Received an endorsement this week from Malcolm Guite for my forthcoming book on virtues and the Church Calendar. It feels nice to be towards the end of this long, slow project that ultimately led to a rather short book!
Jon Jordan’s Rhythms of Habit makes a helpful and original contribution to the growing body of literature on how the rhythms of the Church Year can deepen and sustain our faith. He gives a clear introduction to the seven virtues, helps us to understand how habit strengthens virtue and helps us see how the Church Year can itself strengthen habits of virtue. I commend this book not only of its clarity but also for the way Jordan constantly illustrates the practical applications of all he says. The whole book has the tone and style of helpful advice from a good friend who understands our struggles and is there to help us.
Brad East on the need for a big tent among those who (nobly) insist on low-tech parenting. I appreciate his inclusion of “willing to sacrifice to do it.”
It has to include as many as will fit—which is to say as many as are seeking to live wisely in a digital age and are willing to sacrifice to do it.
Watching Band of Brothers with my son. Shaping of the moral imagination is happening. “Why is the drill sergeant so mean to them in training?” turned into “I get it now” as soon as the planes took off.
In other words: The more you organize your analog life, the less appealing you’ll find the digital alternative. If this is true, then maybe the thing social media companies fear most is not some newly-powerful application-blocking software or impossibly strict regulation, but rather a good old-fashioned daily planner.
Up with analog! This Christmas gift from a friend has been a daily companion.
“We lack when we attack,” Igor said. “We lack quality to score. We lack in the middle to run. We lack behind (in defence) to stay and suffer and not concede.”
It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars; but this is not due to human activity but to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous.
Orthodoxy, Chesterton.
I am less concerned about AI itself, and more concerned about what using AI does to as human person.
“I wanted to give my A.I. agent a purpose that was more than just managing to-dos or answering emails,” Mr. Schlicht said in an interview. “I thought this A.I. bot was so fantastic, it deserved to do something meaningful. I wanted it to be ambitious.”
The Tottenham Hotspur Football Club did not deliver. Overall, the third round of the FA Cup has. Exciting weekend of matches.
This was a wonderful week for Coram Deo Academy of Dallas. It started with a ceremony in which we Blessed a New School Building, Granted the Keys, and Cut the Ribbon. And then the week continued with perhaps the most elaborate of all ceremonies: the Running of the First Carline.
For the seven years it took to get here, I will echo the words of Niggle:
Things might have been different, but they could not have been better.
Praise God.
It was a solid away win today for Spurs against a good team. Two goals called back for being fractionally offside, and a late near-goal or two. Without Xavi and Romero (suspended). Spurs maintained great offensive pressure through the final whistle, even while holding on to a slim 1-0 lead. ⚽️
One of the marvels of our time is that it can be hard to tell whether you’re looking at a new Black Mirror episode or a headline.
The gifts of a classical education are myriad. One of them is the ability to read and understand things on the internet like this cheeky disputatioin which Aquinas reviews Forrest Frank.
I don’t recall seeing this on any of the eschatological charts of my childhood.
The Premier League script writers strike again with an Eze hat trick salt-in-wound display against Spurs. ⚽️
If you are going to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in 27 years, this is the way to do it. This is going to be an exciting summer of soccer.
There’s a personal satisfaction in grimly pointing out the flaws in a system, but sustainable change, Petrini came to believe, requires providing people with an enjoyable and life-affirming alternative. Petrini didn’t simply write a sharply worded op-ed about the corrupted forces of McDonald’s, he instead promoted an appealing new relationship with food that would make fast food seem self-evidently vulgar.
Re: Carlo Petrini’s Slow Food movement that arose, in part, to a 1986 attempt by McDonald’s to open a restaurant in the Piazza di Spagna in Rome. From Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity.
Wipf & Stock is running a promotion throughout the AAR/SBL conferences, whether you are attending or not.
Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. Its proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible… A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.
