Saving the Boomers

The Philosopher Mom has some great excerpts from a piece talking about the fruits of the Baby Boomer worldview.

Painless birth?

Sounds like Mrs. Darwin got about as close to it as you can get. Quite a birth story!

Summa Theologiae...on Twitter

Quite an impressive undertaking.

Coming soon: new ocean!

Well, "soon" in geologic timescales, anyway.

Goodbyes in Christ

A touching post about moving on from the Philosopher Mom.

Genghis Khan a Prolific Lover, DNA Data Implies

Scientists combine history and genetics to discovered interesting stuff:

An international group of geneticists studying Y-chromosome data have found that nearly 8 percent of the men living in the region of the former Mongol empire carry y-chromosomes that are nearly identical. That translates to 0.5 percent of the male population in the world, or roughly 16 million descendants living today.

20 Amazing places of the World

A neat list with some breathtaking pictures.

I want to be a tree

A beautiful analogy for the spiritual life.

Pray the Liturgy of the Hours with the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration

Great resource!

via eChurchBell (Twitter)

How to hold a rockin' megachurch service

Amusing parody of modern mega-church services:

Praying With the Office Chaplain

A neat story about the rise of workplace chaplains. An excerpt:

Following the military-chaplain model, these roving spiritual advisers typically visit offices or factories weekly, greeting employees, hanging out in the break room, handing out business cards and meeting one-on-one with workers. But they're also on-call 24/7, so chaplains rush to hospitals, restaurants or homes on request, providing comfort and support free of charge to employees.

They perform weddings or funerals for people who have no one else to do so. And they pray with employees over problems from medical or marital crises to job loss, addiction and financial woes, holding the information in confidence. The Rev. Warren Wetherbee, a corporate chaplain in LaCrosse, Wis., says he sometimes helps employees make a budget if asked, or sits with them while they decide to cut up their credit cards.

Cover the canvas

The secret to getting past blocks in writing or any other kind of art.

A new magazine for Catholic singles

Not an ad, just something I thought looked cool.

John Wayne's grandson is a priest

Neat!

If there is a more fabulously nerdy video, I have not seen it

A Mother's Day song by a biologist:

When death isn't pretty

A gripping, honest post by Denise Spencer, wife of the late Internet Monk blogger, talking about how her husband's final moments weren't what she'd hoped they'd be like.

Access to media is changing from scarcity to surfeit

Some interesting points with lots of implications. Key quote:

A Xhosa tribesman in South Africa with a Vodacom HTC Magic mobile handset has instant access to more information than the President of the United States did at the time of the tribesman’s birth.

Read the rest here.

via Ted Weinstein

World Youth Day 2011 Promo video

via Catholic Seeking

Life and death, good and evil in the New World

A fascinating PDF article about the role the Dominican friars played in the 16th-century exploration of the Americas. It shows the complicated mix of forces at play in terms of how the indigenous people were viewed, what the motives of the various colonists were, etc.

Stephenie Meyer wrote Twilight in three months with three young children at home?

I've never read Twilight, but I thought this story behind its writing was interesting. (For the record, the series has sold 70 million copies and spent 143 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.)

Calvin Klein fragrance a hit with big cats

Amusing.

If Wikipedia were a book

A student tried making a book out of Wikipedia entries. He only printed out 0.01% of it and it was still a couple feet tall.

SaintWiki

A great resource.

Baby hears his mom for the first time after getting cochlear implants

An incredibly touching video.

How the Church Fathers approached youth ministry

A great article by Mike Aquilina. An excerpt:

Scouring the Patrologia Latina and Patrologia Graeca, I found nothing to suggest that Ambrose had ever led teens on ski trips to the nearby Alps. Digging through the Eastern Fathers, I came up even drier — no junior-high dances — not even a pizza party in either Antioch or Alexandria. In fact, in all the documentary evidence from all the ancient patriarchates of the East and the West, there's not a single bulletin announcement for a single parish youth group.

