Can This Ship Be Saved?

The SS United States, a fast and beautiful passenger liner, was built in 1952 and operated in commercial service until 1969. She is now in danger of being scrapped.

Lots of pictures in the slideshow at the link; also, some of the comments are interesting.

More about the ship at Wikipedia, and here is an organization which is attempting to save this vessel.

A Letter from Poland

…about Obama’s recent action regarding ballistic missile defense and the highly offensive way in which this action was announced. Here.

This is painful to read.

Lewis vs Haldane

J B S Haldane was an eminent British scientist (population genetics) and a Marxist. C S Lewis was…well, you probably already know who C S Lewis was.

In 1946, Haldane published an article critiquing a series of novels by Lewis known as the Ransom Trilogy, and particularly the last book of the series, That Hideous Strength. Lewis responded in a letter which remained unpublished for many of years. All this may sound ancient and estoteric, but I believe the Lewis/Haldane controversy is very relevant to our current political and philosophical landscape.

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Black Storm Clouds and Brilliant Lightning Flashes

Today there are once more saints and villains. Instead of the uniform grayness of the rainy day, we have the black storm cloud and the brilliant lightning flash. Outlines stand out with exaggerated sharpness. Shakespeare’s characters walk among us. The villain and the saint emerge from primeval depths and by their appearannce they tear open the infernal or the divine abyss from which they come and enable us to see for a moment into mysteries of which we had never dreamed.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(For those who are not familiar with Bonhoeffer–he was an important leader of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany. He was executed in 1945.)

I was reminded of the above passage by something Cara Ellison wrote a couple of days ago in discussing the 9/11 anniversary:

I guess I thought they were all gone, those types of monsters, stranded on reels of black and white film.

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