I wrote about it here four days ago. (And here.) Now, others are weighing in with the same view.

Back in August, 2006, I wrote about Crocs shoes: The jury is still out as to whether Crocs turn out to be like the PT Cruiser*, a product which looked dorky, became wildly popular, and has remained a consumer fixture, or more on the order of the Pog phenomenon, which took off like a meteor and is now largely forgotten. One indicator of the shoes’ long-term prospects may be this, though: When I had my first Crocs-sighting about a year ago, I never dreamed I’d be blogging about the things! Well,...

A Time for Burning is a cinema verite documentary that shows us what happened in a white Lutheran church in Omaha when its pastor, William Youngdahl, tried to gain congregational approval to foster racial understanding in 1965. His proposal was that ten families from his church meet with ten families from a black Lutheran congregation whose building was several blocks away. That may seem utterly innocuous and unobjectionable. But in 1965, it was a bit like throwing a lit match into an oil refinery. My...

I just finished taking a course, Classics 401, at the Lancaster branch campus of Ohio University. The topic, daily life in ancient Rome, is one that I knew little about, quite honestly, and because I believe that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection happened while his Judean homeland was a province of the Roman Empire, will help me in my preaching and teaching. The final week’s readings dealt with the role played by religion and philosophy in Rome, from the monarchy through the empire....

A bit of unsolicited advice for President Obama: Reduce your number of public appearances. Even before his turn on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, when he committed the first gaffe I remember coming from his mouth since he became a national figure in 2004, the President was at risk of being overexposed to the point of becoming background noise. Mr. Obama is personally popular and the entire country has a stake in his success. But since the Thursday after he was elected last November, we have been...

History is one of the most important subjects with which a functioning human being can be conversant. “A knowledge of the past prepares us for the crisis of the present and the challenge of the future,” President Kennedy once observed. That’s true not because history repeats itself in some cyclical game of futility, but because there are certain constants and frequently recurring themes that run through history. Being aware of history can help–but only help–us avoid...

Republican Rob Portman will likely have no opposition in a bid for his party’s US Senate nomination in 2010. A big reason for that is his access to the deep pockets that made one Cincinnati area the second-most-fertile zip code for George W. Bush’s presidential coffers. Portman’s longtime connection with both of the Bushes and their contributors has apparently frightened off any other Republicans who might have considered seeking what will be an open seat next year. But, while Portman...

So far, this is my favorite track on the newly released U2 album, No Line on the Horizon. I was looking for a live version I saw somewhere, though I don’t think the one below is what I remember seeing. It’s funny because while I prefer this live version to the recorded one on the CD, the harmonies here are definitely off. Perfection isn’t always perfect. The melody for the verses of Get on Your Boots reminds me a lot of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited. [Crossposted at my...

Peter J. Leithart is a Biblical scholar widely respected and read by people from all camps of the Church, conservative, liberal, and moderate. Few of his blog posts deal with political issues, like this one, where he shows no restraint. There’s an argument to be made that his negative reaction Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s statements in China isn’t really a political pronouncement either. Instead, I see him playing the role played by prophets in ancient Israel: speaking...

See here.

Even if Roland Burris did nothing wrong to obtain former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s interim appointment to the United States Senate, Blagojevich’s corruption would have Burris facing his constituents through a cloud of suspicion. Wisconsin’s senator, Russ Feingold, has a proposal that might prevent future Roland Burris-style imbroglios. But, a little background is in order. The US Constitution, of course, originally stipulated that senators be elected by their state’s...

Senate Guru is reporting: Ohio: Despite both Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher entering the 2010 Democratic Senate primary this week, Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones is reportedly moving forward with a Senate campaign exploratory committee. It will be interesting to hear how he expects to get traction against two statewide officials in the primary. It will be interesting. My own feeling is that Governor Ted Strickland’s quick endorsement...

