http://blog.postmodernvillage.com Villagers rant, rave, and pontificate while surveying and rebuilding the wreckage of culture. Wed, 07 May 2008 20:05:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Singleness of the Eye --a sculpture by Paul Friesen, 1981 Matthew 6:22 The eyes don't face north. All three face up on their limestone pillars of optic nerve. Two also face east into rebirth, one also south into the prevailing wind. Cobwebs glisten between the pillars. Gash marks denote the flecks of ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2008/05/07/219 Despite what my conservative friends say, I actually cleave to few radical notions, but one idea that they and their moderate brethren would consider pretty offensive follows. If we are to survive as a nation, as an economy, as a civilization, perhaps even as a species, we need to have ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2008/01/16/218 Making sense means less than it used to. “Means” has sort of lost its flavor as well. Semantics have fallen out of favor; a groundswell has swollen away with reason as entirely too much expectation for any one of us to handle. Rationality is a dodo bird, and logic–even simple ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2008/01/03/216 by Special Correspondent T.S. DeHaviland Alan Greenspan, speaking on NPR’s occasional segment “The Long View” late last year, again perpetuated the dangerous myth that the gap between the rich and poor in this country is due to a lack of highly educated and highly skilled workers. There is no doubt that ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2008/01/01/215 by Special Correspondent T.S. DeHaviland As the Christmas spending season draws to a close, I encourage all of you to continue to do your patriotic duty and shop, just like the president told you to back in the latter part of 2001. We can’t have this administration’s otherwise stellar legacy be ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2007/12/25/214 Americans love to get their bobby-soxers in a rumble; we like nostalgia at a penny a pound; we blush Coke Red and ware Pepsi Blue: America the pre-packaged in sanitary cello fain for your projection. Freud was a dalliance, but we prefer numbers, have left our black turtlenex in the trunk of the ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2007/12/22/213 To a large degree, the war in Iraq is an imaginary war. Truly and tragically, it is causing literal suffering for the tens of thousands of Americans wounded or killed and the millions of Iraqis killed, wounded, or made refugees. But the purpose of this ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2007/10/30/212 In his book God’s Universe, the astrophysicist Owen Gingerich takes the biologist E.O. Wilson to task for placing humankind within natural processes and not as their end. If it’s a leap for Wilson to say that man is not nature’s purpose, then it’s as much ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2007/08/28/210 I've been thinking a whole lot lately about the old adage "The perfect is the enemy of the good." The historian of religion Karen Armstrong would say that this saying is an indication of the tension between mythos and logos—the eternal ideal vs. the practical ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2007/07/24/208 Now that the would-be bombers in Great Britain have all been tracked with closed-circuit television, the FBI is going to want a CCTV network for the U.S., and We, The People are likely to agree. There are all kinds of reasons this is a bad idea, and I don't need ... http://blog.postmodernvillage.com/archives/2007/07/04/206