Credit ROFLRAZZI.COM Thanks to Loren Eaton for the link.



Steve Bradford, who I credited with yesterday’s link, had this link today. It’s a review of How To Train Your Dragon by Nathan D. Wilson, that draws a very, very different conclusion from mine:

But that’s not what was served up. Instead, dragons were bad. They raided the village stealing sheep. They burned it down constantly. They killed people. Lots of people. And here’s one of a few things that stunned me. Why did they do these evil things? Well, because they served The Dragon. The big one. The huge, ancient, evil one. And the story progresses not with one small boy (Hiccup) successfully communicating to his father (Stoick) that dragons were misunderstood, but with that boy crushing The Dragon’s head and . . . losing his foot in the process.

That message never even crossed my mind while I saw the movie. And frankly, I don’t think many other viewers took it that way either. But still, if that’s what Cressida Cowell, the author of the books the movie was based on, intended, I probably owe her an apology or something.

I often get things wrong. Continue reading Dragons, and Pythons →

Patrick J. Deneen, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University, argues that teaching the Great Books is essentially worthless if the teacher treats them all as equally true.

contemporary arguments on behalf of the Great Books are often as pernicious, and even indistinguishable from, the forms of value relativism that they purport to combat. Many conservative academics have become lazy in the defense of the Great Books, content to let the phrase stand in for a deeper and potentially more contentious examination of the various arguments within those books and the West itself, and of the need for university faculties to provide some kind of organized and well-formed guidance to students on how best to approach these texts.

In short, teachers must have a bias for the truth in order to guide students through these great works. Reality must be recognized in the classroom. Because if an interest in ideas, no matter how ridiculous, is the highest virtue for a teacher, it barely matters what he is teaching. The outcome will be similar. Students will believe their own opinions are the only ones that matter, regardless their merits.

Now, we can download recorded messages from L’Abri Fellowship on their well-organized site. Hundreds of lectures are available with more being added.

And if you like the spoken word, look into the selection at Reformed Audio. Ryan Jankowski and Benjamin C. Richards appear to have good readings of weighty stuff by several dead white guys, so you know it’s got to be good. [Thanks to Mike Johnson for both links.]

Scott Cairns Inks Three-Film Deal with Disney — “It’s time we got literary types back in Hollywood–think of what Faulkner did for Gunga Din. Look, Scotty’s got the right stuff–think Indiana Jones meets the Philokalia.”

Take a guess. Do you think I’m, possibly, just a little excited about this upcoming movie (thanks to Steve Schaper for sharing the trailer with me)?

Sure, I have quibbles. The ship is centuries before its time. There’s a helmet that belongs in a different period, too. But all in all it looks good, and although I’d never pictured Russell Crowe as Bold Robin, he makes a rattling good warrior. All the talk of “the law” is good. I might mention that Robin is traditionally placed in Nottinghamshire, which is part of the old English Danelaw. There was a legacy of Norse republicanism in those parts.

Last weekend, when the Vikings and I lent our considerable glamor to the preview of How to Train Your Dragon, we went out to eat afterward, and the discussion turned to the old 1950s Robin Hood TV series with Richard Green, which we older Vikings remembered with great fondness. Some of the younger Vikings knew it too. Continue reading Robin and Lance, and stuff →

I guess this is video day here. I have a couple to share. This one is a trailer for a documentary about the enslavement of big education. Blogger Erin O’Connor consulted on this film. I hope I’ll be able to see it.

It’s shocking what liberal and big government types are doing to American children. They are wasting the time and money of millions of us.

Remember how you felt after September 11? Remember how you prayed for people you would never know? Let’s recall something of that motivation and pray for the people of Moscow.

Merriam-Webster has a list of ten word what define our decade, that is, the decade what just passed us by. I believe these words were looked up the most through the dictionaries services.

1. rogue (uncontrollable)

2. locavore (one who eats local food)

3. integrity (moral wholeness)

4. staycation (at home while out of the office)

5. partisan (I’m too angry to define it)

6. Google (search)

7. insurgent (“to rise up”)

8. bailout (see partisan)

9. Pandemic (broader than an epidemic disease)

10. Carbon footprint (farting)

By slight contrast, here’s their list of words from the 90s.

Dr. Seuss books that scared me

I loved There’s a Wocket in my Pocket! as a kid. It was favorite book.