“Ralph McInerny, Scholar and Mystery Novelist, Dies at 80 - New York Times” plus 3 more |
- Ralph McInerny, Scholar and Mystery Novelist, Dies at 80 - New York Times
- Burger King Corp. and Seattle's Best Coffee Team up to Offer Freshly ... - Forbes
- Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions: - Reason.com
- Open Options: advice on interpreting my mother's advice? - Salon
| Ralph McInerny, Scholar and Mystery Novelist, Dies at 80 - New York Times Posted: 16 Feb 2010 01:21 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Ralph McInerny, a scholar of Roman Catholicism who taught at the University of Notre Dame for more than half a century and a prolific novelist whose books included the Father Dowling mystery series, died Jan. 29 in Mishawaka, Ind., near South Bend. He was 80. The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, said his son Daniel. Mr. McInerny, who taught philosophy and medieval studies at Notre Dame, was an expert on Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century Catholic theologian and philosopher; much of his published scholarship included biographical and exegetical texts on Aquinas, and he edited a volume of Aquinas translations for Penguin Classics. He also wrote on the sixth-century philosopher Boethius, the 12th-century Spanish Arabic scholar Averroes and later thinkers and theologians, including Cardinal Newman, Kierkegaard, Pascal and Descartes. He was far better known, however, as a novelist, and especially as the creator of Roger Dowling, a former canon lawyer whose career was derailed by drink and who has become, in his rehabilitation, a parish priest in a Midwestern town called Fox River, where he runs across an inordinate number of murders and shows an unusual gift for solving them. Known for their clever plotting, the clarity of their writing and Father Dowling's perspicacity and moral rigor, the series grew to more than two dozen books after the character was introduced in "Her Death of Cold" in 1977. Transposed to Chicago, and with Father Dowling's first name changed to Frank, the books became the basis for a television series, "The Father Dowling Mysteries," starring Tom Bosley, which ran from 1989 to 1991. The Father Dowling books also had a religious subtext, with the main character serving as a messenger for the author's traditional view of Catholicism. "Dowling is idealized for more than liturgical purity," Anita Gandolfo wrote in the 1992 book "Testing the Faith: The New Catholic Fiction in America." "Father Dowling embodies a medieval worldview with its unambiguous moral order and universally accepted recognition of the truth of that order." Ralph Matthew McInerny was born into a large Irish-American family in Minneapolis on Feb. 24, 1929. He spent two periods of study in St. Paul Seminary, with a stint in the Marines just after World War II between them. He earned a B.A. but decided against becoming a priest, and he eventually received a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. from Laval University in Quebec. He taught for a year at Creighton University in Omaha and landed at Notre Dame in 1955. In 1953 he married the former Constance Terrill Kunert; she died in 2002. They had seven children, six of whom survive him: four daughters, Cathleen Brownell of North Barrington, Ill.; Mary Hosford of Baltimore; Anne Policinski of Wayzata, Minn.; and Beth Hark of Inver Grove Heights, Minn.; and two sons, David, of Overland Park, Kan., and Daniel, of Waco, Tex. A son, Michael, died in 1957. Mr. McInerny is also survived by 2 sisters, 5 brothers and 17 grandchildren. Mr. McInerny's nonscholarly writing was hardly confined to Father Dowling. He wrote several other mystery series. One, written under the pen name Monica Quill, featured a crime-solving nun named sister Mary Teresa; another featured a lawyer, Andrew Bloom; a third was set at Notre Dame. He was two books into a fourth, about a nearly retired Ohio detective, Egidio Manfredi. His other books include an autobiography, "I Alone Have Escaped to Tell You," published in 2006. Mr. McInerny was also a frequent commentator on contemporary issues involving the Catholic Church. He was a founder and editor of Crisis magazine, a journal of lay Catholic opinion, now online as Inside Catholic. In the decades following the Second Vatican Council, he found much to criticize in the acceptance, by some theologians and Catholic educators, of secular modifications — on issues like homosexuality and abortion — in established Catholic principles. He delineated his views in a 1998 book, "What Went Wrong With Vatican II: The Catholic Crisis Explained." In 2009, after Notre Dame invited President Obama to speak at commencement, Mr. McInerny was an especially angry objector, criticizing both the president and his own university. "Barack Hussein Obama, enabler in chief of abortion, has agreed to speak at the 2009 commencement and to receive an honorary doctorate of law," he wrote on the Web site of the conservative magazine National Review. "That abortion and its advocacy violate a primary precept of natural law reinforced by the Catholic Church's explicit doctrine is a mere bagatelle. Wackos of all kinds will kick up a fuss, of course, but their protest will go unnoticed in South Bend. The pell-mell pursuit of warm and fuzzy Catholicism will continue." Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Burger King Corp. and Seattle's Best Coffee Team up to Offer Freshly ... - Forbes Posted: 16 Feb 2010 02:18 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. BusinessWire - Burger King Corp. (NYSE:BKC) and Seattle's Best Coffee(R) today announced they have signed an agreement to offer Seattle's Best Coffee(R) in approximately 7,250 BURGER KING(R) restaurants across the United States by September 2010. Offering freshly-brewed premium coffee made from 100-percent arabica beans is part of Burger King Corp.'s commitment to enhancing the brand's beverage platform and breakfast menu. In keeping with the BURGER KING(R) brand's HAVE IT YOUR WAY(R) philosophy, restaurant guests can enjoy a great-tasting, freshly-brewed cup of Seattle's Best Blend(R) coffee, hot or iced, with optional vanilla or mocha flavor and whipped topping, at a suggested retail price of $1 to $2.79. Article Controls"With more than 40 years of heritage in premium coffee, Seattle's Best Coffee(R) brings a high-quality, great tasting cup of coffee to BURGER KING(R) restaurant guests in the U.S.," said John Schaufelberger, senior vice president, global product marketing and innovation, Burger King Corp. "The addition of Seattle's Best Coffee(R) expands on our HAVE IT YOUR WAY(R) brand promise by offering our guests even more beverage options and strengthens our ability to remain competitive in a continuously changing industry." "We believe everyone should be able to get a great cup of coffee," said Michelle Gass, president, Seattle's Best Coffee, LLC. "We are thrilled to be partnering with Burger King Corp. to complement their breakfast program. Together, we are making premium coffee far more accessible than it has ever been." Seattle's Best Coffee(R) first started roasting coffee back in 1970, and today is one of the most recognized specialty coffee brands in the United States. The Uncommonly Smooth(TM) taste profile of Seattle's Best(R) comes from years of experience in sourcing and roasting the highest-quality beans, creating truly satisfying and delicious blends. Seattle's Best Coffee(R) will replace Burger King Corp.'s current BK JOE(R) coffee program. ABOUT BURGER KING CORPORATION The BURGER KING(R) system operates more than 12,000 restaurants in all 50 states and in 73 countries and U.S. territories worldwide. Approximately 90 percent of BURGER KING(R) restaurants are owned and operated by independent franchisees, many of them family-owned operations that have been in business for decades. In 2008, Fortune magazine ranked Burger King Corp. (BKC) among America's 1,000 largest corporations and in 2010, Standard & Poor's included shares of Burger King Holdings, Inc. in the S&P MidCap 400 index. BKC was recently recognized by Interbrand on its top 100 "Best Global Brands" list and Ad Week has named it one of the top three industry-changing advertisers within the last three decades. To learn more about Burger King Corp., please visit the company's Web site at www.bk.com. ABOUT SEATTLE'S BEST COFFEE Founded in 1970, Seattle's Best Coffee, LLC has more than 550 specialty coffee cafes and kiosks in the U.S. and Canada including an expanding franchising program. Its packaged coffee is available in supermarkets across the U.S. and Canada and its recently introduced ready-to drink iced lattes are available in the Western U.S. Seattle's Best Coffee is also brewed at more than 15,000 locations, such as college campuses, restaurants, hotels, airlines and cruise lines. Seattle's Best Coffee's smooth roasting delivers a rich and balanced Uncommonly Smooth(TM) taste. Seattle's Best Coffee is a featured brand within Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX). For more information, please visit Seattle's Best Coffee online at www.seattlesbest.com. Photos/Multimedia Gallery Available: http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=6182146&lang=en SOURCE: Burger King Corp. Burger King Corp., Miami Michelle Miguelez, 305-378-7277 mediainquiries@whopper.com or Seattle's Best Coffee Alan Hilowitz, 206-318-7100 press@seattlesbest.com Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions: - Reason.com Posted: 16 Feb 2010 02:40 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who six months ago was accusing anti-Obamacare protesters of practicing "the politics of the jackboot," is now trying gamely to understand these Nazis Tea Partyers. Along the way he gives good insight into a certain liberal mindset:
