The best quote of the day comes from Dirty Harry over at Libertas, in a piece on a couple new films about Che Guevera: “I can’t imagine what it must be like to hold an ideology where Wal-Mart outrages me more than the slaughter of 600 people.”

Get a scoop of ice cream for 31 cents tonight at Baskin-Robbins in support of The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

May 1: I took the family to the East Brainerd Baskin-Robbins last night after church. It was packed. The 5-6 people behind the counter could not stop taking orders. I heard one of them say she had never seen it that busy.

Here’s a story you won’t see in your local paper. A committee from a school board in Ahmedabad, India, is looking into what appears to be a full-fledged scam for passing high school final exams. Indian students can request a writer or exam-taker, if they are injured or unable to write the answers for their own exam. Naturally, the writer is supposed to put down only the answers provided by the student who should be taking the exam in the first place, and I think the policy allows academically weak students to stand as writers for other student. Presumably, the writer would not be able to help the other student. But if, say, you bribe a strong student or someone with answers to write for your son, well, if he gets a better grade, why should anyone complain? I ask you. Does the Bible say anything about taking someone else’s test in an Indian high school? No, it doesn’t, so what’s to complain about?

We married off the Older Niece down in Iowa this weekend, and it was one of the better weddings I’ve attended, I think. They chose to do the whole thing low-key, low pressure.

So I had to make my own pressure.

I left too late. I should have left at 7:30 a.m. at the latest on Saturday, but I thought that if I waited till 8:00 I could drop off the package I’d promised to mail to my new publisher at the Post Office, and still have plenty of time.

Unfortunately the Post Office doesn’t open till 9:00.

So I hit the road (taking care to go around the area where they’ve closed off Highway 35 south, at Highway 62, for repair). We had snow on the ground, and a nasty west wind was shooting across my bow. Continue reading “The vegetable is gorgeous!” →

Granta, the magazine of new writing, has done something new with its website, so take a look.

Do you subscribe to any literary journals? Which ones or which ones would you subscribe to if somehow that special something made you do it–whatever that is?

In talking about Intelligent Design in the previous post, I looked up this NPR transcript from November 2005 on academic freedom for proponents of ID. Some of the same people featured in Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed are in this report. Here’s the end of it.

Ms. JESSICA YOUNG (Student, George Mason University): It does get overwhelming having it crammed down your throat every day in biology classes. I had–my animal biology professor said the same thing: `This is not a theory; this is a fact. This is–evolution is a fact.’ You know, it’s comforting to know that there are other people who question evolution.

HAGERTY: For Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, these students with their Bibles are Exhibit A in the case against intelligent design. It has a religious agenda, she says, because it singles out the origins of life for scrutiny.

Ms. SCOTT: You know, we don’t know everything there is to know about the theory of gravitation. We don’t know everything there is to know about atomic theory. And yet nobody says that we should be presenting the strengths and weaknesses of atomic theory. People would look at you funny if you made that suggestion. But this is what happens all the time with evolution.

HAGERTY: The judge in the Dover trial is expected to rule in the next few weeks. The culture wars will rage on long after that. As for Caroline Crocker, she’s received plenty of moral support, but no one has offered her a university teaching job.

Tip: For some time, I’ve been following old Li’l Abner daily comics over at Comics.com. Recently they went back to the beginning and re-started the strip at its very inception (or close to it, as far as I can tell). As you can see if you click over there, at this point Al Capp had not developed his mature style. He was trying to draw fairly realistically, and hadn’t yet adopted the simplified shapes and heavy outlines that made his later work so graphically compelling. Also the characters are unevolved. Mammy (whom you’ll see if you go to the strip on the day I’m posting; I don’t know if you’ll see her tomorrow) is wearing her “classic” outfit, but she actually only put it on a few strips ago, identifying it as her good clothes, which she had to wear for a trip to New York. You’ll also note that she’s too tall. Pappy is also too tall at this point. Capp hadn’t yet decided that they’d be a lot funnier if they were both the size of midgets, so that you’d ask, “How did this couple produce that boy?”

Also Daisy Mae’s bosom has not yet reached its full potential.

Anyway, it’s historically interesting, and I’m looking forward to watching the artwork develop.

How do I feel today, after 24 hours of a book acceptance? Good, but worried. I can’t help thinking that it’s all a big mistake, and that the publisher will soon recover from the concussion that surely disordered his mind. I think that, strictly speaking, this isn’t me spoiling my enjoyment. This is how I enjoy things. It’s my way to celebrate. And I gotta be… you know, me.

I also went to the doctor today, as a couple commenters suggested, to see whether my anemia is cause for concern. I await the results, confident that I probably have only a month to live.

Baylor University promotes Christian scholarship while dismissing Christian scholars. Neodarwinian thinking vs. intelligent design thinking has something to do with it.

From one point of view, “Expelled is full of lies.” Of course, that’s okay for some filmmakers.

For his documentary on a black Louisiana man who was murdered for whistling at a white woman, Keith Beauchamp is teaming with FBI officials to uncover crimes from the distant past.

Beauchamp believes he’s able to coax more from potential witnesses because he doesn’t carry the stigma often associated with law enforcement officers. Images of billy club-wielding policemen breaking up rallies and protests are still etched in many memories.

“For the first time in history, they are allowing a filmmaker to assist them in setting up a justice-seeking atmosphere that will allow eyewitnesses who may have information to feel comfortable coming forward,” Beauchamp said of the FBI.

The filmmaker also knows what it’s like to fear police. He says in 1989 he was beaten by an undercover police officer for dancing with a white friend in Baton Rouge.