9/11 on 9/12.

I didn't think I'd have anything to add to this and this.

Except for the fact I hadn't counted on the dismaying ingenuity of the American political system. Sorry, Gov. Patrick, but it is pathetically stupid to talk about the murderous assault using anodyne 9/10 Therapyspeak. "Tragedy" and "incidents" do not begin to cut it.

"A failure of human understanding...a failure of human beings

to understand each other, to learn to love each other."

If that's the best his third-tier speechwriters can do, then perhaps the Governor should consider having a mime deliver next year's speech.

Look: by all accounts, Deval Patrick was a dedicated and capable assistant attorney general back in the mid-90s. Would that the dogged advocate had shown up here. But the other legal tendency, which cultivates blurred and passive lawyer language, is embarrassing in this setting.

Those who planned and executed the slaughter six years ago understood perfectly what they were doing. And they gloried in it. And, oh, would they just love to do it again. They have no intention of learning a damn thing from us--except to the extent it helps to kill ever-larger numbers.

The word you're looking for, Governor, is "evil."

From the Daaaaaad! Files.

Madeleine: "Daddy, Dale says he won't play with me because he only plays with me on Mondays."

Me: "This is a Monday."

Maddie: [brightens] "Oh, OK."

Me: "Dale, this is Monday."

Dale: "I didn't know that. All right."

Then they proceed to play amicably in the dirt.

Problem solved.

Happy Birthday, Madeleine!

My baby girl turned six today. 2:14pm, September 6, 2001. 8 lbs, 12 oz of evicted ("induced") fury. And heart-melting beauty.

Two from then:

One from now:

Love you, little girl.

Where did the days go?

Blame Canada.

The whiny Canucks wear out Rome and get the right to use the dread NRSV as their lectionary. It's a time-honored tactic, and why not? It works.

Take note, fellow orthodox: tick-on-a-dog's-ass tenacity pays dividends.

All of this is being done to placate a tiny elite group of people whose second generation will sleep in on Sundays anyway.

The slight (think tick) good news? We can change it when they're gone. Good news part two: "With most of its inclusive language intact." "Most"?

Best piece of good news? I don't live in Canada and don't have to go to church there to listen to the cack-handed translation.

But for the most part, this decision is absolutely horrid. Not to mention mind-boggling. How on earth is this squared with Liturgiam Authenticam? For all of the banalities/general clunkiness in the NAB, and the half-hearted throw at inclusive language in the RNAB, it wasn’t an ideologically-driven project from the start.

Others in Fr. Zuhlsdorf's combox do a good job of showing the fatal problems with the NRSV (especially Kevin Edgecomb), but I’ll add the most infuriating from my perspective: the rendering of Daniel 7:13, which turns the crucial "son of Man" passage into "I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven…"

Nice. No, that "Son of Man" phrase isn't important at all. No, sir--er, ma'am--er, Ms.--er, M. Combine that with the nuking of the christological signals in the Psalms, and the NRSV does a better job of severing Christ from the Old Testament than Marcion.

And this will definitely be an encouragement for the Ministry of Inclusivity types here in the US. An amazingly bad decision.

Schembechlerism: College Football's faded Arianism.

Oh, this is just beautiful, all over. From a commenter at Mgoblog, what is wrong with Michigan football:

What we witnessed on Saturday is an indication that we're in the final, terminal stage of Schembechlerism, a religious approach to football which, stripped of its positive qualities now that Bo is gone, has become a stale creed kept in place by rote observance and ritualistic repetition. Lloyd Carr has been an extremely loyal adherent to this philosophy, having learned at the foot of the master himself. However, like most acolytes in such positions, he's lacking in the founder's personal dynamism or charisma that can make up for the practical deficiencies in the ideology.

Schembechlerism asserts:

• It is never necessary to make a hard, realistic assessment of your own strengths and weaknesses as compared to your opponent's. This relieves you of the burden of developing game plans tailored to your opponent. We are Michigan, after all, and all we need to do is execute properly what we want to do anyhow. Of course, this also relieves the opponent of the necessity of preparing for anything that they haven't seen on tape or film already, but the element of surprise is very overrated and probably gay anyhow. It doesn't matter that we've averaged under 12 points per game against USC in Rose Bowls since 1970; we know each and every time we play them that we don't need to do a damn thing different than what we've done all season long. Why? We're Michigan, dammit.