With the question posed like that, one of Dionne's answers will not surprise you: "yes, parts of this movement do seem to be motivated by a new nativism and by racism." But then he pivots, with a sense of audible wonder, to these creatures who seem to genuinely disagree with economic interventionism:
Almost there, Dionne! Well not really, but I want to be encouraging. In my experience, "anti-statists" didn't think Bush was a "sellout"; they never thought he was one of them to begin with. The Republican Party turned publicly and decisively against the 1994 Revolution's libertarian strains long before the 2000 election. As John McCain wrote in his memoir of the 2000 campaign,
The results were not only anathema to what Dionne calls "anti-government radicalism," they were an affront to the far less ambitious (and far more widespread) notion that maybe the government should limit its annual growth to the rate of inflation plus population-expansion. Instead, as Nick Gillespie wrote in his devastating obit for 43's presidency,
We're not talking about (shudder) closing down the Department of Education here. We're talking about maybe not increasing its budget by 80 percent in just five years. That really is how far we've allowed the goalposts to be moved. (And don't even get me started about states doubling their budgets between 2002-2007, a brazen feat of misgovernance that taxpayers are assumed to expect as a reasonable baseline from which to start weeping about "cruel" budget cuts.) Just about every government in the United States, on every level, has been going on an absolute spending bender for the last decade. Pointing this out is no act or example of "radicalism," it's Civics and Journalism 101. Or at least it oughtta be. And yeah, some of us were saying this stuff before George W. Bush was safely term-limited. In case you've blacked that era out, here's what the leading lights of the pro-Republican commentariat were saying about government spending in the run-up to 2004 election:
So no, Bush was no "sellout"; he was a mainstream Republican. That was the problem. Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
| Open Options: advice on interpreting my mother's advice? - Salon Posted: 16 Feb 2010 12:59 PM PST Message from fivefilters.org: If you can, please donate to the full-text RSS service so we can continue developing it. My biggest mistake was taking my mom's advice. She is wildly successful; MVP at her company, MBA to supplement it, and a BFH in a wealthy part of the city (That's a Big Fine House, just FYI). Following life advice from her should be as certain as the stocks she invests in, yet I'm finding myself mulling over my two hour where-is-my-life-going crying fit and I think I have discovered the perpetrator to my problems. Mothers of daughters hear this; it doesn't help us to hear "Keep your options open." In the book of bad advice, this phrase lies between "I give up, wretched daughter, do what you want" and "I don't know, ask your father." In other words; it is useless. Not only it useless, it truly, truly, kills us. In the undertow of you second wave feminism, to have it all just isn't good enough your little sweetness. It's the new femme flavour of the week; do what makes you happy, my darlings. My overpriced philosophy 101 has taught me a thing or two, mom, and this is what I can tell you. "Do what makes you happy," well that's a positive reinforcement statement. What we oversaturated, underachieved youth of today need is a good old "don't do that" sentence. The ones we have heard in our not-too-distant childhood include "Don't eat the sand, honey," or "Don't give your little brother a new haircut ever again." The new negative reinforcement statement I am proposing is this: "Do not regret closing doors, new ones always open." Like you, moms, we have been brought up to be high achievers. There is no problem being the best, but let me be blunt; sometimes we mess up, like, totally gnarly. I once thought the quest to keep my options open was the way to postpone mistakes. I don't want to get muddled up in mistakes, so let's let some doors just swing shut. Sometimes, our hot hormonal brains lead us to do what makes us happy, only to find ourselves cursing our decision making skills in the back row of PHIL 2038: "The Philosophy of Madonna to Rhianna: Pop Culture protégés." That was a mistake. And girlfriend, it gets even worse. In our design-your-own degree day, we are being told "keep your options open" not only from our successful mothers, but