Yet the Fathers had enormous success in youth and young-adult ministry. Many of the early martyrs were teens, as were many of the Christians who took to the desert for the solitary life. There's ample evidence that a disproportionate number of conversions, too, came from the young and youngish age groups.

So how did the Fathers do it? Read the rest here.

Catholic music...in space!

Neat.

Top Catholic blogs

An impressively thorough list of Catholic blogs listed in order of Google Reader subscribers.

How e-books are revolutionizing the publishing industry

A fascinating look at how the book publishing industry is changing, especially as it relates to unpublished authors.

"Best of" epic movie trailer music

Beyond awesome:

Why Christianity is losing to LOST

Some good food for thought.

Can changes in writing reveal Alzheimer's?

Reader Cuppa Jo pointed me to this interesting article: "An English prof ran a computer program on many of Christie's novels and discovered a dramatic change in her word count and vocabulary as she got older, a possible indication that she was losing some of mental faculties. Really amazing concept!"

"Why I remain Catholic in the face of the scandals"

A transcript of a fantastic segment Elizabeth Scalia did on NPR on Good Friday.

Stories of martyr priests of the Mexican Revolution

A great collection.

Five Myths About the Rapture

An interesting piece from former fundamentalist Carl Olson.

How to find a book's word count

Very helpful information (if you're a total writing nerd who is curious about how many words various books have).

Hidden messages in the Sistine Chapel?

Interesting.

via CMR

Two-time cancer survivor with one lung summits Everest

Very inspiring.

What every 18-year-old should know

A thought-provoking list.

Three key words for anyone who wants to be published

All aspiring writers should read this.

100-year-old doctor still delivering babies

Inspiring story.

Catholic Family Community Toolbar

Very cool idea for a product. (This is not an ad -- just something I thought looked useful.)

Incredibly elaborate kids' clubhouses

Really cool pictures.

Amazing egg shell art

Wow.

God and the Fibonacci sequence

Light and Darkness: or an autobiographical interlude

Anne Kennedy shares some fascinating stories from life without electricity when she lived in Africa. An excerpt:

In the afternoon, it is too hot to go anywhere or do anything. And in the evening, the twilight period, the time between full sun and complete black, is only about 20 minutes. If you haven't filled the lamps in the morning or waning afternoon, you are racing against the light to fill them enough to carry you through the evening, and to light them. Once darkness has fallen, the deep quiet and deep darkness restrict movement and work.

But it was, and is, always my favorite time of day.

Read the rest here.

Raquel Welch takes an honest look at contraceptive culture, sees something amiss

An interesting article. Best line: "Seriously, folks, if an aging sex symbol like me starts waving the red flag of caution over how low moral standards have plummeted, you know it's gotta be pretty bad."

Trouble sleeping? Maybe it's your iPad

How one sleep-deprived man found rest by turning off all electronics when the sun set.

A race car driver who knows the course well!

via My Three Sons

Quote to ponder: the role of the preacher

"The preacher beats the bushes but the confessor catches the birds."

- St. John Eudes

The virtue of affability

A great post about this underappreciated virtue that is "a debt to decency."

National Geographic's 100 greatest adventure books of all time

A great list.

How to encourage your kids to be fearless eaters

Some great tips.

"My favorite cleaning products"

A helpful list!

Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages

A fascinating article about near-extinct languages:

The chances of overhearing a conversation in Vlashki, a variant of Istro-Romanian, are greater in Queens than in the remote mountain villages in Croatia that immigrants now living in New York left years ago.

At a Roman Catholic Church in the Morrisania section of the Bronx, Mass is said once a month in Garifuna, an Arawakan language that originated with descendants of African slaves shipwrecked near St. Vincent in the Caribbean and later exiled to Central America. Today, Garifuna is virtually as common in the Bronx and in Brooklyn as in Honduras and Belize.

And Rego Park, Queens, is home to Husni Husain, who, as far he knows, is the only person in New York who speaks Mamuju, the Austronesian language he learned growing up in the Indonesian province of West Sulawesi.

