Religion

Organizations: One bad, one going bad

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Doktor Luther’s Twitter Feed directs us to this item from the London Daily Mail, featuring recently published color photographs from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party “Christmas” celebration in 1941.

Details not included in the article’s photos, but very important, are noted in the accompanying article:

But the Nazi Christmas was far from traditional.

Hitler believed religion had no place in his 1,000-year Reich, so he replaced the Christian figure of Saint Nicholas with the Norse god Odin and urged Germans to celebrate the season as a holiday of the ‘winter solstice’, rather than Christmas.

Out of sight at the top of the tree behind Hitler was a swastika instead of an angel, and many of the baubles carried runic symbols and iron cross motifs. The remarkable pictures were captured by Hugo Jaeger, one of the Fuhrer’s personal photographers.

No, Nazism was not a Christian movement. No matter what Bill Maher tells you.

Also, another fine piece at the American Spectator by my friend Hal G. P. Colebatch, about the British YWCA’s recent decision to drop the organization’s historical name (with it’s icky C, standing for Christian), and to change its name to Platform 51:

In a further maneuver in the one-way war against British traditions and values, what was known for 156 years as the Young Women’s Christian Association has dropped the word “Christian,” along with the rest of its title, changing its name to Platform 51. Continue reading Organizations: One bad, one going bad →

Fiction, Reviews

Night of Thunder, by Stephen Hunter

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Night of Thunder

I’d fallen behind in my Stephen Hunter reading the last year or so. I get most of my books from a used book store, and they never seem to have any Hunter in stock. But I recently got a chance to order his two most recent paperbacks, and Night of Thunder is the first in line.

Night of Thunder is about NASCAR, the races, the business, and the culture. It exhibits many of the qualities of NASCAR itself—lots of action, lots of color, plenty of thrills, and very little substance. In other words, Night of Thunder is an entertainment, the most purely cotton candy, Coors-in-a-cooler, hoo-rah spectacle of any of Hunter’s novels. That sounds like a put-down, but it all depends on what you’re looking for. Nobody delivers more entertainment per consumer dollar than Stephen Hunter, and you’ll have fun with this book. But I don’t think you’ll remember it long. Continue reading Night of Thunder, by Stephen Hunter →

Non-fiction

Eternal Snow

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“THE WORLD of ice and of eternal snow, as unfolded to us on the summits of the neighbouring Alpine chain, so stern, so solitary, so dangerous, it may be, has yet its own peculiar charm. Not only does it enchain the attention of the natural philosopher, who finds in it the most wonderful disclosures as to the present and past history of the globe, but every summer it entices thousands of travellers of all conditions, who find there mental and bodily recreation. While some content themselves with admiring from afar the dazzling adornment which the pure, luminous masses of snowy peaks, interposed between the deeper blue of the sky and the succulent green of the meadows, lend to the landscape, others more boldly penetrate into the strange world, willingly subjecting themselves to the most extreme degrees of exertion and danger, if only they may fill themselves with the aspect of its sublimity.” — Hermann von Helmholtz, from his lecture on ice and glaciers

Authors

"Animal Hour" Film Deal

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Andrew Klavan has news of a agreement with Arilu Inc and Avida Entertainment Inc. to take the novel Animal Hour to the theaters. Klavan has a screenplay adaptation already. The deal gives these two companies one year to find the funds and talent for a movie.

Uncategorized

Carpin' about my generation

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Another snow-blowing night. Again we had that particular quality of snow, not wet but prone to sit in a lump in the chute anyway, rather than blowing out as it ought. It’s a heavy snow, leaden in quality. Or else something’s wrong with my snow blower. But it works fine when the chute’s clear, which lasts for the time it takes to clear the distance of about a foot, before I have to stop and clear it out again. With a stick. This is the first point in the Snow Blower’s Catechism—Thou Shalt Not Clear a Jam With Thy Hand. That way amputation lies.

We don’t actually have all that much snow yet, and there’s more scheduled for tonight and tomorrow. But I have a matter of family business to attend to tomorrow, and I’m not sure how long that’ll take. Which also means there may or may not be a blog post from me tomorrow.

Ori Pomerantz directed me to this excellent essay, Slouching Toward Geezerhood, from Bruce Thornton at RightNetwork. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the blunt truths of the universal tragedy that is the Baby Boomer Generation better expressed.

The most obvious feature of the Boomers is their refusal to grow up. The ever-extending length of adolescence, a confection of modernity, partly accounts for this. Post-war affluence made it affordable to prolong further this historically novel time of life between childhood and adulthood. Consumerism took advantage of the new market and the greater surplus wealth to elevate in social importance the whims and desires of a group flush with disposable income. The result was the most pampered, obsessed over, and indulged generation in American history. Why wouldn’t they want to prolong this privileged position as long as possible?

There’s much more, but I particularly like that thought. I’ve believed for some time that the whole phenomenon of the Teenager was a cosmically successful marketing ploy, designed to squeeze mountains of cash out of kids with unprecedented amounts the stuff to spend. Catch ’em while they still have no impulse control, and they’re yours forever. And if the moral fiber of the nation is goes from six-ply to two-ply, hey, that’s business.

A startlingly anti-capitalist sentiment from a conservative, I know. But capitalism isn’t a pure good any more than government is. Balance is the key, and has been part of the American genius… up till now.

Read it all.

It will not cheer you up.

Publishing

Cruciform Press

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“What would a book-publishing company for gospel-centered Christians look like if it began with the realities of 21st century technology?” Look no further. This is a new publisher formed by Kevin Meath, Bob Bevington, and Tim Challies over the passed year. My cousin, Jimmy Davis, has a book roughly on the same subject as his blog coming out the first of April.

Writing

Don Miller on The Church's Voice in Your Head

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Relief Journal links to questions asked by author Don Miller on how people in church affect your creativity. It may be helpful to have specific people, not just “the church,” critiquing our work, but Miller still makes fair points.

The Press

When Is a Lie Actually Libel?

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Glenn Reynolds talks about the words flying around from those wanting to accuse Gov. Palin and the Tea Part Movement of inciting the violence of a young man who has reportedly been obsessed with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords for the last three years.

To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

Ed Morrissey quotes diverse sources on this topic, noting how many people want to restrict freedom of speech to their own ideological supporters. (via Books, Inq)

Fiction, Publishing

Altering Old Stories to Suit the Modern

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More on altering old texts to suit modern sensibilities:

Efforts to sanitize classic literature have a long, undistinguished history. Everything from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” to Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have been challenged or have suffered at the hands of uptight editors. There have even been purified versions of the Bible (all that sex and violence!). Sometimes the urge to expurgate (if not outright ban) comes from the right, evangelicals and conservatives, worried about blasphemy, profane language and sexual innuendo. Fundamentalist groups, for instance, have tried to have dictionaries banned because of definitions offered for words like hot, tail, ball, and nuts.

Makes one want to use language, if one were wont to do so.