Cheers

Three cheers for all the hot air global warming alarmists have spewed over the past decade, which it seems has made this winter most delectable as of yet. You got your Solydra scandal; I got my light-weight jacket.

A hearty cheer for our generous (and cool) donors. Is the OBSERVER self-sufficient? ‘Nuff said.

The Office for University Life Initiatives and the Institute for Church Life will introduce Notre Dame’s Project on Human Dignity.  Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, Archdiocese of New York, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and leader of the Catholic Church in America will deliver the inaugural lecture “Modern Questions, Ancient Answers? Defining and Defending Human Dignity in Our Time” at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 6 in the ND Conference Center/McKenna Hall Auditorium.  Catholic and Protestant responses from ND theology professors Ann Astell and Gerald McKenny will follow the Archbishop’s address.

Jeers

The mental state resulting from satisfying the compilation of graduate/law/fellowship/job application, thesis due date, final, paper, test, and basic bodily requirements. For the blissfully uninformed, picture an electrocuted pile of Ramen noodles. That begins to cover it.

ND:Newswire: This week, it featured a story on planned parenthood. The headline “Want smarter children?  Space siblings at least two years apart, research shows” is bad enough.  But the real message of the press release was that your first and only child is your best shot.  In a “civilized” society in which mothers abort one twin to give the other a better chance of survival, do parents need that kind of additional pressure?  It might be radical to suggest that a few extra points on the SATs might not fully encapsulate even one’s academic achievements — let alone self-worth.

Seminar discussions. Like, can you feel the subversive tension in the metaphorical symbolism on one esoteric level of the text, a dystopian narrative of the perfectibility of man, which speaks to the paradox of fate and free will and the wheel of fortune, if read through the metaphysical lens of the Bhagavad Gita, in conversation with Moby Dick? It’s a commentary on the human condition.