Category Archives: Blogs, Socials

R.I.P., Charlie Kirk

September 10, 2025 Lars Walker 1 Comment

Credit: Adam S. Keck. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0.

Charlie Kirk is dead at 31, the victim of a cowardly assassin.

I was not a follower of Charlie Kirk’s. Nothing against him; I guess it was mostly an old fart’s reflexive resentment of up-and-comers. He took over Dennis Prager’s spot on Salem Radio, and though Dennis’s accident could hardly be blamed on Charlie, I suppose I was annoyed by the change. As old men are wont to be.

I resented a video clip I saw, in which Charlie stated that “no heterosexual man” ever re-plays old conversations in his head, pondering what he should have said. Since I do that all the time (and a number of my friends, whom I firmly believe to be heterosexual as well, say they do it too), I took some offense.

Until I discovered that Dennis Prager said it first.

But I think what annoyed me (subconsciously) most of all about Charlie Kirk was that he did – extremely well – a thing I always wanted to do. He faced people who disagreed with him in public, and argued with them, never (that I know of) descending into anger or name-calling, no matter how much anger and name-calling he took from the other side. I’ve never been able to do that, to my great shame.

My strongest impression of Charlie Kirk actually comes from video clips I’ve caught on Facebook, in which he appeared on a podcast called “Whatever.”

I watch “Whatever” clips now and then, as low entertainment. It’s a podcast about men and women and their relationships, and the format (as far as I can tell) is for young women, often heavily tattooed and pierced, to appear on one side of the table in the studio, to describe how wonderful their lives are as “sugar babies,” OnlyFans influencers, or porn stars. The host and his friends sit on the other side, arguing for something (usually) a little more responsible. The guest who seems to show up most frequently is a guy about whom I know nothing at all, other than that he claims to be an Eastern Orthodox Christian, but is not shy about using profanity. His strategy seems to be to shame these women into repenting and becoming celibate (he does not recommend they marry, as he considers them morally spoiled).

But Charlie Kirk was a guest at least once. And the clips of him at the table are something entirely different. He was polite, courteous, and sympathetic with the women, even as he condemned their sins. He listened, and spoke kindly. I feel that Jesus, when he dealt with prostitutes, must have been very much like that.

And I thought I saw (though Heaven knows I know nothing about reading women’s faces) that there was something in those women’s eyes as they looked at Charlie Kirk. A look that seemed to say, “Why couldn’t I have found a guy like this?”

Well, there’s one fewer guy like that in the world today.

Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk. Enter into the glory of your Master. May your blood be the seed of the church for which you fought so bravely.

Blogs, Socials, Uncategorized

Are we all Ned Ludd now?

August 29, 2025 Lars Walker 3 Comments

When you do a web search for “Ned Ludd,” this is the only picture our computer overlords have to offer.

On Wednesday, my Close Personal Friend®, Gene Edward Veith, posted an article describing a recent report out of Microsoft Corporation, predicting which jobs are most threatened by Artificial Intelligence. Ed’s post is subscription only, but the report itself can be found here, if you care to read it. It includes the following list of endangered jobs, in order of endangerment:

Interpreters and Translators
Historians
Passenger Attendants
Sales Representatives of Services
Writers and Authors
Customer Service Representatives
CNC Tool Programmers
Telephone Operators
Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks
Broadcast Announcers and Radio DJs
Brokerage Clerks
Photographers
Technical Writers
Tour Guides
Copy Editors and Proofreaders
Librarians
Museum Technicians
Archivists
Event Planners
Public Relations Specialists
Marketing Coordinators
Social Media Managers
Conference Coordinators
Advertising Sales Agents
Travel Agents
Court Reporters
Paralegals
Insurance Underwriters
Claims Adjusters
Survey Researchers
Market Research Analysts
Fundraisers
Grant Writers
Instructional Coordinators
Human Resources Specialists
Compensation and Benefits Analysts
Training and Development Specialists
Executive Assistants
Office Managers
Data Entry Keyers

This will be, of course, a troubling list for many people. For me, it’s already kind of old news, as I, in my old gig, translation, (Number One on the list), have already been “made redundant,” as the English say.

Nowadays I find myself in sympathy with the legendary Ned Ludd, an English weaver who supposedly broke up a “knitting frame” because the technology threatened his traditional job. (In fact, his legend seems to be older, going back to a boy who was disciplined for sloppy work and smashed the machinery in a fit of pique. Later on, when mechanization arrived, the people opposed to innovation were labeled “Luddites.”)

A better hero for us enemies of progress would probably be John Henry, the hero of the folk ballad, who raced a job-threatening steam drill and beat it, but worked himself to death in the effort. I remember that even as a boy I viewed John Henry as emblematic of something that was going on in the world – little did I guess how high the stakes would get in my own lifetime.

