Farrago Line

Urbana

Kathy Gilsinan, writing for opinionjournal.com, checks in on Urbana.

From Gilsinan's article:

The young people gathered here at Urbana are trying to figure out how best to put the ideas of their faith to use in the world. Blake Yates, who graduated from Baylor University in 2005, is thinking of going on a long-term mission trip to Haiti. He points to the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells his disciples that what they did to the least of his people, they had done also to him. "The obvious application is if there's folks out there dying and in pain, we need to be able to see Jesus in them."

Gilsinan says about 22,000 folks attended this year. I personally know at least one of them very well. She plans to become a nurse and ply that craft throughout the world, or select depressed parts thereof. She's been to Africa twice: Uganda and Cameroon. And she makes me wonder, uncomfortably, what have I done with my life?

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Smile

Big Brother isn't only watching. He's analyzing.

The Baltimore Sun's Frank Roylance reports that computers using behavior recognition software are catching criminals.

In an earlier Sun story by Stacey Hirsh describes another video-to-computer technology that brings game film to another level.

Play Visualizer allows coaches and players to watch plays from virtually any angle 3D re-creations of plays taken from video. Coaches can also use the tool to create their own computerized plays

Pulling the theological plug

In Wired, a story about the death of poet Piergiorgio Welby, who, being terminally ill sought relief from the machines that kept him alive.

Wired author Tony Long asks:

What's "natural" about keeping someone hooked up to life support when, without extraordinary technical intervention, he would simply die?

Then he avers the following: (parenthetical remark mine; italic emphasis mine)

Not that it really matters (what the Church thinks or says on the issue). This is an ethical question, not a theological one, and the underlying issue is technology. Because of what's possible, knowing when to "pull the plug" on a terminally ill patient isn't as clear as it used to be. Doctors can go to some pretty extreme lengths to keep patients alive these days.

Why is this not a question for theology? Certainly "it" has ethical and technological aspects, also medical ones, also journalistic ones. How does the fact of those aspects exclude a theological consideration?

More on this question later.

(note: I am not, at this point, arging with Mr. Long, or anyone, over the right or wrong of the case of pulling the plug on Mr. Piergiorgio. I am only asking: why is this not a consideration of theology?)

Cross over Cross

What's that you say?

Christians protested a cross ban?

And won???

Intelligent Design

Sounds like intelligent design to me.

Unless we don't plan to employ intelligence when "creat[ing] life forms ... derived from our own species."

“But suffice it to say that genetic engineering, coupled with other technologies such as pre-implantation genetic screening, would likely speed up evolution enormously, and create life forms, including those derived from our own species, in ways that the Darwinian process can never hope to accomplish.”

-Bruce Lahn

This is a fascinating article. BTW: I had no idea the Darwinian process had capacity for hope.

I was led to this article by John Derbyshire's post on his blog at the New English Review.

Just discovered this blog. Like tripping over a gold mine. Lookee fellas -- More Derb!

Food Police

How do you spell detenshun?

I wonder if this skool takes the boy's brain as seriously as it takes his stomach?

You get the standard three guesses. We'll grade on a curve. And there'll be extra points if you express yourself in a uniquely creative way without employing sexist language and without making yourself seem more clever than your neighbor. Wouldn't want to offend.

Malcolm Goddard, the headmaster, said: "We take healthy eating very seriously and everyone is aware of our new policies."

How sweet.

Hat tip: PJM

Censorship Today

Michelle Malkin is too hot for Youtube?

"Enter Fox News pundit, author and top-rated blogger Michelle Malkin. Last week she received notice from YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing service, that her video had been deemed “offensive.” The result? Her account was terminated and her videos deleted.

"YouTube refused to say why her videos were “offensive” and there was no avenue available to challenge the decision. Today, her videos are gone and her voice is suppressed on the most important video “node” on the Internet."

So is (or was?) David Zucker.

Peggy Noonan notes a rise in the bullying pulpit.

Answer Girl

Answer Girl Clair Lamb discusses writing and what the ever-expanding blogosphere has in common with small-town life in this week's episode of Blography.

This is obviously must-hear podcasting.

Posthuman moderns

David Warren on "aging children."

"People who lived shorter lives, had to get on with them. They measured their distances along the ground, not by the dials on their exercycles. It was not uncommon for people in their later teens to behave like adults; to be finished with school and out earning a living. Whereas today, schooling often extends to middle age, and I know people my own age who still haven’t seriously considered growing up."

Guilty.

But given a second chance and praying I take it.

Media culpa

Peggy Noonan gets rude with the "dictatorship of the retarded."

She argues that while losing a liberal elite dominance of television news, the country gained freedom but let slip standards.

The Good:

"The new media did not divide us. The new media gave voice to our divisions. The result: more points of view, more subjects discussed, more data presented. This, in a great republic, a great democracy, a leader of the world in a dangerous time, is not bad but good."

The Bad:

"The left sees Fox as a symptom and promoter of anarchy. The old unity, the old essential unity one used to experience when one turned on the TV in 1950 or 1980, has been fractured, broken up. We are becoming balkanized. Fox, blogs, talk radio, the Internet, citizen reporters--it's all producing cacophony, and heralds a future of No Compromise. No one trusts the information they're given anymore, as they trusted Uncle Walter. This is bad for the country."

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