our successful schools too. I may be facing a smorgasbord of intellectual delights, but am I at the right buffet? Some advice on education for next time; "Instant gratification is not always conducive to a proper education." Thank you mom and dad for financing my scholastic binge, for what universities fail to realize is that you are the customer, I merely ingest the goods. I wonder if my administrators want you to know my A's came from my intimate knowledge of Madonna's video library, not of the composition of Canada's senate in the great 1867. I'm more than happy to receive those A's but then again, Madonna? What am I thinking?!?!In plain truth, this college girl is in crisis mode. This indecisiveness does not only extend to our schizophrenic scholarly careers either. In keeping my options open, I have torn apart a relationship greater that of Jack and Rose. Ah yes, my first love. An old tale of bliss, ripped apart by the coming of September; different schools, different cities. That should have been the end. My non-existant feeling for him I wrenched open again and again, I always went back; why, I just kept my options open. And now, away in my student housing, my flippy-floppy feelings have made me the she-devil incarnate to him. Great, and with a paper due too. Here's some advice I could have lived with; "You made your bed, stupid, now sleep in it." My fifty something friends, was this not the advice your mother gave to you? With each generation, we blame our mothers for our mistakes, but lades, I think y'all came out alright. We destitute victims of the "do what you feel" age, we'll come out alright too, just ask me ten years from now on my Caribbean spear fishing boat, because that's what I feel. On the other hand, maybe we'll start slamming some doors; it's time to get serious. Where's the old, "let me tell you how I did it," or the "I walk to school uphill both ways, with no shoes"? In today's slew of "do what you feels", well honey it feels damn good to do what I'm told. Let's try this: Work hard. Make a decision and stick to it. And my goodness, never, ever, listen to your mom.Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction. |
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His health-care proposals stopped far short of the single-payer system that so many liberals have long sought, and his plan is the kind of thing moderate Republicans offered back when they were a significant force. Obama put absolutely no political muscle behind the progressives' backup idea: a public option that could have served as a beachhead for a single-payer system.
The purest expression of this disposition has come from Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican from Texas. In 2008, Paul strenuously criticized President Bush's proposed bank bailout for "propping up a failed system so the agony lasts longer." Without a bailout, Paul conceded, "It would be a bad year. But, this way, it's going to be a bad decade."
I welcomed a greater, if still limited, role for government in national problems, anathema to the "leave us alone" libertarian philosophy that dominated Republican debates in the 1990s. So did George W. Bush, I must add, who challenged libertarian orthodoxy with his appeal for a "compassionate conservatism." He based much of his more activist government philosophy in an expanded role for the federal government in education policy and in his support for contributions that small, faith-based organizations could make to the solution of social problems. I gave more attention to national service and to a bigger role for government as a restraining force on selfish interests that undermined national unity. But his positions did him much credit, as well they should have, and they do him much credit now as he uses his presidency to advance them.
If increases in government spending matter, then Bush is worse than any president in recent history. During his first four years in office—a period during which his party controlled Congress—he added a whopping $345 billion (in constant dollars) to the federal budget. The only other presidential term that comes close? Bush's second term. As of November 2008, he had added at least an additional $287 billion on top of that (and the months since then will add significantly to the bill).
New York Times columnist David Brooks this August proclaimed Bush's presidency to be the "death of small-government conservatism." Conservative National Review writer Ramesh Ponnuru last week went so far as to call limited-government advocates "dumb" for being disappointed in Bush's big-government record.| You are subscribed to email updates from Philosophy - Bing News To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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