Yesterday, 150 years ago, John Brown was hanged. He took justice in his own hands and killed several people during the 1850s in an attempt to end slavery in America. Obit magazine has a report. “Even though devotees flocked for decades to his grave as if it were the shrine of a saint,” St. John Barned-Smith writes, “the dispassionate massacre of people is the work of a bloodthirsty gangster, not a noble redeemer.”

Tom Naughton goes to a doctor who trained with climate researchers on how to conduct medicine. “Man-made body enlarging. . . . If this keeps up, you’ll weigh 650 pounds by the year 2030. It’s a looming disaster.”

“The environment should compete with religion as the only compelling, value-based narrative available to humanity,” claims a paper on the United Nations Environmental Program and its need to be at the center of political and economic decisions at the U.N. and around the world. Reported in a Fox News exclusive, the author of the paper, Mark Halle believes:

there are signs that the hugely ambitious role he and his fellow-thinkers sketched for UNEP as religion’s main competitor are “beginning to happen.” Halle pointed to UNEP’s espousal this year of a so-called Green Economy Initiative, a proposal to radically redesign the global economy and transfer trillions of dollars in investment to the world’s poorest developing countries, but one that is couched in terms of providing new green jobs, an end to old, unfair carbon-based energy subsidies, and greater global fairness and opportunity. Halle called the development “quite exciting.”

I’m sure the U.N. will do its best to keep all of that money out of corrupt hands in various African governments, just like they did with the Iraq Oil for Food program.

It was a good Thanksgiving break. In spite of my fears, I got the house (adequately) cleaned, and the turkey (more than adequately) roasted by the time the family showed up. As always we were crowded but cheerful, and everybody seemed to have a good time.

We gathered on Saturday, and by Sunday the cold I’d been flirting with ravished me entire, and I spent the day in bed with it. And a book, which I’ll be reviewing shortly.

The interview with the Christian Authors Show, which I mentioned in an earlier posting, has finally appeared on their schedule. It will be the featured interview on Dec. 9 and 10, and selectable after that. (Unfortunately, I can’t link to the section I’m in. You have to select “The Christian Authors Show” from the menu.)

In case nobody’s mentioned it to you, Christmas is coming. West Oversea is the perfect gift for every person on your list! Even if they don’t read books, the guilt your gift will engender will be salutary for their characters. And it’s the one gift you know they won’t exchange—because we don’t do returns.

In fact, you should buy two copies for everybody. It will make Christmas truly magical.

For me and my publisher, anyway.

There’s an ordering link on the sidebar.