• Speaking of unmanly things, anything smacking of subterfuge, trickery, or sleight-of-hand is also unholy and probably gay. Although the observation of this unspoken rule has in truth been spotty at times, it is only resorted to in extremis, like when we're down by 17 points in the fourth quarter at Minnesota. This is why Michigan will not use play action as part of the base offense. Just because an initial fake to Mike Hart will induce the entire defense to converge on his tiny person is no reason to use it. (Besides, according to Father Andy Mignery, using play action creates pass blocking problems. No word on how teams as diverse as USC and Boise State, not to mention the entire NFL, manage to solve that religious conundrum, but remember: we're Michigan. We don't need to look at what other teams do. Why? Because we're Michigan).

• Never, never hire a Special Teams coach with a recognized talent for that arcane part of the game. It is far better to have already overworked position coaches, or better yet, grad students, take control. Just because ST is one-third of the game is no reason to go crazy. This means you can do fine with LBs—as opposed to players with actual blocking experience—for critical blocking assignments. It also means you can refuse to double up gunners aiming for Steve Breaston's femurs. Kicking to Rocket twice is fine, too. To refuse to kick to him again is ever-so-slightly poofy. Having punts blocked is also good.

• Whenever possible, make sure your defensive backs line up at least 10 yards off the receiver and backpedal furiously at the snap. It is far better to yield the entire middle of the field than to have even the slightest possibility you'll get beat on a long bomb, which is unmanly. This is especially critical when the opponent needs to go 70 yards with less than two minutes to play. Besides, the repeated stabbings of 8-yard passes to wide-open TEs and RBs in the middle of the field stimulate the appearance of stigmata on the foreheads of duly reverent UM fans. This served us well in the Rose Bowl back on January 1, 1972 against the Stanford Harbaughs, and has worked beautifully many times since then.

• Beware of recruiting speed on the defensive side of the ball: it is the seductive siren of the spiritually dirty. In a morally pure world their RBs wouldn't be faster than our hulking LBs, and we shouldn't abandon our principles merely for the sake of adequate coverage on 3rd and 7. Just as important, ensure that Saint Gittelson is unquestioned. Squats are for pansies.

• On first down, run, do not pass, regardless of the number of defenders crowding the LOS. On third-and-eight, throw a five-yard pass, regardless of the absence of blockers. If our RBs and wideouts are pure of heart, they will find a way.

• Always, always, always run a sweep to the short side of the field, regardless of circumstances. The Book of Schembechlerism says that the sideline functions as an additional blocker. Those who assert that the close presence of the sideline gives the advantage to the defense are impure and very probably unmanly.

• Lastly, it is critically important that all major staffing decisions be made with the goal of maintaining Schembechlerism at all costs. Therefore, whenever a coordinator position needs to be filled, it is imperative to not look far and wide for the most qualified coach; the on-staff assistant or trusted personal friend are the only permissible options. We must not let the filthiness of other football religions and philosophies enter the hallowed meeting rooms of Fort Schembechler. Remember: all those vermin outside are enemies of the Panicky Deep Safety Drop, the Short-Side Sweep, the First-Down Off-Tackle Run, the Lead-Footed Short-Armed Linebacker, and the Five-Yard Pass on Third-and-Eight. Vigilance is necessary and permanent.

Re: the worst day ever in Michigan fandom.

What Mgoblog says goes for me. And the reference to the official Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay is a nice historical touch.

There's only so much hype, BS and inexcusable coaching one can stand in a lifetime, and I've reached the saturation point.

This team hasn't had a collective set of clockweights since some guy named Brady lined up over center. Nor a killer instinct. Nor an ability to adjust. Nor the sheer strength of will to get off the mat.

As Sports Illustrated said in 1997, the "M" stands for "mediocre."

Sparties, Buckeyes, Nittany Lions fans, all of college footballdom--you're right: the Wolverines are a perennially overrated fraud and an arrogant program that thinks itself immune to reality.

Enjoy the rest of your NCAA football season.

Attention, Keira.

This is what a Hollywood actress should look like:



As Mr. Anderson notes: "Curves." Besides, the late, great Anne Baxter's performance in The Ten Commandments is brilliant all over. Her depiction of love curdling into bitter vengeance is a chilling wonder to behold. All that and va-va-voom, too.

Please note that I accept Gina Lollobrigida as a valid alternate answer.

Compare and contrast.

[Vulgar language alert.]

I like to think I understand how reasonable, decent people can be atheists. Weighing the claims of the particular religion, the findings of science, looking at the incomprehensively vast, howling and apparently lifeless waste that is the cosmos, and considering the often-bloody record of religion across the pre-history and history of mankind, I can see someone saying: "Sorry. Can't buy it. Too big a leap, thanks."

All right--I can respect that.

