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Her best work is "And Then There Were None." I prefer Poirot, even though Agatha Christie herself loathed him. She said she hated that Poirot is such an egotist and braggart, but the funny thing is, she didn't have to write him that way; she did it once, and he became so popular that she ...

Doom wrote: ↑Sun Jun 29, 2025 3:39 pm I have never really cared for Tommy and Tuppance

Any suggestions of her work you like?

I don’t mind the characters so far. I like their banter. But, reading up on her works I do see the theme of fans not enjoying these two characters as much as her others.

I had some bigoted notion that Agatha Christie was simply not worth reading. Maybe it's from when I was a child and seeing a few shows inspired by her works and being turned off by the aesthetics of the particular shows.... but I really don't know where it came from. My 7 year old daughter came home...

I haven’t been to a parish that uses the Gather hymnal so far this century. I mean, virtually every parish in America uses something from Oregon Catholic Press but I haven’t seen a Gather hymnal in I don’t know how long Interesting. I wonder then if the archdiocese is the decision maker on what is ...

Yup… Gather is what we use.


Honestly, I assumed it was the only hymnal for the Novus Ordo.
I’ve gone to churches all over Wisconsin… Milwaukee and Green Bay archdioceses. And all of the churches use the same hymnal.

All her life Helena wanted to go to Rome. Her husband, Constantius promised, only to rescind and then eventually divorce her. Much later in life, for Constantine's jubilee, she was invited to Rome (as mere formality that none thought she would accept)... and she accepted. She was living at Treves at...

When I was cleaning out one of our closed churches, I found a copy of Gather propping a door open. At last! A fitting use! :laughhard As soon as the parish is directed to "please turn to page....." I dart there quickly and scan the notes to see who wrote it. 80% of the time Marty Haugen o...

I like Brideshead Revisited... I remember on the previous forum there was some dispute about the book's merits. But as an exemplar of Waugh's faith, so far I would say "Helena" is the more enjoyable read. There's a frugalness with words in "Helena" that makes the story a bit more...

A Mass doesn't go by without some song by Marty Haugen being sung. Which is interesting, considering how bad many of them are. Even prior to my church's current "Director of Liturgy and Marty Haugen Songs", MH was still regularly broadcasted during Mass. Maybe it just isn't that fitting, n...

Thank you for that quote, Riverboat.

I'm going to use that one going forward.

It's pretty good so far. Follows the life of Helena (as should be expected) and her passively accepting the pains of various losses she suffers (nonchalant attitude of the emperor when he divorces her, or takes her son (Constantine) away from her for years). Later in life she has her grandson (Crisp...

I think, in general, the entire last season, or even the last two, are pretty bad. Certainly, the massive decline in ratings after the 4th season reflects that. It was consistently in the top 10, but then it was cancelled due to low ratings in 1993. I remember not liking the last season or so, and ...

Wonder Years is one that I recall ending on a high note. Daniel Stern has a good voice for one of those soliloquy send-offs. I was pretty young when that show was on and had this sense that it was on for years (at least 5... which by kid estimates is at least 5 decades). Stunned to see that the sho...

Wonder Years is one that I recall ending on a high note. Daniel Stern has a good voice for one of those soliloquy send-offs. I was pretty young when that show was on and had this sense that it was on for years (at least 5... which by kid estimates is at least 5 decades). Stunned to see that the show...

Doesn't happen often. Shows usually seem to outwear their welcome and popularity. Take The Office, should have ended after season 5. Because after season 5 it became like an SNL skit where everyone was trying to "out funny" the other guy. Nobody played the straight role to Michael Scott. G...

OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down, per Palisade AI. Weird. I see Trump is working on a bill that would disallow legislation against AI for 10 years. I don't understand...

Along the lines of unemploying multitudes of people.

Companies laying off thousands and thousands of people as they implement ways that the jobs can be completed by AI.

I avoid debates on the AI threat given my general ignorance on the top. Ross Douthat has an interesting channel where he discusses contentious topics. Well, one of his more recent ones had a guy who defected from some Open AI development work when he became scared witless that the end is nigh. He ac...

Thanks for the information, Doom. To be honest, when I was making this post I was hoping that you'd reply to it. One thing that Stark doesn't mention... maybe he get to it: is why Christianity? If it's so dang easy for a belief to spread at 40% per decade... why isn't it happening more frequently? I...

One chapter in and .... let's say that this isn't what I was expecting. Stark proposes a 40% growth of Christianity per decade up until the middle of the 4th century. And the reason for the cut off is that by 350 he states that the number of Christians in the Roman Empire would be 33,882,008. So, th...