He’s one of our country’s best writers, and he knows a whole lot about music (it shows up all over in Fortress of Solitude, for example).  Rolling Stone has him talkin’ about singin’:

This points to what defines great singing in the rock-and-soul era: that some underlying tension exists in the space between singer and song. A bridge is being built across a void, and it’s a bridge we’re never sure the singer’s going to manage to cross. The gulf may reside between vocal texture and the actual meaning of the words, or between the singer and band, musical genre, style of production or the audience’s expectations. In any case, there’s something beautifully uncomfortable at the root of the vocal style that defines the pop era.

It’s something a lot of religious men struggle with.  There’s help with this website and this book:

Living Free, which is published on Friday, follows on from the Searching for Intimacy initiatives pioneered by CARE to support people trapped in the use of internet pornography, as well as their families.

The book sets out how to identify and acknowledge the problem, how to find or be a mentor, and how to set up a support group. It also gives advice on how to protect the family or help a spouse overcome their use of internet pornography.

Will it work?

The Church of England has its own ecclesiastical courts. British Jews have had their own “beth din” courts for more than a century.

But ever since the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, called in February for aspects of Islamic Shariah to be embraced alongside the traditional legal system, the government has been grappling with a public furor over the issue, assuaging critics while trying to reassure a wary and at times disaffected Muslim population that its traditions have a place in British society.

Boxed between the two, the government has taken a stance both cautious and confusing, a sign of how volatile almost any discussion of the role of Britain’s nearly two million Muslims can become.

Eduardo Peñalver asks what I’ve been asking at Commonweal:

For the past few evenings, I’ve been watching this documentary on Bush’s torture policies.  I highly recommend it.  But as I watch it, I frequently think to myself that the rhetoric some bishops (and Cardinals) are preemptively unleashing against Obama on abortion would be easier for me to stomach if they had raised an outcry that was even remotely as emphatic about the officially sanctioned use of torture by the outgoing administration.  You know, intrinsic evils and all that.

This is a reference to a Michael Warner book, but it’s also a really great question in general: how does concern about looking normal affect how we force people to conform, even surgically?  An interesting reflection on this in Slate:

which is the problem, the birthmark or the bad attitude? Something needs to be done, but is it surgery? Is every child entitled to “look normal”? Or is he entitled to respect regardless of how he looks?

As it happens, surgery for the kid who was called ugly is a no-brainer. That’s because his disfigurement had functional effects, enlarging his tongue so he couldn’t speak intelligibly. Dr. Waner and others who take on such cases pro bono are doing noble work. But the quest for normality can extend to iffier cases. The Times describes a baby at the conference who “has a circular, purple mark on her forehead about the size of a nickel.” Such defects, known as hemangiomas, “often disappear or shrink in 10 to 12 years, but they can have a social and psychological impact—on children in particular, who must live with the stigma of looking different.” Is that a good reason for surgery?

The thing is, it’s always been there.

The trick, though, is that the majority of peope listed in the article I blogged on earlier today (see below) are already established in the Catholic world as liberals–even if the real world is coming to recognize diversity within the Catholic ghetto, we folks already in the ghetto are doing no better at “talking to the other side” Witness Bishops Chaput and Martino taking up where Burke left off; even if more Catholics voted for Obama than Kerry, I seriously doubt that had anything to do with a change within the Catholic world on abortion.  Instead, I’m willing to venture economic issues or other concerns compelled an Obama vote.  All in all, I’d say the dividing lines about abortion in the Catholic church are stronger than they’ve evern been–those who are more moderate are just better at expressing themselves outside the ghetto.

I do think it’s a relevant fear.  After all, papers and magazines have money to send reporters on long investigative stories and to correspond from far-flung locales.  Websites don’t have those kinds of resources and, what’s more, they tend to have a more personal, analytical bent (rather than objective and empirical).  Of course, yes, I know, nobody is REALLY objective and empirical, but there is a difference between a very smart blogger mostly reading stuff online and giving her take and a reporter who goes out, gets facts, and tries to tell them as objectively as possible.  The question is, as papers and magazines fade, is the latter kind of writer fading too?  Stories like this say maybe not:

As America’s newspapers shrink and shed staff, and broadcast news outlets sink in the ratings, a new kind of Web-based news operation has arisen in several cities, forcing the papers to follow the stories they uncover.

Here it is VoiceofSanDiego.org, offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists — the province of the traditional media, but at a much lower cost of doing business. Since it began in 2005, similar operations have cropped up in New Haven, the Twin Cities, Seattle, St. Louis and Chicago. More are on the way.

Their news coverage and hard-digging investigative reporting stand out in an Internet landscape long dominated by partisan commentary, gossip, vitriol and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs.

Patrick Gannon is an incredibly talented illustrator.  He’s really fun and uses cut paper and wood, which is a great, little-used medium.

“This diocese stands for orthodox Christianity,” said Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker on Saturday, “and we are increasingly at odds with the revisionist practices and teachings of the official leadership of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church we once knew no longer exists.”

See, it’s stuff like this that ultimately makes me a Catholic moderate.  I’m torn up about it, because I do really want the Catholic Church to take more liberal stands, yet I also want us to operate as a community.  And when that doesn’t happen–a la Episcopalians–there are nasty ruptures of community.

I know, I know.  He’s not full of it.  Who’s full of it are people who think that because we evolved (which we obviously did), we are limited to our biology.  That’s just silly.  Of course, our genes might encourage certain behaviors (though this is a bit of a mystery, since it’s impossible to see a person with JUST genetic behavior and no socialized behavior).  But that doesn’t mean we have to do what they ask of us, or, what’s more, that we have to think our biological instincts are morally right.  Read the article here: (h/t: bookforum.)

No, the problem with the Darwinian tenor of the Menaissance is neither antipathy to women’s equality nor a misguided reading of female nature. It is an uncompromising biological determinism that makes no room for human cultivation. We are animals, the new Darwinians seem to say; get used to it. They define manhood as alpha-style toughness and unsentimental promiscuity. And in that spirit, they cultivate manipulation, calculation, and naked (in both the literal and metaphorical sense) self-interest. “Nature doesn’t care about hurting people’s feelings,” explains dating coach Mike Pilinski. “It cares ONLY about reproductive success.”

From one vantage point, they are right. Manipulation and self-interest suffused relations between the sexes even when gentlemen strode the earth; a few pages of Edith Wharton should disabuse any doubters on that score. But human beings rely on culture to tame natural selfishness. After all, we have prohibitions against grabbing a neighbor’s steak off the grill or kidnapping his daughter, to give just two examples of behavior about which Nature also doesn’t care. For this reason, successful human cultures expect far more of their men than muscle and promiscuity. If Darwinian daters fail to understand this, you can’t entirely blame them. They see that when the old dating and courting regime fell, it left a cultural vacuum with no rules for taming or shaming the boors, jerks, and assholes. What do they have to lose?