World has a stirring interview with a guy working to get alcoholics and other addicts on their feet (subscription required). “Misdirected compassion was keeping those people on the streets and killing them on the installment plan, a little every day,” said Bob Cote of the organization Step 13. He said the holidays are a bad time for pan-handlers, because $10 from someone trying to be compassionate can enable them to kill themselves. “They’ll get drunk, get hit by a car, or maybe freeze to death,” he said.
All posts by Phil
Live Q&A with “Jabez” Author Bruce Wilkinson
I’ve thought about avoiding any posts on this, but WaterBrook Multnomah Publishers is doing something too interesting to ignore. Bruce Wilkinson, who made a huge splash with the book The Prayer of Jabez (and only ripples with follow-up books), has a new book which appears to focus on themes similar to “Jabez.” You Were Born for This talks about everyday miracles and the idea that you and I “can be a ‘Delivery Guy’ from heaven in such universally significant arenas of life as finances, practical help, relationships, purpose and spiritual growth” if we “are willing to learn the ‘protocol of heaven.'”
Yeah, I don’t like the look of that either, but Mr. Wilkinson is going to be online tomorrow evening at 7:00 Eastern in a live Q&A to discuss themes in the book. Questions will be taken through the chat room.
Re: The Founding Fathers
James Srodes reviews Gordon Wood’s book Empire of Liberty, saying it covers an important part of early American history which is often glossed over. As is usually the case, the truth isn’t pretty. Srodes writes: “The hard truth that emerges from Mr. Wood’s narrative is that many of our most marbleized Founding heroes were frightful snobs who were inept at the mechanics of government, ignoramuses about economic realities and fatally estranged from the very people they sought to lead. None of our first three presidents comes out of the story very well.”
Wandering
I’ll be offline for a while, enjoying the family and, I hope, local foods. Be seeing you.
Rationing Your Carbon Output
Someone save us from the pseudo-scientists! One U.K. company is fining and rewarded employees based on their carbon output.
Britain’s first employee carbon rationing scheme is about to be extended, after the trial demonstrated the effectiveness of fining people for exceeding their personal emissions target. Unlike the energy-saving schemes adopted by thousands of companies, the rationing scheme monitors employees’ personal emissions, including home energy bills, petrol purchases and holiday flights.
Commenter Chris Bock, whom I assume is British says, “Right now hardly anyone is standing up and fighting for civil liberties in Britain. People want to accept being herded and prodded, their lives micromanged and filmed to the minute, their lives compounded by ever increasing fines and taxes for minor everyday infractions of local and national laws designed to generate such income. Britain will wake up one morning and realize they are a democratic society in name only and anyone crowing about civil liberties and individualism will be deemed Enemies of the State.”
Looks very much like The Village in Patrick Mcgoohan’s show The Prisoner. Perhaps if the once great British would return to their God, preaching the gospel in Canterbury and London, they would stand up for themselves again, defend their families, protect their neighbors, and put away the corruption of the world. But I probably shouldn’t talk like that. It’s undefined, too general, and I just sound like a religious nut. [via Sweetness & Light]
How Good He Is to Those Who Fear Him
Is there any tension between the goodness of God and the fear of Him?
“Oh, how abundant is your goodness,
which you have stored up for those who fear you
and worked for those who take refuge in you,
in the sight of the children of mankind!” (Psalm 31:19)
Book Pages Returning to NC Newspaper
The Greensboro News-Record dropped it’s book pages a while back, probably following the lead of other newspapers. No doubt the decision was made by a secret cabal of news editors and producers who hate independent thinkers and truly want to crush reading throughout the country, at least reading outside the approved list. But readers still live in Greensboro. This editorial explains some of the popular demand that brought the book pages back to the newspaper.
More than 150 book clubs are affiliated with the Greensboro Public Library and dozens more operate on their own in dens and living rooms throughout the Triad.
Greensboro’s One City, One Book initiative ranks among the most successful community “read-ins” in the country.
The Barnes & Noble store in Friendly Center is one of the chain’s highest-volume stores in the Southeast.
I doubt this will become a trend. Everyone knows people who read newspapers don’t read or care about books.
Inside the Bush White House
More or less–it’s probably closer to being inside of Washington staffer’s office. You have to ask, “What is this, a cruel hoax?” (inside joke, see the article)
Vote for Your Favorite Book
The National Book Award wants you vote for the best of six award winning choices.
- The Stories of John Cheever
- Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
- The Collected Stories of William Faulkner
- The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
- Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
- The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
I won’t tell you who was winning when I voted, but I will say it was the one I picked.
Reason for Reading Dan Brown?
Adam Gopnik says maybe the reason so many want to read Dan Brown’s books is their niceness. Ancient conspiracies, secrets which must be kept in the dark, crazies with bad skin, and safe plots with modern conclusions. Gopnik writes:
Much of it is bogus, to be sure—though modern Masonry borrowed some oogah-boogah from the Egyptian past, it was an Enlightenment club, whose greatest product was “The Magic Flute,” and which was about as sinister, and secretly controlled about as many governments, as the Royal Order of Raccoons in “The Honeymooners.” But Brown is having fun. And the book is full of activities; there’s more to do with a pencil and safety scissors than in any Highlights for Children.