Read the rest here.

James 3: a video

Oof!



via Pursuing Titus 2

Convert purchasing power throughout time

Enter a sum of money from one time period, and this calculator will tell you what it's worth in another time period.

via DarwinCatholic

The spiritual benefits of eating locally

Some interesting points by Katie Rose.

The Association of St. Francis de Sales

I wanted to share this comment I got to this post at my other blog, since this organization sounds so cool. Geomama wrote:

I loved the Introduction to the Devout Life so much that I set out to find people who lived that kind of spirituality. Check out the Association of St. Francis de Sales. I'm going through a 2-year "formation" period to become a consecrated "Daughter of St. Francis de Sales" (wish they had a catchier name). It's all about living the devout life in any vocation (I'm the mother of 5). Each person in formation is assigned to a "companion" (a consecrated Daughter) who helps us apply the teachings/virtues to our lives.

Very cool!

A cute interactive dog trick game

Type in a command and watch the doggy do your trick!

Temperaments and conversion

Devin Rose makes some interesting points about the different motives that drive people's religious quests.

A wholeness of vision

A blogger shares the powerful story of two babies who were conceived under far-from-ideal circumstances, whom many people would consider "poster children for the pro-choice movement." A fascinating post.

A video of the world's smallest horse

The little girl who paints God

A really neat video about child prodigy Akiane Kramarik:

A video from 1930: "Fashion in the year 2000"

We cannot forget about the power of beauty

A thought-provoking analysis from Rebecca Teti. She writes:

I agree completely with [Barbara] Nicolosi's longstanding criticism of contemporary Christianity, especially Catholic Christianity: that it has radically abdicated its understanding of the power of beauty; and since beauty might be the only argument for God the people of our time are actually open to, that means we are largely failing to tell the Christian story to the world.

Read the rest here.

Stunning photos from inside the womb

This is some amazing footage, broken down by each stage of development. Click on the links to see the videos. Here's an example of a 9-week-old baby inside the womb.

via Red Cardigan

"How do you reach Easter when you're stranded in Gethsemane?"

A beautiful, poignant article by a woman who unexpectedly lost her mother right before Easter. She writes:

If the Easter message does not apply in every single circumstance of life—however sordid, tragic or mundane—then the resurrection is either a pipe dream or we have failed to glimpse its significance. If the risen Christ cannot answer our deepest agony, redeem the most grotesque sin, kindle flame in the coldest heart, then Christianity, and Jesus Himself, are just childish, pious concepts.

"If Christ is not risen," St. Paul writes, "our faith is in vain."

But if He is...then, as St. Augustine says, the Christian should be an alleluia from head to foot.

Read the rest here.

"Our experience with co-schooling"

Bearing talks about her experience sharing homeschooling duties with other families.

Highlighting beauty in the online world

A site that features Catholic websites and blogs that are well-designed. From their About page:

We believe that being entrusted with the Fullness of Truth, the Church has a responsibility to share this truth with the whole world, so that the beauty of Christ can radiate through his word, his body, and his liturgy.

That includes the way that the truth is presented to people. Eleven hundred years ago, a monk named Theophilus wrote a guide for master craftsmen to follow in creating stained glass windows for churches and cathedrals. Theophilus understood that this technique could be an instrument to teach and inspire people.

It’s our hope that we can inspire the church, just as Theophilus inspired craftsmen to strive only for the highest levels of quality in sharing Christ with the world.

Check out the site here.

Thoughts on the importance of a classics education

As someone who did not receive much education in the classics, I found this article interesting. An excerpt:

The wisest ancients, both sacred and secular, sought as their social ideal the good man or woman who could speak well. A clever use of words wasn't enough; one had to use words for right and good ends...Also, the ancients have taught us to distrust, or at least question, our emotions, our passions, which they seemed to consider guilty until proven innocent. That would be heresy on the afternoon talk show circuit now but, between Seneca and Oprah, I know whom I'd rather trust.

Read the rest here.