Gene Edward Veith Jr.'s Blog, page 212
October 15, 2015
More of the Epic of Gilgamesh discovered
Big news in world literature: A new tablet containing additional lines for the ancient Babylonian poem The Epic of Gilgamesh has been discovered. The following link tells about how the tablet was discovered and its significance. The article goes on to summarize the relevant points for the poem, quoted below. From Osama S. M. Amin, [Read More...]
When I’m 64
Another iconic birthday for my g-g-generation! After growing up with the maxim to never trust anyone over 30, I turned 30. Now I have attained what even the Beatles, in a song Paul McCartney wrote when he was a teenager, recognized as an idyllic age. This is pretty much what it’s like, especially the part [Read More...]
October 14, 2015
State church
Richard Neuhaus once said that the habit of associating Lutheranism with Germany–then blaming Lutheranism for what’s bad in German culture–is misplaced. Germany has always had a mix of many religious traditions: not just Lutheranism but Roman Catholicism, Calvinism, anabaptists, etc., etc. If you want to see Lutheranism’s cultural influence, he said, look at the Scandinavian [Read More...]
Democratic debate post-mortem
Well, who won the Democratic debate? Did anything or any one change your mind? How did the Democrats do as compared to the Republicans? Who, among all of these throngs, would you vote for? Who would you definitely not vote for? After the jump, some thoughts about the debate and the Democratic slate from me.Who [Read More...]
Playboy to stop showing naked women
Playboy Magazine, which was a major player in the sexual revolution, has announced that it will no longer publish photographs of nude women. From My Way News – Playboy magazine to end publishing fully nude female photos: Playboy will no longer publish photos of nude women as part of a redesign, the decades-old magazine announced Tuesday. [Read More...]
October 13, 2015
The live blog of the Democratic debate
The very post about how we would liveblog the Democrats attracted so many comments that I thought we’d start fresh. The live blog will be here. I’ll comment in the “comments,” and you do the same.
Scandinavia’s two tracks of Christianity
The Scandinavian countries are often called among the most secular in the world, with researchers citing the low rate of weekly church attendance (only 3% in Denmark). But what goes on in the state churches is only part of the story of Christianity in northern Europe. There is the church, but there are also the [Read More...]
Let’s liveblog the Democratic debate
The Democratic presidential candidates will hold their first debate tonight on CNN at 8:30 ET. The participants will be Hillary Clinton, entitled and irked and pressured to project a better image; Bernie Sanders, the geriatric socialist; Martin O’Malley, the governor and rock guitarist; Lincoln Chaffee, who is running on a platform of imposing the metric [Read More...]
The problem with polls
Today’s politics rely a great deal on polls. The problem is, election polling–which has had some spectacular failures lately–is faced with two huge problems: (1) Cell phone usage has shot up, to the point that 47% of the population no longer has a land line. And robo-calling of cell phone numbers is illegal. (2) The [Read More...]
October 12, 2015
I’m back!
We’re back from our two-week sojourn in Denmark and Norway. We had a very good time, my presentations seem to have gone over well, and I learned a lot. I’ll be posting about the religious scene in Scandinavia and some of our adventures in the days ahead. Right now, I’m too jet-lagged to do much [Read More...]