(Continued on page 2)

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Authors, Blogs, Socials, Publishing

The Vietnamese Love Edgar Allan Poe

November 16, 2024 philwade Leave a comment

A hundred years ago in Vietnam, when the French controlled their education, Edgar Allan Poe was believed to be “America’s literary giant.” They were familiar with eerie stories of supernatural beings, which a long-standing Chinese genre gave them, so discovering Poe was like grandkids discovering Mam-ma.

“Poe’s name evoked liberation of the mind, and he was praised as someone who had ascended from the mundane by the power of imagination,” Nguyễn Bình writes for Literary Hub, offering several examples of Poe’s influence on the nation’s literature.

In 1937, author Thế Lữ began writing detective fiction. “In the story “Những nét chữ” (Letter Strokes), [Hanoi-based hero] Lê Phong told the Watson-like narrator: ‘The stuff about reading people’s thoughts from their faces like Edgar Poe and Conan Doyle said… I’m only more convinced that they’re true. Because I just did so.'” (via Prufrock)

A couple more links for today.

Ted Gioia says the big guys are out to get independent creators. For example, Apple is squeezing Patreon. Google says it can’t find select websites. It’s ugly. Gioia writes, “I’ve been very critical of Apple in recent months. But this is the most shameful thing they have ever done to the creative community. A company that once bragged how it supported artistry now actively works to punish it.”

And is this the best sci-fi classic most fans have missed? “Though it routinely ends up on best-of-all-time lists, somehow, the 1974 science fiction novel The Mote in God’s Eye never actually seems to get read.” A quick glance at the first of 2200 reviews on Goodreads suggests the book hasn’t aged well.

Photo: Dinneen Standard station, Cheyenne, Wyoming. (John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

Authors, Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Poetry

Have We Forgotten Too Much?

October 12, 2024 philwade Leave a comment

Peter Hitchens blogged about memory a couple months ago, noting Orwell’s 1984 naturally, pointing out “Orwell’s description of the sort of things people actually do remember: ‘A million useless things, a quarrel with a workmate, a hunt for a lost bicycle pump, the expression on a long-dead sister’s face, the swirls of dust on a windy morning seventy years ago.'”

He spent half of the post on the former Communist novelist Arthur Koestler (1905-1983). He said at one point everyone with a decent education on world affairs knew about Koestler and the novel Darkness at Noon. “It was perhaps the most devastating literary blow ever aimed at Communist tyranny,” Hitchens said. Important because it exposed truths the world didn’t want to believe. In WWII, Stalin joined the Allied forces, and people wanted to forget any crimes he may have committed before that. Others wanted to believe Marxism was a force for good in the world, so they waved away evidence to the contrary.

“For a large part of my life,” Hitchens wrote, “this potent political novel, and its accompanying volume Scum of the Earth were vital parts of human knowledge and understanding.” Those who had read them were “the undeceived, and the hard-to-deceive.” Where are those people now?

“What if the past has already disappeared?”

Rings of Power: In far more trivial news, reviewer Erik Kain argues that defending Amazon’s ‘Rings Of Power’ by claiming Tolkien had no canon “would make Sauron proud.” A professor with ties to the show has said, “Tolkien’s ideas were ever evolving,” meaning all of his notes and drafts demonstrate none of his ideas, even the published ones, are fixed.

Poetry: To end on cheerful note, read this delightfully modern love poem by Daniel Brown. Here are the first three lines.

A first “I love you” still implies the start 
Of serious, but we moderns also have 
Recourse to a preliminary move; ...

Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction, Publishing

Digital Lending Library in Trouble with Publishers

September 7, 2024 philwade Leave a comment

The Internet Archive may have lost its struggle with publishing companies over the “Fair Use” legality of its Open Library service. It argues that by purchasing print copies of books, it could legally digitize them and lend them on a one-to-one basis to readers around the world just like a regular library.

This week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling against The Internet Archive, saying its practice of controlled digital lending does not fall under an application of the Fair Use of copyrighted materials, according to Publishers Weekly.

“We conclude that IA’s use of the Works is not transformative,” the decision states. “Instead, IA’s digital books serve the same exact purpose as the originals: making authors’ works available to read.” The practice effectively substitutes the original work, which specifically runs contrary to the intent of Fair Use.

I can’t judge whether this is an appropriate application of the law, but it doesn’t look wrong from what I’ve read. The Internet has gotten out of hand in various ways. Maybe Open Library’s concept doesn’t work, but a tweaked version of it would.

In other news of publisher lawsuits, six of the big publishers along with the Author’s Guild are challenging Florida’s new law that requires schools to remove books with inappropriate sexual content. The suit specifically claims the term “pornographic” is undefined and takes no consideration of a book’s context.

