For your Christmas Eve, an Irish reel recorded in a pub. Ken Doyle is on flute and Mark Pitner plays bouzouki.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my pod
I understand how you feel. Through all the hectic activity, the parking and the shopping, the glitter and the tinsel, one thought has nagged at you. “This would be a perfect Christmas season,” you think, “if only I could hear Lars Walker’s voice.”
Well, your Christmas wish has come true. Derek Gilbert of View From the Bunker recorded an interview with me, and you can listen to it here.
God bless us, every one.
Sony Hackers: English You Write Much?
The Language Log is talking about whether the language used in threats issued by the hackers of Sony Pictures reflects a particular native language or is a hoax. “Kevin McCready surmises that the hacker threat was ‘…written by someone who has strong command of English but is pretending they don’t. In particular it would be interesting to see if grammatical errors conform to those a Korean might make.‘”
The text of the original threat isn’t uniform. Here are the second and third sentences: “Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made. The world will be full of fear.”
A commenter claiming to be a native Korean speaker says it looks Korean to him. He writes, “Some people seem to be saying that ‘Soon all the world will see what an awful movie Sony Pictures Entertainment has made’ seems to be too good to have been produced by the same writer of some of the other lines, but this sort of expression (‘all the world will see’) would not be out of place in Korean either.”
Controversial Exhibit of Artwork on Mary Rebuffs Art Snobs
So a straw man walks into a bar. Except he doesn’t.
The National Museum of Women in the Arts is running what appears to be a fabulous exhibit, Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea on view December 5, 2014–April 12, 2015. Terry Mattingly has a video on it and writes about a review in The Baltimore Sun that reports on how some art critics are irritated that this exhibit doesn’t shove back the faces of Christians who actually like Mary, the mother of Jesus. “In other words, this exhibit has – among a elite art critics – become controversial because it is not causing controversy among (wait for it) religious believers who are, by definition, opposed to modern art.”
Apparently controversy is what exhibit planners want to avoid on a regular basis, but not all controversy is created equal. The only way to avoid the right kind of controversy is to show that your museum is too sophisticated to show respect for anything that isn’t the latest in trendy, Ivy League expressions.
“The [Baltimore Sun] story makes it clear, for example, that this astonishingly deep exhibit could not have taken place if its planners had decided to include modern art about Mary that would have offended the very churches and museums that controlled some of these priceless masterpieces.” But the straw men these critics hate so much are anywhere to be seen.
Scalzi and Redshirts
“John Scalzi is interesting as someone who has built a writing career in these strange days,” Joseph Bottum explains. “He spent a few years writing movie reviews after college before landing, in 1996, a sweet gig at America Online as editor and in-house writer. Laid off in the meltdown of AOL, he took to writing guidebooks for the money and science fiction blog posts for the fame. Or, at least, the dribs of money and the drabs of fame. The blog, called “Whatever,” proved enjoyable for readers—a few years ago, he issued in book form selections entitled Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded—and it successfully established him as a voice to be reckoned with in the field.”
Scalzi’s most recent novel is called Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas
Advent Ghost Stories 2014
“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.
He Can’t Make a Christian
In her regular Thursday column, Bethany Jenkins gives us Martin Luther on the nonexistence of a sacred/secular divide . Here’s part of it.
The pope or bishop anoints, shaves heads, ordains, consecrates, and prescribes garb different from that of the laity, but he can never make a man into a Christian or into a spiritual man by so doing. He might well make a man into a hypocrite or a humbug and blockhead, but never a Christian or a spiritual man. As far as that goes, we are all consecrated priests through baptism, as St. Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9, “You are a royal priesthood and a priestly realm.” The Apocalypse says, “Thou hast made us to be priests and kings by thy blood” (Rev. 5:9-10).
Today: Through the Eyes of Spurgeon
Watch a new documentary on C. H. Spurgeon today for free. It’s called Through the Eyes of Spurgeon. Get the details here.
“Valkin’ in my vinter undervear”
Back for a reprise: A ghost from my Christmas past. This guy is the late Roger Awsumb. In the ’60s he used to play Casey Jones on the “Lunch With Casey” program on a Twin Cities TV station. This is probably the most popular thing he ever did.
Ayn Rand Didn’t Understand Capitalism
Joe Carter breaks down the egoism of Ayn Rand.
“Reason, applied consistently, doesn’t lead us down a straight path to egoism, much less to capitalism. Examined closely, we would find that her entire Objectivist philosophy is founded on this simple question begging premise. . . .
“Ultimately, Rand’s egoism is irreconcilable with both Christianity and capitalism. In fact, since the system fails to have any true explanatory value, it’s difficult to find any reason to adopt Objectivism at all. Fortunately, we don’t have to buy into Rand’s philosophical errors in order to appreciate her fiction. We just have to keep in mind that instead of reading a “novel of ideas”, we are reading a work of fantasy.”