Kudos to a great new band based in Chattanooga, Concerning Lions. This isn’t a great video, but the song is cool and, I believe, will be in an upcoming album. I wish I could point you to the lyric, but if you’re in a place where you can crank the volume, then you’ll be able to hear the words yourself, which is, like, better.
Concerning Lions – Young Curmudgeon – TBP from Concerning Lions on Vimeo.
I’d been looking for the late Stephen J. Cannell’s The Viking Funeral: A Shane Scully Novel
Having finally found it, I have to confess to a little disappointment. It’s a diverting actioner, and moving in places, but it’s by far the darkest book of the series. I wasn’t prepared for the grimness of the thing.
In this book, our hero Shane Scully spots an old friend driving on the freeway, a friend who—he had every reason to believe—had committed suicide some time before. The friend’s response to catching his eye confirms the identification. His investigation of the matter leads Scully into very deep corruption in the police and sheriff’s departments, and to some terrible moments of betrayal, given and received. Scully spends a good portion of the book grieving his own killing of someone very important in his life.
It’s kind of depressing.
It gets better after a while, but the fun level in this one is pretty low, despite Cannell’s penchant for injecting cinematic violence, explosions, and automatic weapons fire at every opportunity. Worth reading, but not as light as one might hope. Cautions, as usual, for language, violence, and adult subject matter.
Jonathan Acuff, author of Stuff Christians Like
Maybe not.
Matthew Spalding of The Heritage Foundation offers a free chapter of his book, We Still Hold These Truths, which is filled with great quotes from our nation’s founding leaders. There’s a 20 minute video to promote the ideas of the book.
Let me promote a book you may not see many places. Shared Hope International has published the story of their founder, Linda Smith. From Congress to the Brothel describes Linda’s paradigm-shifting journey to a Mumbai brothel district.
Joseph C. Phillips talks about the failure of public schools and the need to ask hard questions. He points to last years scores on student performance.
These are not students failing because they do not have access to the internet or don’t have Olympic sized swimming pools. The sad fact is that the report demonstrates that middle-class black boys are scoring about as well as poor white boys. These are students who are not proficient in the basics of math and English.
With education experts always calling for more money, is it evident at last that the experts either don’t know how to educate children or more likely have conflicting goals which practically hinder education?
Our friend Loren Eaton, of the I Saw Lightning Fall blog, sent me this link from Tor.com, an article by Ryan Britt on the new BBC Sherlock series (which you may recall I liked), linking it to Science Fiction.
The notion of Sherlock being a sort of cerebral superhero came up a lot. He does seem a lot like Mr. Spock or The Doctor when viewed through a certain lens. However, there might be something even more alien about Holmes than Data, Spock, or The Doctor put together. Doctor Who show-runner and co-creator of Sherlock, Stephen Moffat explains in this brief interview below.
First Thoughts, the First Things blog, links to this article on a remarkable educational phenomenon going on in Kurdish Iraq. In a piece called “Something Terrible and Wonderful,” Joseph Knippenberg tells of a new university, where westerners teach in the old western liberal tradition.
From what I can tell (having visited the institution some months ago), the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani is unique in Iraq, where higher education emphasizes rote learning, large lectures, and high-stakes testing. By contrast, at AUIS, classes are small and discussion-oriented. The students understand and appreciate the difference, as this press release about auditions for a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth seems to indicate:
I don’t even like poetry,” said Khende Asaad, an International Studies major from Erbil. “But when I hear Shakespeare, I feel like this big door is opening, and something terrible and wonderful is about to happen.”
One of our most popular posts, not by the comments it drew but by the traffic it has attracted over the years, is this story from September 21, 2006 about a microwave and a turkey. It’s linked from an urban legend page which talks about a pregnant turkey prank, which may or may not have happened despite being believable (but that page has been removed in the ever-changing Internet).
If you haven’t read either story, here’s your chance to catch up.
Bird on Thinklings points to a list of 10 plot holes in sci-fi or imaginative movies, commenting on the Star Trek and Star Wars holes. Shrode makes note of two, pretty serious Bourne Identity problems. I haven’t seen those movies, so I don’t know how the red bad error would hit me. About Star Wars though, I love this list of design flaws in Star Wars technology. John Scalzi writes, among other things:
Stormtrooper Uniforms: They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view (“I can’t see a thing in this helmet!” — Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don’t just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops.
Scalzi also has a Star Trek critique list: I love it.
But looping back to that plot holes article, writer Matt Blum complains about The Princess Bride, asking “how does Fezzik know Rugen is the six-fingered man?” He says, Fezzik isn’t observant enough to notice Rugen and report on it later, but I suggest the fact that Inigo didn’t know Rugen had six-fingers doesn’t mean that wasn’t a generally known fact. Neither he nor Fezzik dealt with Rugen or his people for their adult lives, I gather, so they didn’t know, but surely everyone around Rugen knew, everyone in the castle, and many in the villages. Some of these people are the type who talk about other people’s details (you know the type), and when Fezzik took up with the Brute Squad, he was in the company of people who knew and talked and I suppose Rugen himself.
This list has spoilers, btw, but you might have figured that out already.
Speaking of plot holes, here’s a gratuitous photo of a gorgeous Rita Hayworth, who is marketing war bonds in 1942.
The Wall Street Journal has some emails from Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and following popular crime novels. The author writes of his intention to work around the usual formalities of crime novels. Main characters are not from typical crime novel stock, and he didn’t want his serial killer offing anonymous people, so he spend time introducing minor characters. In real life, no one is completely anonymous. He also states:
A rule of thumb has been never to romanticize crime and criminals, nor to stereotype victims of crime. I base my serial murderer in book I on a composite of three authentic cases. Everything described in the book can be found in actual police investigations.
The description of the rape of Lisbeth Salander is based on an incident that actually took place in the Östermalm district of Stockholm three years ago. And so on.
Lars reviewed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo here, and the following book, The Girl Who Played With Fire in this post.
For most of my life, I’ve been aware of a particular conflict (there are many, of course) between liberal and conservative Christians. I’m going to try to shed some light on this particular difference of opinion.
Which means, of course, that I’ll just make people mad. But I persist.
The disagreement, I think, springs from a misunderstanding of the Golden Rule.
Liberal Christians (I believe) tend to think the Golden Rule says something it doesn’t actually say. They think it says, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—and they will treat you the same way.”
But the text doesn’t actually say that. What it says (I’m quoting the NIV here, despite my recent criticism of that translation, because we’re kind of chained to it on this site, through our associated Bible Search app) is, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) Continue reading An alloyed golden rule
Nevets has a comparison between real and fictional character motivations.