Religion

Rise up and walk. And say thank you.

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Thanksgiving tomorrow. I doubt I’ll post anything that day, as I’ll have family prowling the place like roaring lions, seeking what they may devour. Tomorrow morning comes my annual D-Day, when I face the challenge of roasting a turkey. I’ve done this four straight years now with unbroken success, but I still feel incompetent.

What am I thankful for? There’s a question to make me guilty. “A pack o’ blessings lie on my head,” to paraphrase Romeo and Juliet, and yet I spend most of my life (as you may have noticed) bemoaning the things (some of them quite important, you have to admit) that I’ve missed out on.

But I’ll tell you one thing I’m thankful for. It’s this.

Tip: Conservative Grapevine.

I love this stuff. A walking wheelchair—a way for paraplegics to enjoy a more normal life. A way to regenerate damaged spinal tissue would be better, of course, but I think we’ll have that too, before long. (And I’d bet you money it will be through a method that doesn’t involve embryonic stem cells.)

I think things like this are part of (note I said, “part of”) the answer to the question of theodicy—“If God is good, why is there so much suffering in the world?” If you’re wondering why God isn’t doing anything about suffering, I say He’s doing this. He’s working through people to overcome suffering and evil, which is a more glorious thing than starting out with perfection.

That leaves lots of questions, of course. Plenty of undeserved suffering goes unrelieved in this world. I don’t have the answer to the whole question. I’m just saying this seems to me a hint, a relevant fact.

And I would note (because I can’t help myself) that this happened in Israel, a country within the western tradition. Obfuscate all you like, but the great non-western civilizations never came up with the kind of science that does this sort of thing. The machines may be manufactured in Japan or China, but left to nothing but Shintoism or Taoism, those cultures would have gone on until the heat death of the universe without developing the scientific method and modern medicine. Because they don’t believe in a God who made a real world out of nothing, as Christians and Jews do. That doctrine made the examination of nature a praiseworthy thing, rather than blasphemy. It was Christians, who believe that physical matter was made noble in the Incarnation, who figured out thoracic surgery and penicillin.

And for that I’m thankful.

Bookselling, Non-fiction, Publishing

John Thompson of Merchants of Culture

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Cambridge University professor John Thompson talks about the problems with the publishing industry in this interview with The Brooklyn Rail. He is the author of the book

“The real trouble for the publishing industry, in my view,” Thompson says, “has more to do with the gradual unfolding of this economic transformation that led to this structure of publishing, where we now have five large corporate groups and a small number of retail chains dominating the industry.” He says the large corporations must maintain profitability, and 95% of their revenue is still from printed book sales. When profit margins stretch thin, they must eliminate people or other overhead costs to keep the large companies in the black. Everyone in the process must demonstrate growth for the corporation or risk being let go, and if they understand that to mean selling more books, despite the thousands they currently sell, then they try to crank out more books. Naturally, an environment like this produced the desire for the bestseller, those few great selling books which bring in the dough and relieve the pressure to sell other books, making one’s sales load more manageable.

Other factors putting publishing in its current bind include the rise of agents and the changes in book retailing. Will the whole thing collapse soon? Thompson doesn’t think so. Despite all of the industry changes likely to come, he states, “books are a deeply embedded part of Western culture, indeed of other cultures, too, and I don’t think that is likely to change quickly.”

Publishing

Thanks, But This Isn't for Us

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The post intended for this space was thoughtful, well-written though a little long-winded, and it would have made beautiful reading for thousands of BwB readers, however it simply was not the tenor of post we wish to distribute here. We wish the writer all the best success with other blogs for that post. Instead for this space, the self-congratulatory editors of BwB offer our readers a link to this article in the Independent of Ireland on famous statements made when rejecting manuscripts which later made bestselling books, e.g. J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter novel, which was rejected by nine publishers before one man’s eight-year-old daughter said it was so much better than anything else.

A commenter on Twitter pointed to this article, saying it was the reason agents send out bland, boilerplate rejection letters. They fear saying “guitar groups are on the way out” to a band like The Beatles.

On the subject of rejections, Molly-Ann Leikin has a short list of them here.

William Faulkner’s novel, Sanctuary, was tossed back in his face with the editor’s horrified remark, “Good God, I can’t publish this. We’d both be in jail.” It was eventually published, of course, and nobody ended up behind bars.

Music

Concerning Lions

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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.

Fiction, Reviews

The Viking Funeral, by Stephen J. Cannell

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I’d been looking for the late Stephen J. Cannell’s The Viking Funeral: A Shane Scully Novel for some time, just because of its title. I’ve enjoyed the other books in the Shane Scully series, and had kept my eye out for it, but the second-hand bookstore where I get most of my books never seemed to have it in.

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.

Non-fiction, Publishing

Free Chapters of New Books

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Jonathan Acuff, author of Stuff Christians Like, is in the middle of 12 Days of Fantasticalness to promote his new book, Gazelles, Baby Steps And 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me About Debt. He’s allowing us to download the first chapter for free. Such generosity is rarely seen, wouldn’t you agree?

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.

Uncategorized

What's Wrong With the Public Schools?

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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?

Uncategorized

Irregular, terrible, and wonderful

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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.”

Uncategorized

Lars' Popular Thanksgiving Post

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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.

Fiction

Movie Problems and Plot Holes

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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.
Movie star Rita Hayworth sacrificed her bumpers

Book Reviews, Creative Culture