Charles-Antoine Perrault shows us photos from another side of Paris, one Gene Kelly never danced in. “In the end, these projects are yet another utopian attempt by modern architects to find solutions to economic and social issues through design. Focusing exclusively on form, they failed to create a sense of place, producing environments that are all but vibrant.”
I’ve been having a small problem with my beloved Kindle’s battery. It’s supposed to last about 3 weeks, if you keep the WiFi use down, but mine has been lasting about 2 weeks. So I called them a couple weeks ago, and they ran me through some procedures to re-set it. That didn’t do the job, so I spoke to Customer Service on Sunday, and they told me they’d send me a new Kindle. I got it today.
I call that pretty good service. All I have to do now is pack the old Kindle up in the mailer box, and send it back to them for cannibalization.
It’s still under warranty. If the warranty had run out, I’d have to pay a modest fee for the replacement, far less than buying a new one.
I remain a Kindle fan.
Everybody’s talking about the Florida Primary today. I only remember one primary from my years of residence in Florida. I was still a Democrat back then, struggling with the increasingly obvious fact that my party hated both me and the horse I rode in on. I puzzled over who to support for president, and decided that the one who seemed most socially conservative was… Al Gore. Continue reading Three things
NPR has a good report on Susan Cain’s new book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, noting that modern workplaces are often designed for extroverts. My office is a comfortable place for introverts, but I feel the pressure of the extroverts in the desire to collaborate on work that doesn’t seem very collaborative to me. I appreciate what she says about leadership training, even though I’m not a leader and don’t know what it will take to become one. Perhaps the problem is my definition of leadership.
Get Cain’s book here: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
There are various ways for authors to handle the problem of aging in popular series characters. Some characters never age at all. Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin were unaffected by the passage of decades. John D. MacDonald, as I recall, allowed his hero Travis McGee to age about one year for every three in real time. This lent an illusion of realism, while extending McGee’s effective life as an action hero as long as the author was likely to live. Perhaps the bravest course is to just let nature take its course.
That’s what Stephen Hunter is doing in his Bob Lee Swagger novels. Old Bob Lee, decorated Vietnam War Marine sniper, is getting long in the tooth. He’s moving slow, and feeling his aches and pains (especially the ones from his multiple wounds) pretty badly.
So Hunter has apparently decided to take the series in a new direction. And I salute him for it. In Dead Zero he’s produced an exciting and compelling action novel in which Bob Lee acts as the shrewd old detective, reader of human “landscape,” and spotter, but another, younger sniper has come on board to do the running and crawling and shooting. Continue reading Dead Zero, by Stephen Hunter
All in all, a pretty good day.
I took half a vacation day, because I had to meet a service entity for my regularly scheduled furnace inspection. I also needed to pick up my snow blower, which, I had been informed, was now back in fighting trim.
I knew both these things would cost me money, but as it worked out, neither cost as much as I expected.
How often does that happen in this economy?
Also, two blog reviews of Troll Valley appeared.
The first was from Hunter Baker, author of The End of Secularism. He calls me “talented and wise,” so I’m pretty sure he got me mixed up with Walker Percy.
Also, a nice review from Betsy Lightfoot at This, That, and the Other Thing.
Thanks to both.
I think both reviews link to the Amazon page.
But I should remind you that, if you have a Nook, you can get it from Lulu at this address.
Have a good weekend.
In the shadows of the reflecting fire, her face was lovely, but she looked tired, and sad—or anyway melancholy, which is the wealthy’s way of feeling sad.
I have a memory of the first time my parents ever mentioned the Lindbergh kidnapping. To them, it was almost like a tragedy in the family. Charles Lindbergh was not only a national hero, he was a Minnesota hero, a Swedish boy from Little Falls. My father, a frustrated aviator, idolized him.
Max Allan Collins’ Stolen Away is a fictionalized account of the investigation, starring his private eye character Nathan Heller (I said I’d come back to this series, and I have). It’s a long and convoluted book, because it was a long and convoluted investigation. Judging from the author’s overview of source materials at the end, it appears one could do worse than come to this book first, if one were in the market for a comprehensive account of the whole thing (always taking fictional elements into consideration, of course).
The story starts in Chicago in 1932, when young Nathan Heller, a police detective, sights a suspicious woman carrying a baby through the LaSalle Street railroad station. Because police all over the country have been keeping their eyes out for the missing Lindbergh baby, he follows her, which leads to a gunfight and the recovery of the kidnapped baby—of a bootlegger. Continue reading Stolen Away, by Max Allan Collins
Photo by Faucon
Honestly, I never meant to kill them all.
I’m talking about fish, of course.
If you’re new to this blog, you may not know that I occasionally report on my fish keeping adventures. I don’t own fish myself. But for reasons I won’t bore you with, the library I manage has a fish tank, and I care for it.
There are challenges. For one thing, the local water is highly alkaline, resistant to any pH altering treatment, so a lot of fish just don’t like it, and express their disapproval through dying.
But over the years I’ve found a couple of species that do well. One is the Harlequin Rasbora, and the other, discovered more recently, has been the Tiger Barb. Both varieties seemed to do fine with the water (does their orange coloring have anything to do with it? Probably not), and I do my part by keeping the aquarium clean and the fish food coming.
But on Tuesday morning I goofed up. One of the frustrations of keeping fish is measuring out fish food. The containers come with little sliding apertures, and you open them as far as you consider prudent, then pour. Sometimes you get a lot less than you expected, and you have to shake the container. Sometimes you get a lot more than you intended.
That was what happened Tuesday. I immediately grabbed the net and and tried to fish the food out. But apparently I didn’t get enough.
Because the Tiger Barbs did what Tiger Barbs do (apparently the Rasboras are more prudent), and ate themselves to death. At the end of the day, I’d already flushed one Barb, and another was looking peaked.
This morning every single Tiger Barb was belly up. Every single one. Leaving the Rasboras (all of them) and the one other fish that was there when I came, which I’ve never actually identified, to survive.
I’ll get some more Tiger Barbs. They seem to do pretty well, when I’m on my game.
I’m just working on what level of shame and guilt I should feel.
I mean, I sometimes went fishing when I was a kid, and killed fish on purpose.
The big news in the publishing world today is that our friend Hunter Baker, author of The End of Secularism, will be the author of one of the volumes in a forthcoming series from Crossway Books.
JACKSON, Tenn. – January 24, 2012– Union University President David S. Dockery has been named the editor of a new series of books designed for Christian students and others on college and university campuses.
In “Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition: A Guide for Students,” published by Crossway, Dockery and other experts argue that vibrant, world-changing Christianity is not anti-intellectual but assumes a long tradition of vigorous Christian thinking and a commitment to the integration of faith and scholarship….
Four other books in the series will also be released in 2012, including “The Liberal Arts: A Student’s Guide,” by Gene C. Fant Jr., Union’s vice president for academic administration, in May, and “Political Thought: A Student’s Guide,” by Hunter Baker, associate dean of arts and sciences at Union, in July.
Good luck with the book, Hunter. It sounds like a much-needed contribution.
I feel the need to comment on a recent news story that hasn’t gotten (I think) as much attention as it deserves.
As I grow older, a particular experience becomes more and more common (and no, I’m not talking about anything having to do with the bathroom). An announcement is made, in a rather low-key way, about some grand theory which was all the rage when I was younger, often one that was used, hammer-wise, to pound on Christians, given as “proof” that we are moral luddites motivated by pure hate. The news item now tells us that new research indicates that the wonderful, world-changing theory has, in fact, not borne the weight of either experience or further research. Take this story from The Washington Post:
For decades, the prevailing wisdom in education was that high self-esteem would lead to high achievement. The theory led to an avalanche of daily affirmations, awards ceremonies and attendance certificates — but few, if any, academic gains.
Now, an increasing number of teachers are weaning themselves from what some call empty praise. Drawing on psychology and brain research, these educators aim to articulate a more precise, and scientific, vocabulary for praise that will push children to work through mistakes and take on more challenging assignments….
You know, just once I’d like an apology from the people who called us names. But I don’t expect that to happen. It might damage the apologizers’ self-esteem, after all.
Author Sarah A. Hoyt was kind enough to let me guest post on her blog, According to Hoyt. You can read the piece here. Thanks, Sarah.
A friend forwarded this YouTube video to me. The idea is, “How would Shakespeare have told the story of the Three Little Pigs.”
I don’t love it, frankly, because I don’t think the comedian uses the words as well as he might, and this is the kind of thing you’ve got to absolutely nail (at least for my taste).
But I got to wondering, how do they tell the story of the Three Little Pigs nowadays? Surely its traditional lesson—that you ought to take trouble to construct strong defenses, to protect yourself from enemies—is unacceptable in today’s educational environment. I imagine the contemporary version would go something like this.
There were three little pigs whose mother sent them out to make their fortunes in the world. When they’d come to a new part of the forest, they decided to build themselves houses. The first little pig built his house out of straw. The second pig built his house out of sticks. But the third pig built his house out of bricks. Continue reading A blog post, and a cautionary tale
Terry Teachout writes about a composer whom Dana Gioia says: “one of the few living composers whom I would call great.”
Says Mr. Lauridsen: “There are too many things out there that are away from goodness. We need to focus on those things that ennoble us, that enrich us.” The musical language in which he embodies this simple belief is conservative in the best and most creative sense of the word. His sacred music is unabashedly, even fearlessly tonal, and his chiming harmonies serve as underpinning for gently swaying melodic lines that leave no doubt of his love for medieval plainchant. Nothing about his music is “experimental”: It is direct, heartfelt and as sweetly austere as the luminous sound of church bells at night.
