Dogberry Patch points out a new comic book version of the bible–I almost wrote “Holy Scripture” but that would be sacreligious, if not blasphemous, to characterize this book as an actual Bible–which attempts to present the stories in Manga illustrations. Not only does the artwork fail to get very Manga-like, “The narrative reads like the scriptwriter is strip-mining scripture. He bulldozes over details and nuances in the Biblical text to move the plot along.”

I guess I’m not really surprised that the Archbishop of Canterbury approves of it.

With a knee-jerk tax “rebate” coming from Uncle Sam, that great benefactor without whom we could not live nearly as well as we do, let me point out a bit of common advice from Paul Borthwick’s book Simplify: 106 Ways to Uncomplicate Your Life. He writes:

#3 Resist Temptation

An article in a local paper described customers at a local “bargain” store as “People Shopping for Things to Need.” Stay away from shopping centers or malls except when you have a specific purchase in mind. Don’t surf the Internet gazing at all the stuff for sale on eBay or at the website of your favorite clothing, technology, music or DVD store. Window-shopping in all forms induces buying. That’s why professionals spend so much time decorating the windows, jazzing up their websites, and bombarding your Christmas mail with catalogs.

According to the must-be-decent people at feedthepig.org, any money we get from the federal government (which is probably being stolen from starving children in the first place) should go to pay off our debt and save for our future. How boring is that? America was built on the back of responsibility, now was it? No, sir. Spend that money, citizen, and vote for the candidates who will beat down the rich man to save you from victimhood–in good ole American fashion.

A new book discusses “how popular culture is attempting to replace Biblical Christianity with ‘Jesusanity,'” sort of the same Jesus without all that life change and resurrection stuff. Why can’t we all just be inspired by the man? Do we really have to be born again?

Alan of Thinklings recommends seven books he read last year, including this one from Wendell Berry:

The Unsettling of America. There are certain authors about whom I have to say, “but of course I don’t agree with everything he says.” Wendell Berry is one of those guys. He probably wouldn’t approve of the time I spend commuting in my truck, my fancy phone that keeps me hooked up to the office 24/7, or my fondness for frozen pizzas. By the same token, I think he could stand to read a few books on economics. But he is a good corrective to many of the more/faster/now obsessions of contemporary life.

Happy New Year (again)! I told you that one of my daughters thought this was the best Christmas ever. Part of that assessment came from the gift of this book, Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs. This is an incredible book. If you can find a display edition somewhere, it’s worth spending ten minutes flipping through it. The primary illustrations leap off the page, and one of the secondary ones wrestles with itself. Of course since we are evolution-deniers, I shed doubt on certain age statements, and I criticized the section on why the dinosaurs died. What else can a father do? Now my girls throw around dinosaur names they can’t pronounce.

Another Christmas book which excites my older two girls is Starfinder, a neat book with a star chart on the cover. We tried to use this last night, while my oldest kept identifying constellations that weren’t there. I want to sit out in the back yard with them one night when the sky is clear. We’ll have to study this book ahead of time.