Personal note: Blogging from me will probably be light for the rest of the month. My publisher's publicist has booked me for a “virtual book tour,” in which I'll do guest blog posts and interviews for what looks like a daunting number of web sites.

My plan is to throw myself into this thing and work the (Charles) Dickens out of it. A virtual book tour would appear to be tailor made for my personality, so if I can't shine at this I'll be a man pretty much with nothing to say for himself.

While I'm thinking of it, buy my book.

It's been in the news lately—The University of Baltimore is offering a credit course on zombies in literature.

Blumberg's course is not without precedent. Brendan Riley, an English professor at Columbia College in Chicago, introduced a course called "Zombies in Popular Media" in 2006, a few years into the nation's zombie revival. He believes he was the first to offer an entire course on zombies, a perennial entry on lists of oddest college courses.

"It was kind of a fight to get it as a recognized course at the school," Riley said. "Because, at first, it appears to be kind of a frivolous topic."

I suppose if I object to this, I'll be identifying myself as not only a dinosaur, but a fossilized dinosaur.

But I do object, and I'm pretty sure I'd have objected back when I was in college. Read the rest of this entry . . .

Yahoo News passes on 25 things chefs never tell you, like the fact most of them want to have their own cooking show or "Vegetarian is open to interpretation."

About 15% of chefs said their vegetarian dishes might not be completely vegetarian. Beware if you’re one of those super-picky vegan types: One chef reported seeing a cook pour lamb’s blood into a vegan’s primavera.

What the?

Our friend Kit passed along some news I should have been aware of, and wasn't. They're filming a new Conan movie, even as I write. Release is planned for 2011.

The most intriguing fact about the production, it appears to me, is the casting of Jason Momoa (of Stargate Atlantis) as Conan. The implications are notable, since Momoa is a man of mixed race, and Howard's original conception of his hero was... shall we say, not oriented in that direction.

I'm sure there are some who deny this, but the plain fact, as far as I can see, is that Howard was an unashamed racist. His idea of the Cimmerians, Conan's tribe, was that they were the pure racial ancestors of the Celts (that's one reason I never cared much for Arnold in the role. He could have at least worn the black wig they finally stuck on James Earl Jones' head). Some of his stories involving black tribes include pretty condescending language.

I hasten to add that (in my opinion) pre-World War II racism needs to be judged somewhat differently from the modern kind. Many people in that time considered racism the rational extension of Darwinist science, and a lot of the most respectable people subscribed to race theory. Howard's belief in the superiority of whites was not remarkable in his day, and very likely had no tinge of personal animosity in it. The Nazis had not yet shown up to show us all, in horribly graphic fashion, where such thinking actually leads.

So this casting involves a basic reinvention of the character from the outset. For all I know, it could work.

Still, I'd like to see somebody do Howard's Conan someday. Hasn't happened yet.

Here's a funny list of photos (one's pretty bad) of poorly translated words in English. Read cautiously with caution, and beware fighting bear.

Dr. Albert Mohler has a new podcast beginning today: "Thinking in Public." Today's show has guest Christian Smith, whose research leads him to believe many American young people who have grown up in our churches are less Christian than moralists. God to them is the distant author of a great self-help guide.

Here's a curious collection of TV news people making gaffes or showing their true colors. It begins with Katie Couric insulting the Palin family, and get much worse. Some of these clips are offensive (the second and third particularly), and there's a good one in the middle of Rush Limbaugh's comments about NFL Quarterback Donovan McNabb, which is not a gaffe at all, but the context around his comment which got him removed from that sport's show. Watch the whole thing and you'll hear what he's saying and that at least of his co-hosts believes he is making a good point.

It is Labor Day, and (as every year) I had to go to work. So I shall pour forth my frustration on the Communists, whom I hold ultimately responsible for the holiday, and who have done me no good at all.

Grim at Grim's Hall embedded this, the original recording of the South African song ("Mbube") that became “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
Read the rest of this entry . . .

Great Vocab Didn't Save The Thesaurus From Extinction. No. No, it didn't.

Donna Farley, author of Bearing the Saint, which I reviewed below, forwarded a link to a site called Hobbit Meals, which definitely looks worthy of a mention at Brandywine Books.

From their Mission Statement:

Hobbit Meals is dedicated to feeding the hungry in our local communities by hosting “Hobbit Meals,” in which a group gathers to enjoy a hobbit feast, share hobbit recipes, and enjoy all things Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, as well as bring donated food to supply local food banks. Monetary donations are also encouraged to provide local food banks with overhead costs and additional monies for food.

