My review of Hal Colebatch’s Counterstrike is up at The American Spectator Online.
You Know the Guy. Don't Make Me Say His Name.
In other fun press corp news, Craig Silverman has an article on how frequently reporters and announcers around the world said “Obama” when they meant “Osama.” He has a painful video of a Canadian anchor reading the news, saying “Obama” every time she meant “Osama.” Naturally, if it needs to be said, this is all Ted Kennedy’s fault.
Front Page Greatness?
James Fallows calls this weekly world edition of the UK Telegraph the greatest front page ever. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. It’s the absence of cognitive dissonance, a blindness to irony. It’s doing what you’re told without thinking about it or maybe not proofing. Or maybe they thought it was funny.
How Many Authors Have Killing Experience?
Daniel Kalder notes that many writers describe murder in their stories, but few have actual experience with it, or if not murder, then killing on the battlefield. More writers do kill themselves, but that usually diminishes their future creative output. In the U.K. Guardian, Kalder writes:
Writers, by and large, are a boring lot – even more so now that so many are employed by the state (or states in the case of the US) to teach middle-class youth how to tell imaginary stories in prose. Yes, yes, the academy is a fascinating subject and you can’t have enough tales about college politics or balding, paunchy middle-aged lecturers lusting after young girls.
But if you want your work required for undergraduate modern novel classes, college politics is a great topic. Isn’t it? (via Books, Inq.)
How I spent my Cinco de Mayo
Today was a vacation day. I spent it with the Vikings, participating in the annual Festival of Nations at the River Centre in St. Paul (I’ll be there every day through Sunday, in case you’re in the neighborhood and in the mood for a rainbow of multiculturality). I went in a little worried, because it had been announced that our usual parking ramp is closed this year, and we’d have to park somewhere else. I discovered that this “elsewhere” ramp was in fact that one I’ve always used. Sometimes I need a fresh reminder of just how out of step I am, in general.
Today was the Student Day at the Festival, a day reserved for school classes. So we spent the day watching students schooling, fish-like, past our tables. A few stopped to ask questions. (The strangest was from a young man who wanted to know how a Viking sword was swung. If anything in this world is self-evident, it seems to me, it’s how a slashing sword works, but when I made a small demonstrative sweep, he said I had made it clear for him. Well, God bless you, son. Say hello to your Amish parents.) I sold exactly zero books, but you don’t expect much from school kids.
I was waiting for an important call on my cell phone, which was handy in my pouch at my hip, but when it came I somehow missed it. I can only assume that the ambient noise (pretty fortissimo when the kids are in high spirits) drowned it out. I saw the “missed call” note, called back and left a message, but got no response.
The event closed at 3:00 p.m. today, so I rushed home to pick up my lawnmower from the shop, where it’s been for a day or so, and do the mowing that’s so desperately needed on my lawn. But wait! Can’t do anything loud until after 5:00, the time when the window for my return call closes. So I waited, and in the interval it rained on the grass. Ah well. Let it be written in the Great Book—I tried.
Probably no blogging from me tomorrow, as the Festival runs to 10:00 p.m.
As Seen Through the Window
Mary T. Lewis writes, “At its most profound, and especially in [German painter Caspar David] Friedrich’s work, the motif of a view through an open window celebrated the utter subjectivity of the painter’s vision at the very threshold that divided his world and the realm of art from nature.” There’s an exhibit of Friedrich and his contemporaries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The articles has some nice pictures for those of us who aren’t planning to make it over to New York this year.
Prester John, by John Buchan
I remember there was a copy of Prester John
John Buchan was one of the inventors of the modern thriller novel, elevating the genre from the level of earlier (and excellent in their own way) writers like H. Rider Haggard to new realism, seriousness, and economy of language. His most famous work is The 39 Steps, adapted out of all recognition by Alfred Hitchcock, but he wrote other excellent novels. I’m particularly fond of the Richard Hannay books.
Prester John is not part of that series. It will never be widely popular again because, fine as it is purely as a story, it strongly promotes attitudes toward race which are (rightly) offensive to the modern mind. Continue reading Prester John, by John Buchan
Library Boycott of HarperCollins
There’s a movement among librarians and what I believe are to be called library advocates to boycott HarperCollins e-books because the publisher has stated it plans to release new e-books that will have distribution limitations. For Overdrive and other library e-readers, HarperCollins intends to publish new works that will permit only 26 check outs before expiring. They haven’t done it yet, but they still intend to.
Publishers Macmillan and Simon & Schuster don’t publish ebooks for libraries at all, but no boycott has been organized for them that I know of.
One librarian said, “Consumer market eBook vendors like Barnes & Noble and Amazon don’t let publishers get away with the amount of nonsense that we get stuck with through library eBook vendors. I fault the publishers for not realizing what a huge mistake they are making by not realizing that new formats are opportunities…”
In other library news, at least six Alabama libraries were severely damaged in the tornado storm we had last week. Three of them may be completely destroyed. Several more libraries are in badly damaged areas of the state, but no word has come from them yet.
A local history library just south of where I live took a good bit of damage. “Our genealogy and local history material was boxed up and stored at the temporary location,” the Dade County librarian said. That location lost some of its roof. The materials inside were soaked.
Open Season, by C. J. Box
I picked up Open Season
Joe Pickett, the hero, is a game warden in Wyoming. It’s what he’s always dreamed of doing, but things aren’t going smoothly. The pay is low and he has a wife and two daughters to support (another child on the way). On top of that, he makes a couple “bonehead moves” early on, like ticketing the governor for fishing without a license and (this is how the story starts) allowing a poacher to take his revolver away from him.
Still, he believes he’s getting the hang of things when the same poacher who took his gun away shows up one morning, shot dead on Joe’s wood pile. The only clue to his murder is a cooler containing the scat of unknown animals. Then two other “outfitters” are found murdered in a mountain camp, and Joe and two other officers get into a gun fight with the presumed killer. Continue reading Open Season, by C. J. Box
Bin-Ladenfreud
I’m going to try to tone down the exultation. After all, a human being has died, one who was loved by God and might have found salvation. One who might have done much good if he’d turned his heart and considerable gifts to Jesus Christ, rather than to a doctrine of bloodthirsty deception.
Nope, can’t do it.
This was not some Pakistani peasant who’d never been out of the mountains. This was a sophisticated man, born to wealth, who’d spent time in the West and surely had the opportunity to hear the gospel. He was not interested in grace. He chose a form of Islam which hails the murder of innocents and considers women and children the perfect body armor (a woman was used as a human shield in the final firefight. I understand she was one of Bin Laden’s wives, but whether he or someone else tried to hide behind her I haven’t been able to determine). In his own words, he loved death better than life. He was a man without pity, who joyfully slaughtered thousands of my countrymen.
As a Christian, I’m gospel-centric and forgiveness-oriented. But I think we sometimes forget that justice is also a part of God’s nature. One of the chief consequences of the Fall (and a chief complaint of atheists and agnostics in their attacks on religion) is that the world is not just. God has postponed final judgment, leaving such justice as we can scrape together in this world in the hands of fallible human beings. In a situation like this, I think it’s permissible to rejoice a little bit when we see some partial justice done, especially when it’s visited on an individual who knowingly embraced evil.
There’s a troubling and intriguing passage in 1 John—Chapter 5:16:
If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying he should pray about that.
I don’t claim to understand what that verse means. But I think it provides adequate grounds for me to conclude (I could be wrong) that some people have gone so far in evil that the only thing that can be done with them is put them out of the world.
And if that putting out makes the world a safer place, and gives closure to the families and friends of victims, I feel good about that.
That’s my opinion. You may disagree.