What I can't respect is the sophomore bullshit that focuses on Christianity as the locus of evil in the Western world. The atheists who essentially spray "F*ck Christianity" on the wall and proceed to mock and indict it for every failing in civilization, as though the purging of Christendom from the veins of man will usher in Utopia. The same cavalcade of juveniles also seems to think that all the good things of our modern world somehow winked into existence at the time of the Enlightenment and owes nothing to the Western Christian past:

"There were enlightened Greeks and Romans, sixteen hundred odd years of Dark Age idiocy brought on by Christianity, and then, voila, Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, Einstein and now X Boxes, eBay and iPhones and soon enough, embryonic stem cell research that will end the twin scourges of erectile disfunction and saggy titties. Sweet!"

That's pretty much Sam Harris' entire schtick, to use the parlance of our times. Exhibit A, his junior varsity attempt to pull a Weekend at Bernie's with Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. What is remarkable about this alleged paladin of reason is that he is remarkably incurious about how the Western world, which marinated in the "contemptible history of religious atrocity and scientific ignorance" the jackhole shrieks about, nevertheless birthed "biology, meteorology, medicine, physics, and a dozen other specific sciences" he now waves as totems against the Christianist horde plotting to take away his porn stash.

"Well, the scientific method...um, just sort of spontaneously generated. The end."

Well, no. It didn't. Without a Catholic Christian worldview that preserved the tenuous findings of antiquity and gave an honored seat to reason (albeit precarious at times), you aren't reading this today. Our culture, as worn out as it is, is the offspring of the Christian West. You rip out the Christian superstructure, and Sam Harris, if he's lucky, is saddling up his mule in response to the muezzin call from a minaret.

Actually, no, that won't happen, what with Islam also drawing a good deal from a Christian well. In all likelihood, Sam Harris' world of annulled Christianity finds him scratching out a living from a field tilled for the benefit of a lord who holds the power of life and death, while he hopes that the rain god will favor his toil. He and his would live in a static dark age far darker than the candlelit one he shakes his fist at.

In other words, you can't get here without Christianity, as much as Harris fervently believes otherwise.

Fortunately, some atheists do recognize this. For that, I give you this fascinating read about the late, great Oriana Fallaci and her friendship with an Italian bishop over the last year of her life.

Fallaci's credentials as a non-believer were never in doubt. She once defined Christianity as "a beautiful fable," and wrote: "I'm tired of having to repeat, in writing and also orally, that I'm an atheist. In addition to being a secularist, I'm also profoundly anti-clerical. Priests don't sit well with me, just as they didn't with the anarchists of Lugano." (That's a reference to a city on the Swiss-Italian border where 19th century anarchists were chased out because of their opposition to the ultra-Catholic Hapsburg Empire.)

* * *

A colleague of Fallaci and a fellow non-believer, Italian journalist Vittorio Feltri, summed up their position during the Tuesday panel: "All of us have been shaped by a Christian culture. Facing a threat from the outside, and we all know where it comes from, we have to rally around our culture, which is the culture of Christianity, even if in the end we can't bring ourselves to believe in God, except perhaps, every now and then, at night. This was Fallaci's argument, and I share it from the first word to the very last."

A "beautiful fable"? That I can understand. A recognition that the West was formed by Christianity? Good--that's actual reason at work, as opposed to some fetishized rationality that can't rise above flinging turds like a red-assed baboon. Sam Harris, take note.

"Well, that's a huge noggin. That's a virtual planetoid. Has its own weather system."

What the hell's happened to Keira Knightley? She gets any thinner and she's going to implode.

What a shame. Eat something, woman! Photosynthesis is for plants. Definitely not for Englishmen.

"I'll just have a salad."

"No, you'll have the dressing--if I have to run it through an IV."

Seriously--does anybody find the refugee camp look alluring? Yikes.

OK--guess I'm blogging again.

Not sure what I'm going to do with the blog, but eh--going to use it, I guess.

During my "down time," I've managed to replace the leaky kitchen faucet (not to be confused with the previously-replaced disintegrating bathroom sink faucet). After, of course, mangling my hands as part of the effort to fix things. And while I don't normally do product plugs, I'm thinking of adding "Moen" to the impending one's list of names. The faucet arrangement was sane all over.

I also finished up the edging, a task that I look forward to contracting out next year. Sorry, Mike--no before pictures. But I'll get the after. In addition, the minivan's "flappy" passenger window was fixed, so Rachel no longer risks exfoliation every time we go to the car wash.

We're enjoying the quiet, restful period between house repairs right now.

Hmm. Where'd I put the phial of Galadriel?

And Sting. Definitely need to find Sting...

A story just for my beloved Heather....Giant spider web engulfs 200-yard stretch of park trail.