Last night, with our daughter visiting from Florida, we decided to watch a 2008 film that she hadn’t yet seen: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. I love the Narnia novels and loved the Walden-Disney film based on the first in the series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I wrote an enthusiastic review of the first film. But, on the theory that “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” I wrote nothing about the...

See here.

Historian Rick Shenkman has a point. The rating of presidents–a recent survey among historians called Abraham Lincoln our greatest president–probably doesn’t even rise to the level of a parlor game. Parlor games, he says, have rules. But both historians and the public tend to rate presidents by highly movable goal posts. I myself have been guilty of playing this game, having several years ago named my choices for the country’s best presidents. (I remember that at the time,...

For not taking vitamins? This article could lead you to think so. But don’t believe it! I don’t take vitamin pills, basically because every time I’ve started, I’ve found myself incapable of maintaining the habit. So, as in other areas of my life, a bad character trait–in this case, my tendency to procrastinate in the adoption of something I’ve been told is good for me–has spared me. I’m willing to let the early adopters have their day in the sun. If...

I was up late on Wednesday night and channel-surfed through about two minutes of David Letterman’s attempt at interviewing Joaquin Phoenix. I found it tiresome, as I’m sure Letterman did. On Thursday, I see here and there that people are wondering, “What’s wrong with Joaquin?” Maybe not much. He may be involved in a bit of anti-marketing, Joaquin doing his best Andy Kaufman. It makes sense. Kaufman could be tiresome, too. But he attracted attention. Phoenix’s occasional...

One-time late night talk host Dick Cavett writes about welcoming John Cheever and John Updike as guests on his show in 1981. I remembered this incident recently in comments at Ann Althouse’s blog. I couldn’t find it on Youtube at the time of Updike’s recent death. Cavett and the Times have posted it. While Cavett’s show seemed to drive Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show to Hollywood and show-biziness as a way of defining and separating itself, it shouldn’t be forgotten...

The two-hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth comes tomorrow. A few years back, I wrote a seven-part series on Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address, the links to which are listed below. A lifelong religious skeptic who was nonetheless an ardent student of the Bible, Lincoln was led by the crucible of civil war felt compelled to return, again and again, to that book. What emerged as he took the presidential oath of office for a second time was a unique political proclamation,...

Certainly instability born of the disconnect between the Afghan government and its people to which President Obama alluded in his news conference several days ago is at play in a suicide attack on the Ministry of Justice in Kabul. But there’s another factor as well. The Taliban and their allies obviously also are welcoming the new administration in Washington, testing the new president’s mettle, and sending a message that they haven’t given up fighting. The attack comes just before...

I’m not related. I’m not a porn-again Christian. [This gem has been crossposted at my personal blog.]

Much needs to be done to right the US economy. Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on the need for stimulus, though not on the means for doing it. Unemployment is still too high. Solvent banks need to make loans. Corporate executives need to be reined in. Government money can’t be doled out like penny candy. Unemployment insurance and Medicaid monies need to be available. That’s all true. But we also need to get over the panic that has afflicted the US economy and much of our political...

From Psychology Today: …narcissism isn’t just a combination of monumental self-esteem and rudeness. As a personality type, it ranges from a tendency to a serious clinical disorder, encompassing unexpected, even counterintuitive behavior. The Greek myth of Narcissus ends with the beautiful young man lost to the world, content to forever gaze at his own reflection in a pool of water. Real-life narcissists, however, desperately need other people to validate their own worth. “It’s...

continues its murderous ways. Apparently, the government there feels that the people don’t suffer enough. I pray for Myanmar regularly.

Is Islamic fundamentalism Turkey’s future, with secularism, what we in the West would call democratic pluralism, its past? Apparently secularists who plotted a coup against Turkey’s democratically-elected Islamic fundamentalist government fear that seemingly topsy-turvy scenario. Many have been arrested for plotting against the government there. Many in the West have presumed that because democracies have tended to be less aggressive or oppressive, having elections will necessarily result...