Anthony Sacramone is a friend of this blog, proprietor of the Strange Herring blog (where he’s posting again, happily), and an editor of the Intercollegiate Review. The IR has just released a new issue, and I thought I’d pass along Anthony’s pitch:

The Spring 2015 issue of the Intercollegiate Review has arrived. I don’t know how. It’s like a miracle.

Live on IRO are essays by Peter Thiel on “The Competition Myth” and Daniel Hannan on “The Privilege of Freedom.”

Soon to go live is Mary Eberstadt’s takedown of college bullying and its effects on the religious commitments of students (“From Campus Bullies to Empty Churches”) and an assessment of JRR Tolkien’s politics (“Lord of the Permanent Things”).

Also in the lineup is my own “The 12 Funniest Books Ever Written,” which, of course, was the only reason to publish this d*mn thing in the first place. There’s also an apologia for smoking, one of our counterintuitive reports on longevity, entitled “You’ve Lived Long Enough Now Please Move Along.”

Our friend Michael Medved also wrote the God on the Quad department this issue: “Vital Lessons in Vile Smears.”

You can find our entire TOC as well as the digital edition of the IR here.

As we’re trying to reach as many young minds as humanly possible in order to undo some of the damage done by their filthy communist atheist nihilist indoctrinators, I would appreciate it if you would share these links with every single person you know. I will be eternally grateful–within strict limits, of course.

I thank you. And America thanks you.

Anthony

Short notice, but I just found out myself. I’ll be interviewed this afternoon, at 4:30 p.m. on the Issues, Etc. radio program. We’ll be discussing the story of the new heathen Norse temple in Iceland.

You can listen live at the web site, and I believe you can also listen to an archived version if you miss it.

Thoughts thought this week:



Somebody mentioned androids — those all-but-human robots we see so often in modern science fiction — on Facebook.

I don’t think we’re likely ever to see androids.

Not because the technology is too complex (though it may be). But because the technology will probably be unnecessary.

We already have a source of perfect humanoid organisms that we can exploit as servants and slaves.

In time it will probably be possible to alter their brains to render them compliant, and no more intelligent than we want them to be.

The organisms I mean are unborn human beings. Aborted babies.

Legally, they have no standing as persons. So technically, it would not be illegal to enslave them. Is it very unlikely that in a utilitarian future, aborted babies will not be disposed of, as they are now, but recycled, as labor-saving devices?

Seems almost inevitable to me, unless our hearts are changed.

I’ve thought about working this idea into a story, but it’s too Science Fiction for me to handle properly.

Somebody’s probably already done it anyway.

Took half a day off today, because I had an afternoon appointment with my surgeon. Almost one year from the date of my hip replacement, time to zap my groin area with carcinogenic radiation.

But first, stopped at Fat Nat’s Eggs, a small local chain that serves only breakfast and lunch, to try their hot beef sandwich. I’ve become kind of obsessed with hot beef sandwiches since the great one I had in Minot, ND a couple years ago. My review: It was good, especially the mashed potatoes. But I still give the edge to Keys Restaurant, another local chain but a longer drive from my home. Neither is quite up to that Minot place (whose name escapes me for a moment, but it starts with a “K”), though.

Then off to see the sawbones. We both agreed that my new hip and I are getting along fine. She asked me when I want the other one done, and I told her certainly not before my graduate work is done. I don’t care to repeat last year’s catch-up effort, which in memory is worse than the operation. She’s OK with that, knowing that she’ll probably get me sooner or later. Though she admitted that the X-rays showed some changes in the “manufacturer’s original parts” hip, and not negative ones.

I also congratulated her, having perceived, through my extraordinary writer’s powers of observation, that she was about 8 1/2 months pregnant.

My spring classes began today. I actually started my assigned reading yesterday. The Christmas break (which I’m sure the school calls Winter Break) was nice, though I spent it mostly working at this and that. I think of myself as a lazy man, but I do manage to keep busy.

Before me stretches a year of academics. If I keep on schedule, I’ll be done with classes in December, and then there’ll only be the final testing (or whatever) to convince them I deserve my degree (a Master’s degree, I’ve learned, entitles you to put the suffix Esq. behind your name. I don’t think I’ll avail myself of that).

So it’s a matter of doing my time, like a convict. Each day I do the designated work, and I’ll tick the days off one by one until I come out into the light at the end.

On an unconnected note, I bought my first pair of loafer shoes on Saturday. I suppose you’d call them loafers, though they don’t look quite like what I was taught to think of as loafers back in the ’50s. They look a little dorky to my eye, but not as dorky as walking around with my shoes untied (I have complained about modern Teflon shoelaces in this space before), and way less dorky than stopping to kneel down on my old man’s limbs to re-tie them. These are the small indignities God gives us, in His mercy, so that the Angel of Death, when he appears at last, won’t look like such an unwelcome guest after all.

I think I told you that my classes resumed last Monday. I wrote that in good faith, but in fact they start tomorrow. I got another week of freedom I hadn’t planned on.

I’ve used my winter break for a number of different purposes. There was the ordinary Christmas stuff. I did another revision on my translation of a book on Norway in the Viking Age, because the text I delivered to the publisher was a rough draft, and it’s been nagging at me. To my surprise, after I delivered the revision, the publisher told me they’re probably going to go ahead with it. Most gratifying.

And then there were Christmas cards. And then there was taxes.

But I’ve loafed a little. Last night I watched a new TV show called “Backstrom.” Wikipedia tells me that it’s an Americanized adaptation of a series of Swedish detective novels. It stars Rainn Wilson, best known from “The Office.”

It was horrible. Or so it seemed to me. I kind of tuned it out after the first 15 minutes or so. Possibly it picked up while I wasn’t paying attention.

Comparisons to “House” come to mind. House was a rude and irascible genius. Backstrom is supposed to be the same.

But House had one thing this show lacked — wit. You couldn’t help liking House a little, most of the time. He was funny. He was obviously in physical pain, which made most of us cut him a little slack. And he had people around him — notably Dr. Wilson — who put up with his act because they had a history with him and had reasons (often opaque to us) for valuing him.

Backstrom has none of that. He’s just a jerk.

Memo to Hollywood: Being a jerk in itself is not the same as being interesting.