SEEING CLEARLY — Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. – 12.7.06

But Americans also have a growing inequality of wealth, education and opportunity. We face a decline of ideas and public service; growing moral ambiguity; a spirit of entitlement with rights exalted over responsibilities; a cult of personal consumption; and a civic vocabulary that seems to get more brutish and more confused every year.

This last point about our civic vocabulary is important.

The language we use in public discourse matters. Words are like a paintbrush. They’re a very powerful tool. They can form or deform the human conscience.

Words like “tolerance” and “consensus” are important democratic working principles. But they aren’t Christian virtues, and they should never take priority over other words like charity, justice, faith and truth, either in our personal lives or in our public choices.

Read the whole speech over at Hugh Hewitt.

Categories: Life
Tags: America, society

The New York Times has released an application called the Times Reader. This application attempts to emulate the look and easy accessibility of an actual newspaper. It’s available for download now.

Though it’s just in beta, I found the experience quite pleasant. After registering for the free service, I downloaded the application (requires Windows XP and it installs Microsoft .NET 3.0 software) and read a few of the Times’ articles for the day including a detailed story about China’s leaders and their stance on the nation becoming a global power, an article about a new type of keyboard, and an article covering the pros and cons of cell phone insurance.

The New York Times Reader viewing the Technology section

It has several benefits compared to a standard news site or aggregator. The application enables the paper to maintain its typical look, feel, and layout on a computer screen. It does this while also providing enhanced abilities such as adjustable font sizes, links to external websites, and easy navigation to any section of the paper. Of benefit to the NYT is their ability to control the layout and sizing of the advertisements which obviously fund the service.

Another nice feature for the user is the ability to schedule updates. You can have it sync to the server and download the latest articles once a day. In addition to this, it can grab new stores on an interval you set (30, 60, 90, or 120 minutes).

If you’re able to run this application and our looking for a bit more news and depth than the Drudge Report can give you, or perhaps you can’t afford a real newspaper, this would be a great application for you to give a try.

Categories: News, Tech
Tags: Drudge Report, New York Times

I could not have asked for a better Sunday. The weather was crisp, but not too cold. The sky let out no rain. As November managed to set the record for rainiest month in Seattle history, it appears God has determined to give us a brief reprieve from precipitation.

Despite my initial reluctance to crawl from bed this morning, I woke up, prepared for church, devoured a few bites of French bread, and drove there. It happened to be a special Sunday at the church as they installed a new assistant pastor. The sermon was delivered by a Canadian pastor who mentored the man. Apparently he’s originally an American, but I am not familiar enough with Northwestern accents to tell where specifically he was from.

The Canadian pastor preached a fine sermon wherein he disparaged postmodernism’s denial of truth by comparing it to architecture. You can build a postmodern museum with pillars supporting nothing and staircases leading nowhere, but even in this structure the foundation must be solid or the building cannot stand.

Afterwards, lunch was served. I appreciated this as much as any bachelor who tires of his own lack of decent kitchen or cooking skills. It also served as a good opportunity to meet other parishioners.

There was a quite humorous moment that occurred during lunch. A couple tables away from where I was sitting, I could here the head pastor saying something about “he’s from Colorado” and something else I couldn’t make out.

The pastor then asked me a question.

“Would you like to meet my eldest daughter?” I heard a couple people laugh quietly.

“Sure,” I replied quickly.

Categories: Life
Tags: church

I just cooked one of the best meals I’ve ever done. I bought a huge, juicy steak at the grocery store after work tonight. When I got home and finished filling the refrigerator, I got down to business and begin cooking. Now, I don’t really use recipes. I called Benjamin for a bit of advise, but essentially all I did was cook the meat, flipping it every few minutes, until it looked done (slightly non-bloody, but plenty o’ pink). Oh, and I smeared a bit of oregano on it.

It turned out pretty good. After eating it I realized that steak has been a missing part of my diet for far too long, and I will be cooking more of it now.

For beverage, I drank the last Fat Tire in the fridge. For side-dishes, I cooked broccoli and French bread w/ butter. Mmm, mmm, good. It’s worth the effort to cook a good meal on occasion.

Categories: Life
Tags: food