Janie B. Cheaney gives a broad view of this and similar efforts to, as the Florida bill put it, “discontinue the use of any material the [district school] board does not allow a parent to read out loud.”

Scopes Monkey Trial: Historian Thomas Kidd reviews a new book on the Scopes Trial and doesn’t recommend it. “Author Brenda Wineapple calls America a ‘secular country founded on the freedom to worship.’ But various Christian demagogues in American history have tried to force people to worship God in a narrow-minded way, she warns.”

Reading: Brad East in “The Reading Lives of Pastors”— “It is a difficult lesson to accept, but learning and goodness are not synonymous or coterminous. . . . Ordinary experience is a trustworthy teacher: Are the holiest people you know the smartest, the best educated, the most widely read?”

Ye Old Shoppe: Here’s a little bit on old business cards and store signage.

(Illustration by Microsoft Bing’s Image Creator)

Blogs, Socials, Non-fiction

Correcting Bad History is a Perpetual Task

September 6, 2024 philwade Leave a comment

This week, Tucker Carlson once again gave us a sophomoric take on world events by producing an over two hour interview with a podcaster and historian who appears to emphasize minor views. He introduces the video this way: “Darryl Cooper may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States. His latest project is the most forbidden of all: trying to understand World War Two.”

I listened to portions of it. The two men pressed the point that you can’t ask certain questions about this part of history, can’t try to understand the Nazi’s point of view. Cooper says he thinks Churchill is the main villain of WWII, because Hitler’s goals were limited but he was pressed by Churchill’s lust for personal glory. He also painted the killing of Jews and other prisoners of war as a logistical problem. “We can’t keep feeding these people; wouldn’t it be more humane to kill them quickly?” he says, citing a German commander who suggested this.

Victor Davis Hanson calls him out. Hitler believed he would wipe out the Soviet Union and accomplish a few goals in the process.

True, some of the invading Wehrmacht officers may have been disturbed at the sheer mass of captives and Germans’ inability to offer even the bare essentials of humane treatment. But they quickly learned from Berlin’s doubling down on earlier eliminationist directives that they were not to worry about the millions of doomed Russian prisoners or the murders of Jews, given their deaths were consistent with prior Führer directives for the future resettling of western Russia.

At Nuremberg and after the war, many veteran generals of the Eastern Front claimed they privately opposed Hitler’s orders of total war that entailed liquidation of communists and Jews and assumed the mass death of Russian POWs. But very few could prove that they had not received such orders or had bravely opposed their implementation.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Rings of Power Have Returned to Assail Us All

August 31, 2024 philwade Leave a comment

Season two of Rings of Power has begun on Amazon Prime, and I have no plans to watch it. The first season was enough. I didn’t dislike the first season from the start, but it wasn’t a Tolkien story as claimed. It was LOTR fan-fic and not a good one. It wasn’t good enough to give a boat the hope it needs to float, if you know what I mean.

The second season appears to be more of that and worse. Sauron was styled as a returning king to Mordor, but now he’s appealing to the orcs and their father-figure to accept him. The orcs are styled as misunderstood foreigners who just want to live free of tyranny. What?

Army of orcs outside Gondor. "Sire, the orcs are here," someone says. "Well, don't be racist. Let them in."

Erik Kain describes other story points like this: “We need Conflict Between Main Characters, after all, even if it doesn’t really make sense,” and “nothing here is even remotely based on Tolkien’s lore.”

Brett McCracken notes another common complaint. “The series feels bogged down by overwrought dialogue. Sometimes the dialogue is great; often it’s cringey.” Plus, there’s excessive exposition and many opportunities for viewers to ask how a character would have known whatever they just said.

You can get it a feel for Rings of Power season two in this mostly positive IGN review, which according to those who pay attention to IGN is remarkably critical. Don’t those rings look cheap?

And props to Echo Chamberlain for this video recap of the first two episodes that quotes several lines, because you can’t understand the fundamental nonsense of this show without hearing some of these lines. For example, “A rumor is like a songbird; it may sound filling from afar but up close it’s an empty feast.”

Novel Adaptions: Johnathan Boes writes about adapting Tolkien’s work with some remarkable specifics from the Rings of Power showrunners.

Reading into the Text: Ukrainians have long referred to Russian soldiers as orcs and apparently Soviet leaders did too. “Comparisons between Mordor and Russia go back to the Soviet era, when the regime considered Tolkien’s literature politically threatening. The USSR banned Tolkien’s books because they saw the orcs as an analogy for the Soviet people.”

(Photo by Marc Szeglat on Unsplash)

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Book Reviews, Creative Culture