Phil: I'll try to keep you posted. I'll probably post about it myself. If I keep on top of things.

Good post. I starting to think of a new story: "Zombie Chefs Take Manhattan." Will the last vegetarian lock up the butcher shop?

About your blog tour, will you let us know where you post, or I shall I hunt you down everyday?

Al, I think that's all well put. Can't argue with any of it.

From Howard's "The Hyborian Age:" "The Gaels, ancestors of the Irish and Highland Scotch, descended from pure-blooded Cimmerian clans."

Weren't the Cimmerians a Germanic group?

You mean, they should put Sean Connery in the Conan role? If I look up an Irish actor agency and judge mostly on appearance, perhaps Steve Cash who can ride a horse and has some knife skills already, or maybe Charlie Hughes. I wonder if Colin Farrell would work.

But even if the actor worked, they would not back it up with stupid racist rhetoric, unless they plan to undermine the story by showing the poverty of racism.

There's a wonderful basic disconnect between Chinese and English. Making much good for hilarity joy.

Ragnar:

"Wo-myn."

And I don't think you'll find "The Sound and the Fury" all that difficult. It's like a big chocolate cake. I haven't read it in years, but I have a copy sitting right here waiting to be gotten to, because I so enjoyed re-reading "Absalom, Absalom" lately, and I couldn't find my old copy of this companion work. Irritable college students have put forth the myth that these books are too hard to read.

I love the Preludes in part because a rank amateur can actually play some of them. The rest I just noodle through at 1/10 speed when alone, because it's fun for the pianist if not an audience. These have been my favorites for decades.

Loren -- I'm sold! Another book on its way to me in the mail.

I'm convinced that evolution is the best explanation for the fossil record and the development of species. What remains mysterious to me is how the ball got rolling before DNA or RNA had developed. Evolutionary pressure can't explain the development of RNA, because you have to have a genetic mechanism for propagating characteristics before survival-of-the-fittest-offspring selective pressure can begin to operate. There are people working on theories of how a kind of proto-genetic selective pressure could have produced the first RNA, but the work is in its infancy. I don't claim that this ambiguity or lacuna in our knowledge should persuade anyone to believe in God, but I do claim that there's good reason to be a little less smug about what evolution's all-encompassing power of explanation.

Yes. Smith called the young people he came to understand through his research "moralistic therapeutic deists." They've been taught about God in the churches they grew up in, so they probably belief by default, but they don't believe in the personal, life-transforming God of the Bible, because of the poor teaching they received. They hold to a distant God would hopes to see them do well on their own strengths, a God who probably can't help them when they pick up an addiction or get into difficult relationships.

And I think I would enjoy "The Chrysalids," too, so I've just ordered that. But I like best the advice about ammunition.

That's the Deist tradition, right? God is impersonal and distant. He makes no personal demands but simply embodies a kind of formal order, like the laws of physics. It's a way of reconciling materialism with a need to explain why it's possible for us to know anything or to have valid opinions about anything, which would be a difficult trick if the world were merely meaningless mechanical chaos.

My question is the word Woman sexist? It does contain the word man. To be correct for the PC people this should be changed. May I suggest Woperson. Or maybe Wofem? Just how far do we take the destruction of the English we speak, and wright, to please the ego of some so called guises? Personally, I like Women, and think a Wofem might be something I might stay away from : )

I take it, then, that employees at AFLC HQ have not yet been unionized. :O)

That's excellent, Joi.

It's interesting to hear them say you have to get your news from a variety of sources, and I can't disagree that if you watch only one cable news channel you have nothing to compare their reporting too. Comparing news coverage can be revealing, but do most people have time to cast around for news? If you don't trust the NY Times at all, reading them feels like a waste of time. Note this Gallup article--I think news sources gain viewer or reader trust and that's almost the whole ball game. Most of us just don't trust the news from other sources, and we are often suspicious of the stories we do read.

I'm a big Duvall fan too--but I figured he had so much emotionally wrapped up in this movie for his young and attractive wife, this couldn't be good. Thanks for the warning.