Blogging Around: A Few Interesting Things

• A blog I like is Riparians at the Gate where Jennifer Fitz blogs about catechesis, books, prayer, economics (an interesting continuing series) and occasionally points out an interesting blog that I want to read too ... which is what made me mention her to you.
  
  
• Thomas L. McDonald at State of Play tells the origin of tarot cards and shows some delightful images of French tarot.

  Tarot cards were not created for "divination," but to play games. Some people dispute this, claiming that the trump cards of a tarot deck (called the "Major Arcana") can be traced back to Jewish Cabbalism or ancient Egyptian mysticism.
  
  This is the worst kind of pseudo-history, and yet another example of new agers inventing ancient "sources" for modern practices in order to give them a patina of credibility. There is no evidence at all that the Trumps were adapted for fortune-telling purposes before the 18th century, while the cards themselves date back at least several hundred years earlier. Any person or source that claims otherwise is just making things up.

  
  
• Is Whispering Harmful to Your Voice? Doesn't everyone know that it is? The NY Times' "Really" column looks closer. Because it isn't that simple. Naturally.
  
  
• 5 Complaints About Modern Life That Are Statistically B.S. from Cracked.com. Things that everybody knows like "everything is so expensive" and "people are getting stupider" ain't necessarily so. Keeping in mind that this is from Cracked.com, don't be surprised at a certain amount of bad language flung about for emphasis. That said, their articles make me laugh and teach me at the same time. Rose gets the credit for pointing me to their articles.
  
  
• Another blog I like, Strange Herring, is a new one to me. (Can't remember where I saw it linked originally.) Lots of links and some interesting short stories about subjects such as why SlingBlade is the most explicitly Christian movie ever made or "Italians We Like: Steve Buscemi." And gems such as this:

  Medieval Italian Manuscript Feeds Entire Colony. Safeway Stocks Up on Dante, Ariosto.
  
  So this book, written in 1293, started to decay, as really old things tend to do. But it was decaying in a manner that caught the eye of microbiologists. Turns out it was home to “an entire ecosystem.”
  
  Now you know how the mainstream press will play this: “Vatican Library Withholds Food for Millions. Pope Blasted.”