had seen at Match.com. I had looked at YP once before, but was reluctant to do anything with it, because to get full access one has to put one's profile up on the Internet, and I don't know if I want my personal information on like that. Of course, one could be dishonest and make a fake profile... maybe I can limit how much I reveal about myself. (YP even asks that people be honest, etc.)

I had a dream the sequel for Master and Commander was being produced...

Zenit: Father Groeschel to the Legion of Christ

Father Groeschel to the Legion of Christ

"This Is Not the Legion of Anybody Except of Christ"

THORNWOOD, New York, MARCH 2, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is the text of a homily given Feb. 20 by Father Benedict Groeschel, one of the founders of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, when he concelebrated Mass at the formation center of the Legionaries of Christ in Thornwood.

Father Groeschel hosts Sunday Night Live with Father Benedict Groeschel on EWTN, directs the Office for Spiritual Development for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and teaches pastoral psychology at St. Joseph's Seminary in New York and at the Institute for Psychological Sciences in Arlington, Virginia.

* * *
Well, brothers and sisters, I'm delighted to be here and grateful to God that I can talk, because I came down with laryngitis yesterday. And I wanted to be with the members of the Legionaries and of Regnum Christi in a time that obviously is one of great suffering, of pain, but also of promise.

It happened just by an unusual circumstance that this little book of mine, "The Tears of God," arrived yesterday. I wrote it and sent it to the publisher a year ago. The name of the book is "The Tears of God: Persevering in the Face of Great Sorrow and Catastrophe." And so I brought several copies with me. It's hardly a book; it's a long essay with prayers, but I hope that it will be helpful to you all.

And first of all, let me say that the Legionaries have many friends, and I've been on the phone with a number of members of Regnum Christi who are friends and associates of mine, especially through the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, which I am a faculty member of. And I'm so delighted to know that the spirit of the Lord is with you in this time of suffering and that people are holding on.

Now: "You all need reform!" We ALL need reform! When do we need it? Every single day, no matter what goes on. Send anybody around to me who says, "They need reform!" and I'll tell them, "Wake up, smarty!" Our Divine Savior says, "The time has come, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news." And that is something that must go on every single day.

When I was a young fellow, fourteen years old, I saw a book: "The Confessions of St Augustine." And I started to read it. The only translations were old Anglican translations in very stilted language: Dr. Pusey's translations. And it intrigued me. (I skipped over the parts about the Manicheans.) But the whole story of St Augustine, not only his conversion, but also his great belief on every page that God, that Christ, called to him no matter what was happening, even before his conversion. He wrote, "You called me with an unheard voice, and you pushed me on with a hidden goad."

Right in the first paragraph, there is a sentence. It almost knocked me on the ground when I read it: "You have made us for yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." And down through the ages, the spirit of St. Augustine has guided religious orders in the West over and over again (St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic, many, many others... St. Ignatius). And on into modern times. "You have made us for yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

And in St. Augustine, you read a great deal about human weakness, about how much we need every day to be converted. You'll never read in St .Augustine: "We've arrived." Absolutely not.

And at times, in individual lives, and sometimes in corporate lives, events occur which are difficult for us to comprehend, to get our arms around. And often, not always, but often, the answer is a personal, individual call to repentance on our part, on OUR part. And the willingness to go on.

The friars, work with the poorest section of society, and we get along very well with humble people. Right during the priests' scandal, this great scandal four years ago, two of our brothers are walking down Broadway. It's a little hard to miss us, you know. (At least we LOOK religious; I wish we WERE that religious.) And this truck driver with a leather jacket and a handful of keys walked by the two brothers. He turned around and he says, "Hey brothers, don't let the turkeys get you down."

It's a great motto. Now, it's not elegant, and those of you who speak English in a second language: get someone to explain to you why they call them turkeys. (How do you say it in Spanish? "Pavo" is turkey?)

Now, what goes on is that each individual soul is called in the way that the Holy Spirit calls us to turn all of the events of life -- successes, failures, joys, sorrows, virtues, and even sins -- to turn them all into our personal repentance and following of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Legionaries of Christ were built and sustained by a deep Christological theology and devotion. It will stand you in the best stead at this time. This is not the Legion of anybody except of Christ.

And I encourage you... my little book is about this. That's Christ on the cover with tears running down his face. This painting was made in the 19th century. No one knows who made it, but it shows Christ in the agony, crowned with thorns, and the tears running down his face. The tears of Christ are the tears of God. He weeps with us. He wept in the garden. He wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. Don't ever, ever think that he does not weep even now.

