Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Religion

Guinness Company Begun by Christian Businessmen

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Leaning On Barrow

“Guinness was a Christian who thought that by brewing beer he was doing God’s work,” according to author Stephen Mansfield in his book, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World. Bob Smietana reports:

The Guinness family, especially in the company’s early days, was known for the Christian faith, which had been shaped by John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Wesley encouraged his followers to work hard and to give as much money away as possible. The Guinness family took that challenge seriously, Mansfield said. They paid their workers more than other brewers. Their company offered generous benefits — often sending employees’ children to private schools, and having doctors, dentists and a masseuse on staff.

That’s Christians living out their faith in the marketplace. I love it, but I’m not going to try another Guinness for St. Patrick’s Day. I may stick with something safe, like green cookies.

Coffee, Tea, Drinks

Old Slang and Disdain for Tea

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Here’s a long list of old slang words which the Art of Manliness bloggers think are “beyond awesome,” but still not appropriate or applicable enough to include in their book. (Thanks to SB for the link.) Words like these:

Muckender or sneezer: a handkerchief

“An idle and useless person is often told that he is only fit to lead the Blind Monkeys to evacuate.”

Barking-Iron or barker: a pistol

Bunch Of fives: a fist

Earth bath: a grave

Scandal-water: tea, meaning gossip is often discussed with busybodies over tea.

Wait, I have to look this up. Google has a dictionary of slang, jargon, and cant, edited by Albert Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland, published 1890.

Scandal-water, according to this dictionary, is a derogatory word for tea devised by heavy drinkers who thought it was effeminate. It comes from the days “when it was fashionable to get drunk, when ‘drunk as a lord’ was a proverbial expression, when a man was accounted the best in a convivial company who first fell senseless from his chair by excess of liquor, and ‘a three-bottle man’ was considered a king of good fellows.” Barrère and Leland write, “the vulgar bacchanals exerted all the ingenuity they possessed to invent feebly contemptuous names for [tea], among others ‘cat-lap,’ ‘scandal broth,’ ‘water bewitched,’ ‘tattle water,’ ‘kettle-brandy.'”

Bookselling

An almost unbelievable threat to free expression

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Our friend Daniel Crandall, over at The American Culture, writes about “Libel Tourism,” the frightening strategy by which reputed terrorist supporters use the libel laws of Great Britain to censor books (both British and foreign) that report facts they don’t like.

He embeds a video which is a couple years old, but informative:

A bill called the Free Speech Protection act, Crandall reports, is now before Congress. It deserves the support of every lover of books and free expression.

Religion

Peter Hitchens, on Christianity and his brother

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From the Mail Online: Peter Hitchins describes his journey back to Christianity, and his dispute with his atheist brother Christopher, on the release of his new book, The Rage Against God.

I have, however, the more modest hope that he might one day arrive at some sort of acceptance that belief in God is not necessarily a character fault, and that religion does not poison everything.

Beyond that, I can only add that those who choose to argue in prose, even if it is very good prose, are unlikely to be receptive to a case which is most effectively couched in poetry.

Tip: Ed Veith at Cranach.

Fiction, Reviews

Evidence, by Jonathan Kellerman

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Evidence Kellerman

You’re probably tired of my reviews of paperback mysteries, especially ones by the small string of my favorite authors, among whom Jonathan Kellerman is not least. So this will be more an appreciation than a review.

In brief, Evidence is a well-crafted, compelling police procedural, in which psychologist Alex Delaware is mostly along for the ride, as his buddy Detective Milo Sturgis investigates the murder of a couple, found posed in a sexual position, in an unfinished beachside mansion. The investigation leads to a secretive, extremist environmentalist plot.

Much of my enjoyment of this book was strictly partisan and ideological. I don’t know Kellerman’s politics, but he throws conservatives some red meat. First of all, he balances the fact that Det. Sturgis is gay (the least “gay” man possible, in terms of stereotypes), by throwing in Det. Sean Binchy, an open evangelical. Sean has a small part in the book, but he’s smart, decent and hard-working.

Note to Hollywood—I accept token characters. I embrace them. I’m shamelessly gullible in this regard.



Also, the things said in this book about certain elements (certainly not the majority) of the environmentalist movement shocked me. If green terrorism is indeed as common and deadly as this story suggests, the press has a lot of covering up to answer for. The enviro-nuts in Evidence act the way pro-lifers usually act in Hollywood movies and TV shows. Which is saying, pretty darn bad.

So I had a great time with Evidence. Recommended, with the usual caveats for language and adult subject matter.

Non-fiction

Part of the History of the World

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The History of the Medieval World by Susan Wise BauerSusan Wise Bauer has a new world history book out. This is the second one, The History of the Medieval World: from the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade. Howling Frog Books has a good review, noting this is world history, not western civilization history. She writes:

Medieval history and literature is a favorite subject of mine, so it was a bit dismaying to realize how ignorant I am about nearly all of it. I particularly appreciated the chapters on Korean history, which is probably not very well-known to most people outside Korea–certainly not to me. The history of the Chinese empires and the great influence they exercised over so much of the east is fascinating. The many ever-changing kingdoms of India are terribly complex and difficult to follow, and I admire the effort that must have gone into making them comprehensible.

Many more reviews of this book are linked from a post on Dr. Bauer’s blog.

Uncategorized

The dogs in the night-time

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Two Dobermans sitting on patches of grass

“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”

“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”

“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.

(“Silver Blaze,” by Arthur Conan Doyle)

I always think of Silver Blaze when I recall one of the few actual murder mysteries I’ve ever gotten close to. I wasn’t actually all that close, but it presented one or two points of interest, as S. Holmes might have said.

Years ago, I was pretty well acquainted with a particular couple, who lived in a suburban community. They socialized quite a lot with their neighbors, most of whom they enjoyed knowing.

There was one exception.

I met the man once, I think, when I was visiting this particular couple. He wandered in through the back door, uninvited, somewhat drunk, and proceeded to monopolize the conversation for an hour or so. I remember that he made fun of the shirt I was wearing. My friends told me they put up with him for his wife’s sake. He was a self-appointed sergeant-major, the kind of man who always had to be in charge of everything, and always knew what to do better than everyone else. His wife smiled tensely, and endured.

The neighbors suspected he hit her from time to time.

And one night, he was murdered. Continue reading The dogs in the night-time →

Authors, Blogs, Socials

Pray for Michael Spencer

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I didn’t know this until just now (Thanks to Jared Wilson). Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has advanced cancer and has been told not to anticipate remission. His wife, Denise, gives some details on his blog.

She says, “Day by day I continue to see the Holy Spirit at work in him, molding him, softening him, giving him a more childlike faith than I believe he has ever known. When the moment comes, I am assured Michael will be ready. I am the one who doesn’t want to let go.”

Michael has a book coming from WaterBrook Press this September, titled Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture