I’ve always been a sucker for those online IQ tests that ask you a bunch of fun, mostly visual/spacial questions, and then proclaim you a genius. (I’ve never enjoyed real IQ tests, though; they’re much more grudging in their endorsements.) This “Face Memory Test” from the “Science and Nature” portion of the BBC’s website has … Read more
This is cool: According to the BBC, astronomers have discovered a star “so big and bright that it stretches the boundaries of what scientists believed was possible”: The star, known so far only as R136a1, has an observed mass 265 times greater than our sun, and modeling suggests it was once 320 times bigger… But … Read more
While we’re talking about admonishing the sinner, can someone admonish this guy already? Wired’s Dylan Tweney recounts his live-tweeting of Wagner’s Die Walküre at the San Francisco Opera. I cannot fathom how he escaped the opera house alive. Look, fussing with your phone constantly—even on “minimum brightness”—is kind of a d— move at any performance, but it’s borderline sacrilegious … Read more
This is absolutely fantastic: BBC journalist and humorist Charlie Brooker pulls back the curtain on television journalism, revealing the pattern all network reporters follow in their own recorded segments. Have a look and you’ll never watch a news broadcast the same way again. (There is a small bit of profanity.)
Later today I will be speaking to the American Life League conference on “Personhood and Politics: From the Trinity to the Courtroom.” But though the Roe v. Wade anniversary tends to focus my mind on life issues, I watched a BBC news report this morning that reminded me of the ongoing struggle over housing in … Read more
BBC News published a heart-breaking piece just before Christmas about what has become of Romania’s orphans. You may remember reports from the early 1990s detailing the horrific orphanage conditions there. (Deal and his family can attest to this first-hand, from the experience of adopting their son.) Tragically, most of the children from that period went … Read more
Reflective readers sometimes refer to the critical books that shaped their lives as if they were old friends whom they revisit from time to time, discovering in them always some new insight or nuance of meaning, some unheard strains of verbal music for which their reading ear was, at last, now ready. Another reading of … Read more
Here’s what passes for historical scholarship in mainstream culture — from the BBC: Cleopatra, the last Egyptian Pharaoh, renowned for her beauty, was part African, says a BBC team which believes it has found her sister’s tomb…. [R]emains of the queen’s sister Princess Arsinoe, found in Ephesus, Turkey, indicate that her mother had an … Read more
The marvelous thing about penitence is you don’t have to be particularly guilty to enjoy it. I write “particularly,” of course, out of anxiety to cover my theological position: We are all “generally” or “originally” guilty, all born into the heritage of Adam, and unquestionably needful of Christ’s redeeming grace. But penitence is not punishment, … Read more
Most of us modern Christians congratulate ourselves that we’re tolerant and not judgmental. All that Old Testament brimstone is old hat. We’ve advanced and evolved. We’re more forgiving than our ancestors. But then a story like this catches our eye: Shouting, "This is YouTube material!" a 27-year-old British man urinated on a dying … Read more