They seem to have a Christian orientation too. God bless 'em. May the hair on their feet never fall out.

Megan Basham reviews an upcoming documentary Waiting for "Superman," which she calls "a scathing look at the U.S. public-school system and those who stand in the way of reforming it."

As a tie-in post to Lars' review of Heat Wave and as a benefit to some of our readers, without whom we could not do, here is a photo of Nathan Fillion.



And here is a photo of Rainn Wilson beating Mr. Fillion up at Comic-Con this year. Read the rest of this entry . . .

I don't generally get into the Creationist/Evolutionist controversy. This is not because I don't have opinions (or beliefs) on the subject, but because I don't feel I have the necessary knowledge to contribute to the discussion. If I hear an intelligent Creationist, he sounds convincing to me. If I hear an intelligent Theistic Evolutionist, he makes sense to me too. (Atheistic Evolutionists won't get a very sympathetic hearing from me. Sorry.) I am not a scientist nor the son of a scientist; it's a fight I'm just not equipped to jump into myself.

But I have some observations about what a critic might call the meta-narrative. I mean the entire historical drama of the conflict between faith and science, which began in the Enlightenment and reached critical mass with Darwin.

It seems to me that, for people who are supposed to have all the answers, the Scientific Naturalists sure fail in their predictions a lot. Read the rest of this entry . . .

And now, the Oxford Book of Parodies, "beginning with Anglo-Saxon doggerel and concluding with J.K. Rowling." A parody of Beowulf gives us these lines: "Wonderlich were they enwraged / And wordwar waged." Quote that on the subway.

So my encyclopedia of word origins has informed me the word sausage comes from the Latin salus, meaning salted or preserved. (Hmm, perhaps that is incorrect. Webster's online has the Latin word as salsus.) It's says it was invented by the Chinese (I can't verify that), and it gives the recipe used to make The Great Scunthorpe Sausage, which was the longest sausage ever made for a long time. It reports the 1998 world record came from Canada for a "continuous sausage" 28.77 miles in length.

The current Guinness World Record, which may not be for exactly the same thing, is measured by weight. The 2008 Guinness report states: "The record for the largest sausage weighed 18.98 tonnes (41,859 lb) and was made by J.J. Tranfield on behalf of Asda Stores Plc, at Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK on 27-29 October 2000."

Oh, look. Here's an entry on "Scandinavian words in English."

Do you prefer to buy used books online or at a store?

We have some good used bookstores in Chattanooga, and I took all of the children to the large one nearest to us, which was still a good drive away. (I don't know why my favorite used bookstore isn't on that list, but we didn't go to it because it was much farther away and may have been closed.)

I wanted to trade a DVD and some books and perhaps find an etymological dictionary (see Mr. Smith's post linked earlier this week). I walked away with the QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins for $4. There were a couple other books which looked good, but I didn't now how much I would get in trade and the girls wanted to take books too. I got about $15 in trade and walked out with almost $6 left over.

Even though browsing the book-lined aisles can be fun, I usually don't like it. I can't remember what I wanted to look for, or worse I can't find it. Last night, I tried to hunt down something by Frederick Buechner. Where should I look for his non-fiction, memoir-like stuff? I didn't see a memoir section. Maybe non-fiction essays? Will I find something by that other guy I've tried to find before, what was his name--Joseph Epstein?

I'm usually disappointed at this place because I can't find what I want and after a while everything looks cheap. What about you?

Just a couple links from me tonight.

I just got my membership card today from the Friends of the Viking Ship, the society devoted to saving and preserving The Viking, the replica of the Gokstad ship that was sailed from Norway to America for the Columbia Exposition in in Chicago, in 1893. Nowadays replica Viking ships are fairly commonplace, but this was the very first, and no one was entirely sure it could even be done.


A few of you are Viking aficionados, so I thought I'd just mention that they're always looking for support. It's far from the most important cause in this sad old world, but it would be a mournful thing to be told the old ship has crumbled with no one to care.


Speaking of this sad old world, the always thoughtful Theodore Dalrymple has a profound article up at City Journal. It's called Modernity's Uninvited Guest. The subject is theodicy (the question of how a good God could create a world full of evil), and he relates it to the utopian fantasies of the Left, by way of Dr. Samuel Johnson's 18th Century critique of a book of theology.

The superficiality of this argument requires, from a modern standpoint, little commentary. But even Doctor Johnson—a man with a delicate sense of personal imperfection who once stood several hours bareheaded in the rain in the Uttoxeter marketplace, in penance for having been disrespectful a half-century earlier to his father, who had run a bookstall there—did not criticize it strongly. Both he and Jenyns were a world away from our modern concerns about evil. Accustomed to our comforts and our delicate sensibilities, we would find their world unbelievably harsh; yet their notion of evil strikes us as naive and almost innocent. Despite the violence of Johnson’s review of Jenyns, the two men agreed more than they differed. They lived on the cusp of the Enlightenment but were both, at least in their treatment of evil, pre-Enlightenment in outlook. The burning question for them was not “Why do men behave evilly?” but “Why is there evil at all?”

That's it for tonight. Tomorrow—scandal and passion among Norwegian pioneers!

It occurred to me during my walk tonight that we're well into haying season, and I don't think I've ever told you about haying.

My brothers and I didn't do a lot of heavy farm work growing up, but the one labor-intensive time of year was haying season (straw baling too, but the tolerances were greater with straw. Also it was much lighter to lift).

Up until sometime in my childhood, my dad used to make hay more or less the old-fashioned way, cutting it and drying it in the field, and stacking it loose, either in the barn or in a shed, or (when space ran out) on the ground under a tarpaulin. We had an undersized barn, and so usually ended up stacking some hay outside. This is not a good thing. Wet and vermin get in. You always use the outside hay first, because it goes bad first.

Here's my dad and my grandpa, some time before I was born, working on a hay wagon.
Read the rest of this entry . . .

My wife and I caught a wonderful benefit concert with Andrew Peterson, Eric Peters, and Concerning Lions last Saturday. I wish I could share some of it with you. I saw a couple video clips of the Chattanooga-based Concerning Lions on their site, I believe, and you should be able to catch songs from the other great musicians through The Rabbit Room and elsewhere on the inTerweb. I wanted to introduce myself to Mr. Peterson and shake his hand and if possible bless him in some way (Mr. Peters too, who looked like he could use a shot in the arm) but I didn't take the opportunity. I didn't want to talk about myself for 30 seconds, and what else would I talk about.

The concert was to raise money (and attention I suppose) for a very good counseling center in our city, Richmont Community Counseling Center, which is dedicated to helping those who cannot afford counseling from other sources. If you can't tell from the website, they do some great work. May the Lord continue to bless them and others through them.

Note also this video review by Mr. Charles of Mona Simpson's My Hollywood. Good job, sir.

Our friend, S.D. Smith (but you should refer to him as Mr. Smith), wrote a little something about the word amazing. At least, that was my take-away.

By way of Mr. Smith's post, I have learned that the great Walter Wangerin Jr. has a new novel. Out this month is Wangerin's book, Naomi and her Daughters. Publisher's Weekly calls it a short, but profound biblical tale come live.

Travis Prinzi talks about calling and stories at The Rabbit Room.

This is a great movie and based on a true account of Scottish POWs in Japan during WWII.

I hope I didn't contribute to the confusion.

I posted a while back (during the election, I think) that I wondered if Muslims around the world might be offended if we elected a man whose father was a Muslim, but who was not practicing Islam. I based it on what I believed to be a Muslim teaching, that the son of a Muslim man is always a Muslim, forever.

Apparently that doctrine is not universal among Muslims. Certainly we haven't heard much about it during this administration. So that doesn't seem to be an issue, and I was mistaken.

But it appears, according to a Pew Research poll, that 34 percent of Americans think President Obama is a Muslim, while 43 percent aren't sure what he believes.

The usual voices are blaming talk radio, but I'm sure I've never heard any national talk show host espouse that idea (though crazy callers bring it up from time to time). Well, Michael Savage might have said it, but Michael Savage will say anything.

I did hear a guest on a local talk show last weekend say the president was a Muslim, but that was small-time radio.

Our president says he's a Christian, and I believe he's a “Christian,” at least according to his own lights (which would appear to be very different from my lights. Insert Rev. Wright joke here). When the form says “Religion,” he checks the box next to “Christian.”

But is anybody really surprised people are confused on the matter?

Has President Obama ever made a positive statement about Christianity to rival the many flattering statements he's made about Islam since his inauguration? American politicians have a tradition of joining churches and parading their piety. It's often hypocritical, but the president's avoidance of public worship while in office has been no secret.

If I know a man is married, and I hear him talking all the time about Jane, and how beautiful Jane is, and what a great wife Jane is, I think I can be excused for being surprised when I learn that he's in fact married to Sally, about whom he never talks.

Another night of contending with my lawn mower. I suppose I should pity the thing. It's dying. The guy at the shop said fixing it isn't worth the price of replacing it. So I'm running it as long as I can, until its wife becomes a grass widow, or my fuel mixture runs out.

