Category Archives: Blogs, Socials

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

I review ‘Treasure Planet’

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Another day, another review. I reviewed Hal Colebatch’s novel, Treasure Planet, for the American Spectator.

The Jim Hawkins character here is Peter Cartwright, a young man who helps his mother run an inn in a remote part of Wunderland. The appearance of Captain Skel, a demanding and dangerous old space-farer, sets off a plot whose general outlines will be familiar to any Stevenson fan. Long John Silver here is “Silver,” a Kzin with a prosthetic leg, and instead of a ship we have, of course, a spacecraft. The treasure in this book is not gold, but an alien library full of technological information left behind by a long-extinct species.

Read it all here..

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Presence of ‘Malice’

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They’ve revamped our friend S. T. Karnick’s The American Culture blog, and I’ve finally found a minute to write a book review for them. It’s a review of Keigo Higashino’s Malice.

That seems straightforward enough, but Detective Kaga is unsatisfied. The confession has minor holes, ones that nag at him. Gradually, as one peels away the layers of an onion, he works his way down to Nonoguchi’s true, secret motive.

Read it all here.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

Advent Ghost Stories 2014

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“There’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long. long ago.”

Loren Eaton hosts another round of ghost stories centered on Christmastime. There are many here, and Loren has a couple himself. Note this one called “Elizabeth.” Enjoy and post your comments.

Blogs, Socials, The Press

Is a Content Creator Required to Interact with Readers?

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Matthew Ingram argues that media companies, particularly content creators like Reuters, should allow their readers to comment on articles. If they don’t, they are shutting out potential fan support.

Reuters recently removed its comment section, saying self-policing social networks were already handling lively discussion well so they didn’t need to duplicate the effort. Ingram says by doing this, Reuters is handing a large slice of market value to Facebook and Twitter (among other networks) as well as move any arguments over an article onto other venues where Reuters’ writers will have to decide how to respond on their own. He explains:

Is moderation a pain, and an expensive proposition? Sure it is. Lots of things that matter to your business are expensive. And if you have an engaged community, they can become your moderators, as successful online communities like Slashdot and Metafilter have shown — which in turn helps strengthen your community. Ending comments means removing any chance that this will ever happen.

A news service probably needs all the love it can get. Does Reuters really want their writers to tweet their defense of contentious reports or take the debate to Medium?

Blogs, Socials, Fiction

If These Old Bones Could Talk

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Loren Eaton has written a short story for a collective Halloween storytelling event. It’s a story of a young girl who discovers she hears and experiences things when she touches the bones of deceased animals. It’s a bone-chilling (heh, heh) idea which rings true in sad way. If we didn’t have a culture of death in this world, this kind of story would feel completely fantastic.

Bones spoke to Jenny.

She discovered the gift — if gift it was — at the age of five. Her brother, Samuel, had been excavating in the backyard with a red-bladed Ames True Temper shovel. A foot down, he accidentally disturbed the grave of one Fluffymump, a former favorite feline. Some surreptitious digging, a quick bend and snatch, and he whirled, shouting, “Hey, Germy, catch.”

Fluffymump’s sepia skull landed in Jenny’s outstretched hands.

Naturally, she screamed and ran upstairs to her room. Naturally, Jenny’s father bent Samuel over his knee and given him three sharp whacks. Naturally, Jenny’s mother followed close after to offer consolation and chocolate chip cookies only just taken from the oven. But that was where expectation ended.

Read the rest on his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

Veith likes ‘Death’s Doors’

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Our friend Prof. Gene Edward Veith of Patrick Henry College gives my latest novel the thumbs up:

But although there are a lot of big ideas in this book and a lot of rich theologizing, Death’s Doors is just fun to read. It’s suspenseful, exciting, and wildly imaginative, both in the author’s story telling and in the way it stimulates the reader’s imagination. And I’m realizing that all good novels–including Christian novels, classics, and other works that are Good for You–need to have those qualities. And this one does.

Read it all here.

Blogs, Socials

Restaurant Complains of Your Bad Review. Pay $2,000.

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Phare du Cap FerretA French woman blogs her bad experience at an Italian restaurant in an up-scale French tourist town on the Atlantic, and her review eventually ranks fourth in all Google searches for that restaurant. That was too high and hurt the establishment’s reputation, lawyers argued, so a French court has ordered her to change the post’s title (she retracted it entirely) and pay $2,000 in damages.

French lawyers say this won’t become a precedent at all. Sure.

I won’t name the restaurant, in case it adds to the blogger’s grief, but the CS Monitor says that while the bad review is offline (though archived by Internet gnomes), many comments are being posted about how this restaurant can’t take criticism.

Also in this report: “German politicians are considering a return to using manual typewriters for sensitive documents in the wake of the US surveillance scandal.” This is probably a smart move.

Blogs, Socials, Goofing

“All web content deserves to go viral.” Share This!!

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Just in time for Friday the 13th, your new, favorite website has launched. ClickHole, from the makers of The Onion, “is the latest and greatest online social experience filled with the most clickable, irresistibly shareable content anywhere on the internet.” It says so right on the About page. It has “only one core belief: All web content deserves to go viral.”

It’s spontaneously generated (not written by any actual humans) appears on the site, just begging to be clicked and shared. If anyone needs help on just how this “clicking” process works, scroll the About page for a helpful illustration.

Share your results for great quizzes like “How Many Of These ‘Friends’ Episodes Have You Seen?” I got “Nice! ‘You know math?!’ Yep, looks like you’re a borderline ‘Friends’ genius! Wish you were around when Joey posed as a combat medic in Iraq during season 8!”

Read George R.R. Martin’s confession: “When I Started Writing ‘Game Of Thrones,’ I Didn’t Know What Horses Looked Like.”

Watch and share this touching video: “What This Adorable Little Girl Says Will Melt Your Heart”

And best of all: “8 Touching Pics Of Celebrities And Their Dads.”

(via 10,000 Words)

Blogs, Socials, Religion

God-blogging Is Replacing Deep Thinking

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Bart Gingerich writes that young people are being led by untrained writers who claim to understand the deep wisdom of God better than anyone who came before them:

[W]e are starting to observe firsthand that the radical democratization of knowledge has led to what John Luckacs calls “an inflation of ideas.” Everyone has been given just enough knowledge and literacy to get them into trouble and yet none of the patience or discipline to get them out of it. Everyone with a blog or Twitter account can shoot out lots of small ideas that lack depth, grounding, and merit. Thus, American Christians are confronted with more and more theological ideas that have less and less worth.

Seminaries are both suffering from this and contributing to this problem. (via Anthony Bradley)

Blogs, Socials, Writing

I'd know him anywhere

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My favorite Christmas gift this year may have come from a total stranger. Digital artist Jeremiah Humphries produced the above drawing of Erling Skjalgsson, apparently, on a whim.

I like the use of light to suggest the hearth fire in the hall.

These are the moments that suggest to a writer that he hasn’t entirely wasted his time.

For more information on Mr. Humphries’ art, check out his blog.

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