If you look at the religions of the world, there are unique qualities about each of them, that were founded by sincere people, far away from Christianity, and perhaps with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in those cultures: Buddhism, for instance. And in those religions, God never suffers. In the Jewish religion, from which we come, God gets mad. He gets annoyed. He also gets happy; he rejoices when things are going well. But in Christianity, God suffers. An incredible, impossible thought. The absolute, infinite, divine being, eternal, unchangeable... That he could weep: This is the mystery of the Incarnation. Christ comes and weeps with us. He suffers with us. We have the unthinkable reality of a God who dies. Incomprehensible. Theologically, we have explanations through the Councils of how it could happen, but it's a mystery of mysteries. And the devotions of the centuries, especially of the Sacred Heart, reveal that Christ in a mysterious way suffers with us today.

Pope John Paul quoted the French writer Léon Bloy that "Christ is on his cross till the end of the world in his Mystical Body." And so Christ suffers with you in a very special way.

Years from now, you'll think back on these difficult days, and I hope you'll remember that Christ suffered with you. Let the cross be your guide. St. Augustine says, "When the cross was first preached to the few who believed, it was mocked by the multitudes. But by the power of the cross, the blind saw, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, and even the dead rose so that even among the powers of this world, men would come to believe that there is, in fact, nothing more powerful than the humility of God." Nothing more powerful than the humility of God.

And if I may say this as a friend to your community, this is a time when the face of Christ, covered with tears and sweat, calls each of us to participate in the humility of God. Amen.

Daniel P. Wirt, MD, Single-Payer Health Care Reform

Cicero Bruce, The Stand of Allen Tate (from Modern Age 42:4, Fall 2000)

Clearly the South that Tate knew as a boy had been compromised. Yet up to about 1914 the people who called themselves Southerners were still rooted in the soil, rooted in their traditions, and rooted in a way of life inscribed with the permanent values and intelligible principles that had been passed down from one generation to the next. Having reconciled vice with virtue, the South knew from experience what the modern world has tried to forget: the depravity that lurks inexorably in the hearts of humankind everywhere. This knowledge, along with their cultural ties to the past, humbled the best Southerners and contributed to their conservatism. As Tate suggests in his two interpretive Civil War biographies Stonewall Jackson: The Good Soldier (1928) and Jefferson Davis: His Rise and Fall (1929), the refined remnant of antebellum society rarely discussed money or how much of it someone had. For this remnant the quality of a particular man was, according to the narrator of Tate’s acclaimed novel The Fathers, “bound up with his kin and the ‘places’ where he lived,” not with his income or way of earning it, and “‘Class’ consisted solely in a certain code of behavior.”11

For Tate the New South that arose after 1918 from the ashes of the Confederacy was not a reconstruction, but an obliteration. He remained convinced that what was good and right about the Old South perished along with what was mean and vile; the cure for what ailed the old order, in other words, had been in many ways worse than the disease. He maintained that while the “cynical materialism of the new order brought to the South the American standard of living . . . it also brought about a society similar to that which Matthew Arnold saw in the North in the Eighties and called vigorous and uninteresting.”12Much like the town portrayed in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily,” the New South that Tate oppugns in his writings joined the march of progress, and its people, tempted by dreams of avarice, willingly conformed themselves to the ways of industrialization, urbanization, and standardization—for fear that they be otherwise ridiculed like Emily Grierson, who refused to let the postal service affix a number to her mailbox.

Tate insisted that the Confederacy was defeated in and after the Civil War because the South failed “to bring out a body of doctrine setting forth its true conviction that the ends of man require more for their realization than politics.”13He encouraged his fellow Agrarians not to make the same mistake. If the Agrarians were to succeed in forwarding their cause, they had to be of a religious mind, he argued, and they had to be able to understand each other’s religion. Such an understanding, he proclaimed, “is necessary to fire the enthusiasm of a group; it is reciprocal in its action.”14What the Agrarians—or anybody else opposed to progress for the sake of progress—needed, according to Tate, was the intelligence of sacred tradition.

This was precisely what Tate thought humanism lacked. In “The Fallacy of Humanism,” his most controversial essay, which appeared in the journal Criterion about a year before the Agrarians took their stand in print, he made this judgment jarringly plain. Here he denounced the humanistic writings of Norman Foerster, Babbitt, and Paul Elmer More. He alleged that their New Humanism (or Neohumanism) denied the polarities of life, of Heaven and Hell, and disparaged the timeless myths by which man lives and organizes his literature. Furthermore, he argued that it did not possess the authority of religion from which values emerge and around which they unify themselves to form a coherent moral system. Moreover, he contended that authority for the humanists lies not in sacred tradition, but in individuals, not in unity, but in diversity. And most important, he claimed that the New Humanism could offer no consistent point of view without “the background of an objective religion, a universal scheme of reference.”15

Some of his poems.

TN Encyclopedia: JOHN ORLEY ALLEN TATE
Allen Tate's Life and Career
wiki
Fugitives and Agrarians: Photographs

Alan Jacobs's blog, Text Patterns. (Notice @ the American Scene.)

The struggles within the Church continue...

Rorate Caeli: Wagner Affair over -- The Holy Father has relieved the Rev. Mons. Gerhard Wagner from accepting the office of Auxiliary Bishop of Linz (Austria).

Both Rorate Caeli and Fr. Z link to the Der Spiegel interview with Bishop Fellay.


Fr. Z also posts this tidbit: Vatican Radio: Prof. at Pontifical school criticizes Summorum Pontificum.

I had heard that Bishop Williamson had a blog, but never really paid much attention to it--Fr. Z mentions it in this post. Does the blog show that the bishop is crazy in his opinions?

Daniel Larison joins another group blog: Front Porch Republic. He writes: "Many familiar TAC contributors and other bloggers well known to many of you will be joining in the discussions on localism, limits and liberty." Sounds very promising!

Edit. Notice @ Patrick Deneen's blog: Front Porch Republic

The Blu-ray edition of P&P 95: is it worth it? (via Austen Blog)

Thomas Fleming, Religio Philologi: Lenten Tests

The American Papist: Vatican denounces errors behind the economic crisis

Paul Craig Roberts, Obama's Budget

Papal Message on Unity With Orthodox

Papal Message on Unity With Orthodox

"This Beautiful Church Awakens in Us the Nostalgia for Full Unity"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 2, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the message Benedict XVI sent to a ceremony Sunday in which the president of Italy turned over the keys to a Russian Orthodox church in southern Italy to the president of Russia.

The Holy Father was represented at the ceremony by Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, retired archbishop of Palermo, Italy, who read the message on the Pope's behalf.

* * *

The Holy Father, Benedict XVI, who has asked me to represent him in this significant ceremony, sends his cordial greetings to the religious and civil authorities and to all those present, in particular to the president of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, to the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitriy Medvedev, to the ministers, to His Excellency Mark, "ad interim" president of the Department of External Church Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, and to the most excellent Monsignor Francesco Cacucci, pastor of this particular Church. He wants to renew, above all, his fervent best wishes to the patriarch of Moscow and of All Russia, His Holiness Kirill I, asking the Holy Spirit to enlighten his demanding ministry.

The Pope is pleased at the fact that this building responds, here in Bari, to the devotion of the Russian Orthodox to St. Nicholas. The Russian people has never faltered in its love for this great saint, who has always supported it in moments of joy and in difficulties. This is witnessed also by this Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas, built at the beginnings of the past century, to welcome the pilgrims who, in particular in their trips to the Holy Land, made a stop in Bari, a point of encounter between East and West, to venerate the relics of the saint. How could we not recognize that this beautiful church awakens in us the nostalgia for full unity and maintains alive in us the commitment to work for union among all the disciples of Christ?

In truth, the history of Bari and of this region is marked in a profound way by the presence of the Eastern world, and ecumenical sensitivity is one of the characteristic traits of the populations of Apulia. Precisely because of this, the Holy Father Benedict XVI hopes that this ceremony too will contribute so that Bari continues being, as Pope John Paul II of happy memory said, a "natural bridge to the East," offering its precious contribution to the path toward full communion among Christians.

With these sentiments, invoking the intercession of the Mother of God and of St. Nicholas, the Pope renews his greetings to those present and sends them his blessing through my own.

[Translation by ZENIT]

B16: On the Role of Angels

On the Role of Angels

"Let Us Call Upon Them Often"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 1, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today before praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter's Square.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Today is the First Sunday of Lent, and the Gospel, with the sober and concise style of St. Mark, introduces us to the climate of this liturgical season: "The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for 40 days, tempted by Satan" (Mark 1:12). In the Holy Land, west of the Jordan and the oasis of Jericho, there is the desert of Judah, which ascends to a height of over 1,000 meters through rocky valleys, stretching all the way to Jerusalem.

After having received baptism from John, Jesus enters that empty place, led by the Holy Spirit himself, which had descended upon him, consecrating him and revealing him as the Son of God. In the desert, the place of trial -- as the experience of the people of Israel shows -- there appears the dramatic reality of the "kenosis," the emptying of Christ, who is stripped of the form of God (cf. Philippians 2:6-7). He, who did not sin and cannot sin, submits himself to trial and thus can have compassion for our infirmities (cf. Hebrews 4:15). He lets himself be tempted by Satan, the adversary, who had opposed himself to God's salvific plan for men from the very beginning.

In the brevity of the account, in the face of this obscure and darksome figure who dares to tempt the Lord, the angels, luminous and mysterious figures, fleetingly appear. The Gospel says that the angels "serve" Jesus (Mark 1:13); they are the counterpoint to Satan. "Angel" means "one who is sent." We find these figures throughout the Old Testament who help and guide men in the name of God. Just consider the Book of Tobit, in which the figure of the angel Raphael appears to assist the protagonist through many vicissitudes. The reassuring presence of the angel of the Lord accompanies the people of Israel through every event, good and bad. On the threshold of the New Testament, Gabriel is sent to announce to Zachariah and Mary the joyous happenings that are the beginnings of our salvation; and an angel, whose name is not mentioned, warns Joseph, directing him in that moment of uncertainty. A chorus of angels reports the glad tidings of Jesus' birth to the shepherds, as the glad tidings of his resurrection will also be announced by angels to the women. At the end of time the angels will accompany Jesus in his glorious return (cf. Matthew 25:31).

The angels serve Jesus, who is certainly superior to them, and this dignity of his is proclaimed in a clear though discreet way here in the Gospel. Indeed, even in the situation of extreme poverty and humility, when he is tempted by Satan, he remains the Son of God, the Messiah, the Lord.

Dear brothers and sisters, we would take away a significant part of the Gospel if we left aside these beings sent by God to announce his presence among us and be a sign of that presence. Let us call upon them often, that they sustain us in the task of following Jesus to the point of identifying ourselves with him. Let us ask them, especially today, to watch over me and my co-workers in the Roman Curia as we begin our retreat this week, as we do every year. Mary, Queen of Angels, pray for us!

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]

[The Holy Father then greeted the people in several languages. In English, he said:]

I am happy to greet all the English-speaking visitors present at today's Angelus prayer. On this First Sunday of Lent, the Gospel of Saint Mark speaks of Jesus being lead into the desert by the Holy Spirit, tempted by Satan and assisted by the angels. Let us pray that our Lenten journey will strengthen us in the struggle against all forms of temptation. Upon all of you I invoke God's abundant blessings, and I wish you a pleasant Sunday and a happy stay in Rome!

© Copyright 2009 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Rod Dreher: What's wrong with taking pictures?

Here you go Sarge, TERMINATOR: SALVATION Full Theatrical Trailer #2 (via AICN).

Edit. Hrm. Apparently the url doesn't link to the most recent trailer. I'll try to fix it again, but the link to the the trailer is at the top, #1, so click on that one. Or you can go here. (Stills at the bottom.)

Rod Dreher recommends Brooke Waggoner (MySpace).

Other links:

Brooke Waggoner Free EP

Brooke Waggoner: 'I am Mine' : NPR Music

Brooke Waggoner On Mountain Stage : NPR Music

BROOKE WAGGONER: ADDICTED TO HER INSTRUMENT - New York Post

Brooke Waggoner - So-So

The Mutualist Blog: The Long Emergency, S.M. Stirling, and the Transition to a Relocalized Manufacturing Economy

On Lathes:
wiki
WikiAnswers - How does a lathe work
Lathe
How Does It Work?

John Robb, JOURNAL: The Stress Test

One useful way to look at D2 (the current global depression) is to view it as a stress test for nation-states. In other words: can nation-states adapt successfully to the twin pressures of the new global environment? Here's what I mean. Nation-states are now caught between two irresistible and strengthening forces:

1. A dominant, turbulent, and uncontrollable global super-network, that is pressuring/weakening/buffeting nation-states from above.
2. Super-empowered individuals/groups rising up from below that are ready to pounce on or exploit any demonstration of nation-state weakness.

So far, the vast majority of thinking re: the response to the stress test has been a revival of early 20th Century methods/theories of activist government. I'm fairly sure that this is a sterile response to the challenge.

In contrast, decentralization that both improves resilience and accelerates (parallelizes) innovation offers a greater chance of success. Nation-states that ease the process of decentralization will likely have both the easiest transition to the new fluid environment and the best long term prospects (wealth creation).

Maximos, Liberalism, Abortion, and Natural Law - Following Up (He also links to this piece by John Zmirak: The Pentagon is a Money Toilet.)

NLM: Msgr. Guido Marini Speaks Again on the Liturgy, Its Forms and Its Importance

Some info on the new Star Trek trailer

AICN: WonderCon: Quint has seen the new Trek Trailer, plus has pics and info from the panel, including tidbits on Cloverfield 2!

TrekMovie: Wondercon 09: Star Trek Panel Detailed Report & Pictures
Wondercon 09: New Star Trek Trailer Premieres - Full Description & Review
Wondercon 09: TrekMovie LiveBlogging Paramount Star Trek Panel
Wondercon 09: Our Star Trek Panel Kicks Things Off
New Star Trek Online ‘Path to 2409′ Provides Game Story Clues and Ties In To Movie Prequel Comics


(also at AICN: WonderCon: Quint on TERMINATOR panel, new footage and trailer! Info on Arnie and Robert Patrick! Plus the WATCHMEN panel! and Are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton Involved With May’s TERMINATOR SALVATION?? McG Speaks To The Issue At WonderCon!!)

Via Fr. Finigan:

An interesting new blog is Chiral Capers (Observations of Japan in matters cultural, photographical and theological.)