But it's a temperamental patient. It smokes as it runs, and when it gets tired it stops, refusing to start again until it's rested. Which makes mowing an indefinite operation.

Hence the lateness of this post.

And all I've got to share is this link from Dale Nelson, about the release of a new edition of The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, translated by Christopher Tolkien.

Like my lawn mower, I can only do what I can.

Jocoseriosity: half-joking, half-serious, like this blog.

How many times have you hear someone speak with jocoseriosity? He makes his point with a slight spice of humor, and half the audience loves it, the other half hates it. Both remember it, so the jocoserious speaker wins.

And now for something completely different: a Tequila commercial.



This is thought-provoking. Is liberty or morality improved by using it, by thinking through your choices instead of following convention?

A stressful weekend, involving lots of travel and personal insecurity. Everything went fine, except inside my head. Best wishes to the principals involved; they know who they are.

I heard about this on Michael Medved's show this morning—our Ivy League-educated chief executive gave a speech at “the annual iftar dinner” at the White House, in which he put a little spin on the actual historical record.

"The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan --- making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago."

That presents a nice, cozy picture—cosmopolitan Tom Jefferson, out of his tremendous respect for Islam (did you know he owned a copy of the Koran?) hosted a special dinner in accordance with Islamic law, as a sign of respect for a Muslim ambassador.

Not quite the way it was. According to “The Iconoclast” at New English Review, the guy wasn't an ambassador, but an envoy, in this country to shake us down for the ransoms of American sailors kidnapped by the Barbary pirates. Jefferson served him dinner after sundown because that was the only time the guy would eat. By all accounts he was an arrogant jerk who made no effort to understand us, and when he left nobody missed him.

Jefferson balked at paying tribute but accepted the expectation that the host government would cover all expenses for such an emissary. He arranged for Mellimelli and his 11 attendants to be housed at a Washington hotel, and rationalized that the sale of the four horses and other fine gifts sent by the bey of Tunis would cover costs. Mellimelli’s request for “concubines” as a part of his accommodations was left to Secretary of State James Madison.. Jefferson assured one senator that obtaining peace with the Barbary powers was important enough to “pass unnoticed the irregular conduct of their ministers.”

In less irritating news related to the Middle East, Joe Carter at First Things, in his weekly 33 Things post, links to these clips of a virtual model of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem, a sight that would have been most familiar to the Lord and His disciples.

We've been told so many times that Jerusalem was an out-of-the-way outpost of the Roman empire, that we sometimes forget that Herod made his city a world-wide tourist attraction through the construction of a temple complex that was, in fact, one of the world's wonders. The Roman government wasn't entirely happy about it, either.

In response to tremendous public clamor, I shall share my views on the Cordoba Islamic Center near Ground Zero.

My views are kind of mixed, but mostly negative.

When I first heard about it, I thought, “What's the big deal? It's not directly on the 9/11 site. It's just a mosque.”

But things I've been reading and hearing on the radio suggest that it's not just a mosque, and that the very name is a statement of Islamic triumphalism.

I don't know. I'm suspicious of conservative paranoia, but I'm also aware that symbolism is a very big deal with Muslims.

The thought that keeps recurring to me is, “We are told again and again, when dealing with the Islamic world, that it's tremendously important to be sensitive to the feelings of Muslims.

“So how come that doesn't work both ways? How come Muslims have no obligation to be sensitive to the feelings of 9/11 victims?” Read the rest of this entry . . .

Haven't got much tonight. My lawn mowing (the rainy summer has made our grass situation in Minnesota almost tropical) took longer than usual, and no insights illuminated my meditations as I mowed.

Here's a piece from Gene Edward Veith's Cranach blog, which links to a further article by Anne Applebaum about Tom Sawyer, and how what was recognized as normal boyhood behavior in Mark Twain's time, is labeled a personality disorder and medicated in ours.

I mention this purely as a matter of justice, having no personal dog in the fight. I myself was a quiet and compliant child, the kind of kid Tom and Huck would have tied to a tree and then left to his own devices, laughing as they ran off.

About the only other thought I have is one concerning the same-sex marriage dispute.

The side that favors the redefinition of marriage constantly appeals (or this is my perception) to science. They have science and reason on their side, they insist, while traditional marriage defenders have nothing but tradition and fear.

But doesn't it take a certain amount of plain faith to be completely certain that abandoning a cultural template which has been universal as far back in human history as we can look, will surely have no adverse effects whatever? Is that not also an assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen?