Author: Tom Faranda

I didn't see this Forum, which was televised Saturday on MSNBC, but I did see some excerpts on the BBC World News. The BBC excerpted McCain and Obama's responses to a question on taxes, and to their views and thoughts on their own Christian faith. Here's a young Catholic priest, Fr. Jonathan Morris, who has an opinion column…

I have no idea whether the Shroud of Turin shows the real body of Jesus or was somhow manufactured during the Middle ages; there seems to be evidence for and against. If it was manufactured, how did they produce a negative image? Here is an interesting article from the LA times about a physicist who…

Amazing story; the woman has died the unborn baby has survived. There's an under 2 minute news video as well as the text. Baby Saved as Heroes Lift Bus Off Mom

Well actually an extended weekend, counting Friday. Early Friday morning Mom, Dad, and Tim went on a 40 minute bike ride, out onto Croton point and then down along the waterfront to Senasqua Park. Then Friday evening Brigid finally got going with her kayak, which she’d gotten way back in December for her birthday. She…

Just got this email. I happen to know Mary Rider a little. I met her in the early nineties – when I think she was pregnant with child # 3 or 4 – at a Catholic Worker house in NYC. At the time she was the Director of the Seamless Garment Network, which several years…

It's the Times of London, of course. Not the NY Times, the"paper of record." I am personally absolutely Green, although I think the Global Warming schtick is completely overblown – a phonied up non-issue with a pseudo-spiritual basis. But it would be a pity if people cease to conserve and re-cycle. Anyway this is really…

No doubt, there is going to be controversy over the Chinese human rights record at the Olympics. And the Chinese support the  will not speak out about Sudanese government's genocide in Darfur – China is the Sudan's leading market for oil. I received this email from the Save Daurfur coalition today. tom, I was about…

I previously posted stuff here Tom Faranda's Folly: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and here Tom Faranda's Folly: More on Solzhenitsyn Go here for additional reflections - Solzhenitsyn and His Critics – The Acton Institute Solzhenitsyn’s critique of modern societies went much deeper than ideology. He drew from a Christian moral tradition, not a political platform. He yearned for a…

I posted about him yesterday.Tom Faranda’s Folly: Alexandr Solzhenitsyn Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has a wonderful tribute this morning. Excerpt below, but hit the link and read the whole brief essay – it’s only nine paragraphs. Anne Applebaum – Stronger Than the Gulag – washingtonpost.com In the week of his death, though, what stands out…

One of my heroes. He died Sunday at the age of 89. It’s actually pretty amazing he lived as long as he did, since he developed cancer while he was in a Soviet concentration camp and received very poor treatment for it, for several years. I read his first book, One Day in the Life…