All posts by Phil

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Set Clocks Back

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“To wake the sleepers high and low,

And rouse them to the urgent hour!”

Daylight Saving Time ends tonight, so if you are affected by the time change, turn your clocks back one hour. By way of encouragement, I pass on this news:

Pedestrians walking during the evening rush hour are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, two scientists calculate. Ending daylight saving time translates into about 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October, the researchers report.

Have a good weekend.

Fiction

I Am Legend Coming Next Month

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Will Smith is in another sci-fi novel adaptation, this time I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, which has been adapted twice before. Apparently, a four writer team undertook this adaptation. Either that or two writers adapted a previous two-writer adaptation. Matheson has many stories in the public mind, in part because he worked on The Twilight Zone, in part because authors like Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and Dean Koontz have praised his work highly. Another adaptation from him, one of a script seen on The Twilight Zone, is coming in the movie The Box. Still another in The Incredible Shrinking Man.

From what I understand of the story, I Am Legend can’t be called a vampire tale, though there are vampires in it. It’s better described as a post-apocalypse story, focusing on a man as a representative of all mankind. Speaking of the Matheson’s book, Dan Schneider says it focuses “on human loneliness. . . Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre.” (Spoiler warning on that link.) It could be a good movie. Probably is a good book.

Reading

Bridging the Gaps

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Reading foreign novels help us understand foreign writers, says Israeli novelist Amos Oz upon winning the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. This appears to come naturally from this upbringing. In his memoir, he says, “Books filled our home. My father could read sixteen or seventeen languages and could speak eleven (all with a Russian accent). My mother spoke four or five languages and read seven or eight… Out of cultural considerations they mostly read books in German or English, and presumably they dreamed in Yiddish. But the only language they taught me was Hebrew.”

Non-fiction

Why Is He Funny?

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Delancey Place quotes Groucho Marx on being a comedian.

My guess is that there aren’t a hundred top-flight professional comedians, male and female, in the whole world. They are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world. But because we are laughed at, I don’t think people understand how essential we are to their sanity. If it weren’t for the brief respite we give the world with our foolishness, the world would see mass suicide in numbers that compare favorably with the death rate of lemmings.

Authors

Baltimore or Philadelphia?

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I have neglected to point out the national scope of the War over Poe. Who killed Poe and far more here. John Ball suggests:

[Last night was] an occasion to celebrate Edgar Allen Poe, the secular patron saint of American Gothic Horror, and when we’re talking about Poe, the drinks should come first:

CELEBRATE LIKE POE:

1. Gulp a double shot of the cheapest rotgut available.

2. Fall down because your body can’t handle it.

3. Suffer posthumous defamation by an envious hack journalist.

Authors

Perhaps Stephen Crane is Content

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On November 1, 1871, Stephen Crane was born in Newark, New Jersey. Crane is the famous author of the poem “Content,” among other works, which begins:

A youth in apparel that glittered

Went to walk in a grim forest.

There he met an assassin . . .

And it’s downhill for the rest.

Religion

Today in History

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Martin Luther posted these comments: “This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult for learned men to guard the respect due to the pope against false accusations, or at least from the keen criticisms of the laity.

They ask, e.g.: Why does not the pope liberate everyone from purgatory for the sake of love (a most holy thing) and because of the supreme necessity of their souls? This would be morally the best of all reasons. Meanwhile he redeems innumerable souls for money, a most perishable thing, with which to build St. Peter’s church, a very minor purpose.” Continue reading Today in History →

Religion

Keep Praying for Rain

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The docks are on dry land in Lake Lanier. Why does God withhold the rain? Why does he send the wildfire? It’s for the same reason my car doesn’t start sometimes. The Lord calls us to trust him.

Sure, there are responsible things we can do to help sometimes. I don’t know what we could do about the drought other than conserve water now that we’re in the middle of it, but proper forest management can cut back on wildfires, and if a mechanic could discern my car trouble, we could fix that too. But in all trouble, especially the natural disaster type, God’s message is to trust him.

Even the sparrow finds a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may lay her young,

at your altars, O LORD of hosts,

my King and my God. (Psalm 84:3 ESV)

So have no fear . . .

How often does the Lord tell his people not to fear, and how much fear do we, Christians in America, struggle with? I speak for myself here. Why am I afraid of nothing? And here I claim to trust the Lord with my life.

Uncategorized

No Place for an Intern

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Mitt Romney in an interview with Sean Hannity tonight:

But I fundamentally think the people will not vote based upon someone’s gender or their race, or their religion, for that matter. I think they’re going to look at what their vision is for the future of the country, where they would take it, and whether they had the experience and skills to actually lead a nation of our scale in such a critical time.

And I think the greatest drawback beyond the direction [Mrs. Clinton would] take us is that she’s never run anything. She’s never had the occasion of being in the private sector, running a business, or, for that matter, running a state or a city. She hasn’t run anything, and the government of the United States is not a place for a president to be an intern. You need to have experience actually leading and running things.