In my last post I spoke of Gosnelling, which I defined as as “the concealment of horrifying happenings from the public by persons or institutions which should be reporting them”. I pointed out that although the horrific Gosnell abortion-clinic case is the most notorious instance of this in recent times, being deliberately ignored for most of [...]
I want to coin a new verb, “to Gosnell”, with the present participle, adjective and gerund “Gosnelling”, and the past participle “Gosnelled”. The term is referenced, of course, to the disgraceful, ideologically-based silence of most of the U.S. national media ‑ notoriously liberal, and mainly New York and Washington based ‑ during the horrific Kermit Gosnell [...]
Richard Kerley, of whose descent into schizophrenia and tragic death as a vagrant I recently told on this site, back in the late 1970s when abortion was still generally abhorred and abortionists were still occasionally prosecuted, made a very telling point. I remember the scene clearly: he was leaning on the piano in our living room. [...]
I write from Sydney, where I am in temporary residence away from my native Canberra, doing a 4-week course of intensive studies. In February 2012, on the other side of our vast continent, on the outskirts of the little town of Nannup, West Australia, in a depression in large paddock, human bones were found. Nannup, insofar [...]
C.S. Lewis’ little booklet The Abolition of Man is about proper responses. Lewis was fired to write it by a declaration in a new school-book that when a person says that a waterfall is sublime, he is telling nothing about the waterfall but only about his personal feelings. He declared that this is false, and that [...]
My entry on “Homosexuality and Terminological Social Engineerint” has triggered a vigorous debate on this site; and. I have found both the supportive and the critical responses thoughtful and impressive. (I thank Joseph Pearce for pointing out that the “homo” in “homosexual” etymologically means “same”; however, I must again note that in the neologistic polemical term [...]
We Australians invented the decidedly crude “p” word for practising homosexuals. It probably derives from “powder puff”, with effeminate males evidently being known for a time as “powder puff-ters”, and with the “powder” part then falling from use. Like various well-known Australian movie stars and movie producers, the p-word is one of my country’s contributions to [...]
I am indebted to the current edition of the New Oxford Review for an incisive Chesterton quotation of which I had been unaware. (Is “incisive” here a redundant word, since Chesterton quotations are almost by definition incisive?) It is appended to a perceptive review article by Terry Scambray, “Can the Human Mind Explain Itself?”, and states, [...]
A Canadian news report (24/2) quotes Toronto’s Cardinal Thomas Collins as stating in a sermon on Sunday, “You know the old saying: If you think you’ve found the perfect church, join it. Of course, then it won’t be the perfect church any more.” The report tells that he also “likes to remind those in the pews [...]
I heard this tale years ago, I think in a sermon – I regret that I’ve forgotten by whom. Once upon a time two mice, a male and a female, somehow fell into a piano while its top was open. The piano was in a busy bar and eatery, and the waiters had to brush past [...]
