Month: December 2013

Christmas 2013

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Newgrange is an ancient structure in Ireland so constructed that the sun, at the exact time of the winter solstice, shines directly down a long corridor and illuminates the inner chamber. More about Newgrange here and here.

Grim has an Arthurian passage about the Solstice.

Don Sensing has thoughts astronomical, historical, and theological about the Star of Bethlehem.

A wonderful 3-D representation of the Iglesia San Luis De Los Franceses. Just click on the link–then you can look around inside the cathedral. Use arrow keys or mouse to move left/right, up/down, and shift to zoom in, ctrl to zoom out.

Vienna Boys Choir, from Maggie’s Farm

Lappland in pictures, from Neptunus Lex

Snowflakes and snow crystals, from Cal Tech. Lots of great photos

A Romanian Christmas carol, from The Assistant Village Idiot

In the bleak midwinter, from The Anchoress

Rick Darby has some thoughts on the season. More here.

A Christmas reading from Thomas Pynchon.

The first radio broadcast of voice and music took place on Christmas Eve, 1906. Or maybe not. But on the other hand…

An air traffic control version of The Night Before Christmas.

Ice sculptures from the St Paul winter carnival

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, sung by Enya

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Jeff Sypeck on a winter garden

Bah humbug!

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Time to spread my usual Christmas gloom and misery with a few side-swipes at a couple of iconic works of art. Read it on Your Freedom and Ours.

Merry Christmas to one and all.

Kipling on Income Inequality, Continued

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A couple of weeks ago, Chicago Girl Margaret excerpted a little-known poem by Kipling…the poem’s context being a proposal (circa 1890) by the new German Kaiser for an expanded social-welfare system, ideally to encompass other European countries in addition to Germany and to limit “destructive competition” in industry. The poem seemed relevant to Stuart Schneiderman’s post this morning, so I posted the whole thing in comments there.

Thanks to John B. Wells and Coast to Coast AM

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Jim Bennett and I had a good conversation with radio host John B. Wells during the deep, dark early morning hours of Sunday December 22, 2013.

It is a privilege to speak to John’s listeners, many hard-working Americans on the third shift, keeping things going while the rest of the country is sleeping.

John was kind enough to have us on for three whole hours, so we were able to talk at some length about America 3.0.

The Amazon sales ranking for the book went through the roof during and following the show, which is welcome indeed.

John mentioned that he would like to have us on again at some point, and we would be very happy to do that.

BTW, here is a bleg: If you have not yet ordered America 3.0, but plan to do so, it would be helpful if you did so before the turn of the year.

A big, huge thank you to John and to Coast to Coast AM.