Will gives a run down on a list of most significant books in science-fiction and fantasy. This ain’t fan.fic.
All posts by Phil
Touring Prior to West End
Penelope Keith is in a production of Entertaining Angels at the Theatre Royal in Bath, England. I just want to say that I, an American, know who Penelope Keith is. Will that get me anywhere?
Daylight Saving Time: A Change Is Coming
This post is offered as a service to our readers (If I had an Amazon Tip Jar, I’d direct you to it).
Daylight Saving Time ends tonight. Set your clocks back one hour before you go to day or you may be late for church tomorrow.
Next time we do this, we will do it sooner. “Beginning in 2007, Daylight Saving Time is extended one month and begins for most of the United States at 2:00 a.m. on the Second Sunday in March to 2:00 a.m. on the First Sunday of November.”
I don’t expect this to affect the Christmas shopping season.
Update: These cuckoo clock museum owners in London will take all weekend to turn back their 500+ clocks.
Update: Dave Lull directed my attention to this humorous article on the origins of Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time. When Standard Time was proposed to meet the desires of the railroad industry, some said it was “puzzling, saddening, or infuriating [to assume] that time was arbitrary, changeable, susceptible to the whims of the railroads or defined by mere commercial expediency. Surely the world ran by higher priorities than railroad scheduling.”
I would television scheduling to that.
Imprints Are Old School
Faith*in*fiction notes that Westbow will be history in its parent company’s reorganization. Thomas Nelson has 18 imprints and plans to consolidate all of them under one name over several months. President and CEO of Thomas Nelson, Michael Hyatt, said imprints are “an inside-out way of looking at the market, self-focused rather than customer-focused. The only ones who care about imprints are publishers, and they are expensive to maintain.” No jobs will be cut and some added, according to the report.
Hymn Sung to "Kingsfold"
I love this hymn, written by a Quaker teacher in 1906, sung to a traditional English tune called “Kingsfold.”
I feel the winds of God today; today my sail I lift,
Though heavy, oft with drenching spray, and torn with many a rift;
If hope but light the water’s crest, and Christ my bark will use,
I’ll seek the seas at His behest, and brave another cruise.It is the wind of God that dries my vain regretful tears,
Until with braver thoughts shall rise the purer, brighter years;
If cast on shores of selfish ease or pleasure I should be;
Lord, let me feel Thy freshening breeze, and I’ll put back to sea.If ever I forget Thy love and how that love was shown,
Lift high the blood red flag above; it bears Thy Name alone.
Great Pilot of my onward way, Thou wilt not let me drift;
I feel the winds of God today, today my sail I lift.
The choir in my church was to sing an arrangement of this song today, and I could have joined them if I wasn’t with my sweet wife having another little girl. We had prayed for an easy delivery of our fourth daughter, and we received it. Thank the Lord. The next day after we returned home, my wife felt a hardening in her leg with some pain when she drew back her toes–a potential blood clot in the leg most afflicted with varicose veins during pregnancy. We called her midwife and obeyed the summons to the emergency room downtown. A five-hour wait to be admitted to a labor room upstairs for another uncomfortable night on a hospital bed for my good, good wife who only wanted to recoup her strength from carrying and delivering the baby.
But I am able to write you tonight because we have returned home. Thank the Lord. The symptoms in her leg were not a serious blood clot, though maybe asuperficial one treatable with heat and aspirin. We can rest at home without blood thinners and monitoring. The Lord saw us through the drenching spray of a rough sea, and will continue his faithfulness as we raise our daughters I have no doubt. Now, to bed.
A City By Any Other Name Would Still Smell
Seattle, Washington, hopes to draw tourists and new residents by calling itself “metronatural.” For those of you in the back row, that’s like metropolitan with a part of that word replaced by another word so that the final word is–I don’t know–kewl.
What does “metronatural” say to you? If it doesn’t say, “Visit Seattle for your kind of vacation,” then you can add it to your list of ways to spell “failure.”
This reminds me of a breifly lived slogan my city did while I was away in college. In print with designed letters, it’s attractive enough that you may miss the words: “Live it, love it, it’s Chattanooga.” That’s close to “like it or lump it.” Perhaps others agreed with me, which is why the city’s current tagline is “The attraction’s only natural.” Similar to Seattle’s, when you think of it, but less hokey.
Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success
Someone in the marketing department is talking about blogging in 2006. He seems to make good points, but I still don’t like the label “Web 2.0.” It’s old-school, though it may be a better name than anything that would be more accurate.
Feel free to comment on Brandywine Books in this thread whether or not it relates to this list of blog observations. Complain, entreat, rebuke, what have you.
Lars Confronts Viking Shield Wall
Lars apparently didn’t feel his contribution to the defense of Fargo-Moorhead against a Viking onslaught significant enough to mention, but I have discovered a photo of what happened. Lars took the vanguard while the other men were still collecting their shields.
The Litblog Co-op Pick: The Tale of a Rat
This quarter’s Read This pick from the Litblog Co-op is a curious tale of a Boston rat. No, it’s not political commentary. Ed Champion recommends it: “I was entirely unprepared to read a wry and remarkably thoughtful book about the state of imagination in American society. The book had teeth, perhaps a continuously growing set of rodent-like incisors ground to manageable size so that the teeth in question wouldn’t puncture the brain.”
Genes and Big Medical Questions
Speaking of Michael Crichton, his next book promises to have us asking some strange questions: “Could your loved one be missing some body parts? Is everyone at your dinner table of the same species? It’s 2006: do you know who all your children are? Do you know humans and chimpanzees differ in only 400 genes? Did you know one fifth of all your genes are owned by someone else? Could you and your family be pursued cross country just because you happen to have certain genes in your body?”
If we come to a point where we can define our bodies and our mental abilities while living or define them for our children (or by government mandate, one another’s children), then we will have lost our humanity or at least some of it. Mars Hill Audio has discussed this repeatedly, talking to Nigel Cameron about the ethics of current bio-technology. As C.S. Lewis said, if we gain the ability to define our attributes like we can software, we will not have conquered nature; we will have become its slave.
What do you think it means to be human? Are you and I really barely different than apes? Is your body only the vehicle for your soul or whatever is the real you inside?