We are now an entirely gossip-based society. My old friend Mark pointed me to the latest outrage.
T-Mobile managed to do what a massive rebrand and years of advertising couldn’t do. They’ve managed to make the thought of dealing with my cable company, Spectrum, seem appealing.
It is my fervent hope that Our Lord’s admonition to love our enemies does not apply to corporations. If it does, I’m sunk. There are things I hate as much as I hate the entity that calls itself Frontier Communications, but there is nothing that I despise more. I suspect that the company is corrupt; I know it is incompetent.
One of my favorite products is, of all things, a small piece of fabric. This strip of material I ran across during my jump into the Mac world two decades ago is something I now use every day. As ridiculous as that may sound, RadTech’s Optex products tend to sell themselves: usually if I show someone what it does and how well it works, RadTech ends up with another customer.
Climbing up the hill in 80-degree heat and impressive humidity today, I couldn’t help but think how today felt like this time 49 years ago. Most of you won’t remember it, but that was a time when the air was electric with news about Richard Nixon, and doubt whether he would be president of the United States much longer.
Twitter has changed its name to “X.” The way that change reverberated from newsrooms to dining rooms was revealing. It shows how dangerously dependent our society has become on this one, privately owned soapbox.
We do so much online now. Unless we very much limit our internet activities, we make ourselves vulnerable to crooks so clever that they would have gotten rich if they were honest. But for whatever reason they aren’t honest, so we need to take precautions. If we don’t, given the portion of our lives that takes place online, we face catastrophes not far in effect from the house burning down.
Zippy is back and with this episode, the boys record live and in-person for the first time ever. Check it out as we talk Supreme Court decisions, the Cardinals, MLS soccer, Wimbledon tennis and the Psalms in one absolutely packed episode.
Many years ago, in junior high school and high school, I studied Latin. My reasoning at the time was water-tight, to me. It was my hope to become the world’s leading herpetologist. The most daunting obstacle, I thought, was the memorization of scientific names. But if I knew Latin, I’d just translate the common names of snakes, turtles, and lizards into that language and I wouldn’t have to memorize anything. It is funny the things that make sense when you’re 13.
The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, popularly known as Vatican II, sought to confront a hidebound clericalism, and a modern world that no longer takes as its starting points basic natural law and Christian dogmatic commitments. It is unfortunately known in some circles for the opportunity it provided for poorly catechized Catholics and progressive innovators to make changes (liturgical abuses) under the guise of the Council’s authority.