Sunday/Baptism

On this day:
630
Muhammad leads an army of 10,000 to conquer Mecca.
1879
The Anglo-Zulu War begins.

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Jennifer Lawrence. the actress, shared that, after having children, her perspective on dogs has changed, saying, "I just see them as a threat."

"One of them bit my son, and that made me just want to obliterate every dog," she revealed. "I'm just like, 'I'm going to take out you and your f---ing family. You and your friends. I'm going to go to China and take care of your friends over there. Anyone who looks like you is dead.'"

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Police said they used pepper spray to break up a large fight happening outside of a Pittsburgh school.

Pittsburgh Public Safety said officers were called to Obama Academy in East Liberty at 8:41 p.m. on Friday for reports of 200 juveniles gathered in a parking lot following a sporting event.

Police said they saw around 40-50 kids fighting when they arrived.

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The truth is that industrial policy will lead to a government-controlled economy, which – as history has shown time and again – is destined to fail because it attempts to impose the will of a few on everyone else. It dismisses the advantages of economic freedom and the free-enterprise system. Industrial policy doesn't just alter the market economy; it takes it over, even if gradually. Government coercion aimed at achieving the economic goals of those in power has consistently and clearly failed to improve the lives of ordinary people. Industrial policy is not a solution for enhancing people’s lives; it’s a way to make them poorer.--from Michel


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A California man died last weekend after consuming “death cap” mushrooms — the third such death in the state since November.

California has been contending with an unusual spate of poisonings from foraged mushrooms: 35 cases were recorded from Nov. 18 to Jan. 4. In an average year, fewer than five would be expected.

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There has been an arrest in the couple's murders in Ohio, the woman's ex-husband, a vascular surgeon.

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                                                        Sunday/Baptism

Today is the Baptism of Christ, where Christ joins human ritual and symbolism and is baptized by John. There is a tolerant, understanding quality about his joining; one can see a smiling condescending Christ among us as he agrees to the event. But it is more, a peculiar, complex scene where Christ--a mosaic himself--is caught in a moment as part of a larger mosaic, where Christ is both complete and part of something larger, a scene to drive Arians mad.

Claritas. The dry-eyed Latin word
Is perfect for the carved stone of the water
Where Jesus stands up to his unwet knees
And John the Baptist pours out more water
Over his head: all this in bright sunlight
On the façade of a cathedral. Lines
Hard and thin and sinuous represent
The flowing river. Down between the lines
Little antic fish are all go. Nothing else.
And yet in that utter visibility
The stone’s alive with what’s invisible:
Waterweed, stirred sand-grains hurrying off,
The shadowy, unshadowed stream itself.
All afternoon, heat wavered on the steps
And the air we stood up to our eyes in wavered
Like the zig-zag hieroglyph for life itself.
(Seamus Heaney)