it must be delivery day

Because, assuming everything's going OK, that's what comes after labor, right? Three items today of increasing seriousness.

Item 1. Of all the things I never expected to see a live stage performance of, this is up near the top.


Item 2. By far the most valuable paper I heard by Zoom at Oxonmoot, but which got left out of my previous list because it was one of several entries that had disappeared from the "earlier events" online schedule by the time I wrote, was a brilliant piece by the Rev. Tom Emanuel on how the works of Tolkien, an author rooted in Christian ethics and metaphysics, can make such a strong emotional and even ethical and moral appeal to non-Christian readers. Basically it's that he points at his spirituality but doesn't evangelize. But there's more to it than that. Anyway the really good news is that now you can read Tom's complete paper.

Item 3. A newly-prominent civil rights issue: caste discrimination among Indian Americans. That's my state senator who introduced the bill; this is going on right here in Silicon Valley, but as I'm not of Indian origin it's invisible to me except as I read about it. Lots of opposition to the bill: either because it singles out an ethnic group (but what other ethnic groups have this?) or denial that the discrimination exists. But there's lots of testimony that it does, and the denial is coming from the high-caste beneficiaries of any discrimination. Allow me to be skeptical of the denials. Do I remember Southern whites denying that there was any discrimination against Blacks? Yes I do.