November 5, 2005

• Coincidence
  and Design

  Headline from a local newspaper this morning:

  Area Catholics Receive
  
  St. Thomas Aquinas Awards
   

  Headline from today’s New York Times:

  Closing Arguments Made
  in Trial on Intelligent Design 

  Taken together, these headlines suggest that the following link (pdf) may be appropriate for today:

  Neutral Evolution
  and Aesthetics:
  
  Vladimir Nabokov
  and Insect Mimicry.

  Related material
  on Nabokov and theology:

  A Contrapuntal Theme

  Today’s birthday:

  

  Tilda Swinton,
  angel in
  “Constantine.”

  “Gnostic also is the preposterous stage-direction at the end of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Drama of Exile…

  The
  stars shine on brightly while ADAM and EVE pursue their way into the
  far wilderness. There is a sound through the silence, as of the falling
  tears of an angel.

  ‘How much noise,’ inquires G. K.
  Chesterton with brutal common sense, ‘is made by an angel’s tears? Is
  it a sound of emptied buckets, or of mountain cataracts?’”

  – Dorothy Sayers,
     The Mind of the Maker, Chapter 10

  For the answer, see

  A Contrapuntal Theme.

  • 12:06 pm
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