Tom Kirkendall posts Paul Johnson's tribute to Pope John Paul II.
One paragraph from it:
Not that the pope condoned terrorism in any form. He was never among those clergy in the West who mitigated their disapproval by pointing to legitimate grievances.
...which reminded me of another paragraph I read recently:
Finally, I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country -- certainly nothing new; we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that has been on the news. I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence, certainly without any justification, but that is a concern I have that I wanted to share.
-- U.S. Senator John Cornyn
Cornyn then goes on to discuss at length what he sees as the legitimate grievances of these criminals.
Two days earlier, Cornyn had written:
In a world that frequently rejects the idea of moral absolutes, John Paul politely but firmly offered truth, love and justice.
-- U.S. Senator John Cornyn
Indeed.
Before Albino Luciani took the name "John Paul I" upon his accession to the Holy See in 1978, the last time a Pope had chosen a name that no Pope had chosen before was in 913.
Before the two John Pauls, the last Pope whose name ended in "the Second" was Marcellus II, who reigned in 1555.
From an interview with baseball statistics guru Bill James:
[Question: ] I have to ask you this. On an internet baseball fan site, I recently saw you quoted to the effect that veteran leadership had enabled the Red Sox to come back from down 0-3 in the ALCS. But, in that forum, the immediate response was to doubt your sincerity. Bill couldn't mean that! And these were people who held you in high regard. Are you resigned to your reputation at this point in time?
[Answer: ] Well, believe it or not, I don’t worry about my reputation in that sense. I’ll let that take care of itself.
This is probably a long-winded answer, but I’ll try to explain it this way.If I were in politics and presented myself as a Republican, I would be admired by Democrats [but] despised by my fellow Republicans. If I presented myself as a Democrat, I would [be] popular with Republicans but jeered and hooted by the Democrats.
I believe in a universe that is too complex for any of us to really understand. Each of us has an organized way of thinking about the world—a paradigm, if you will—and we need those, of course; you can’t get through the day unless you have some organized way of thinking about the world. But the problem is that the real world is vastly more complicated than the image of it that we carry around in our heads. Many things are real and important that are not explained by our theories—no matter who we are, no matter how intelligent we are.
As in politics we have left and right—neither of which explains the world or explains how to live successfully in the world—in baseball we have the analytical camp and the traditional camp, or the sabermetricians against the scouts, however you want to characterize it. I created a good part of the analytical paradigm that the statistical analysts advocate, and certainly I believe in that paradigm and I advocate it within the Red Sox front office. But at the same time, the real world is too complicated to be explained by that paradigm.
It is one thing to build an analytical paradigm that leaves out leadership, hustle, focus, intensity, courage and self-confidence; it is a very, very different thing to say that leadership, hustle, courage and self-confidence do not exist or do not play a role on real-world baseball teams. The people who think that way. . .not to be rude, but they’re children. They may be 40-year-old children, they may be 70-year-old children, but their thinking is immature.
[Link courtesy of Daniel Drezner.]