Frank Wilson describes The Da Vinci Code‘s reception as I have always understood it.
We’re Watching What You Say So You Won’t Have To
In Britain, you will no longer be “blackballed,” encounter a “black day,” or find anyone’s “right-hand man.” Those words and phrases have been deemed offensive and banned from use by public servants. If you travel to that still beautiful country, get everything in writing because you will not find a “gentleman’s agreement” anywhere. From the article:
Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider children’s spy books, said: “A great deal of our modern language is based on traditions which have now gone but it would be silly — and extremely inconvenient — to replace them all. A ‘white collar worker’, for example, probably doesn’t wear one. An ‘able seaman’, under new regulations, could well be neither. ‘Spanish practices’ can happen all over Europe. We know what these phrases mean and we can find out from where they were derived. Banning them is just unnecessary.”
Unnecessary? Come, come. We all know that when one corrects one’s speech, one corrects one’s heart. If you look good on the outside, you will be good on the inside. Whitewash the sepulcre without, and it is cleansed within. We all know this, so of course it’s necessary.
Context Is King
There’s a Train A-Coming
Update: The first video I posted was removed by the YouTube user.
A Student in Thousand Dollar Bills
Earlier this week, James Lileks posted the cover of a 1941 copy of Reader’s Digest magazine (which just went into bankruptcy reorganization. I could go on an on about the decline of that publication, but that’s a story for another day). Continue reading A Student in Thousand Dollar Bills
Lock It Away
More news in time for Banned Books Week: The Brooklyn Public Library has a big safe for books which are “not for the public.”
It’s probably nothing, but boy, that sure looks like four horsemen…
One of the classic scenes of the Icelandic sagas comes from Njal’s Saga, in its description of the deliberations of the Icelandic Althing (national assembly) over the issue of converting to Christianity, about the year 1000 A.D.
As the debate raged, news came that a volcano had erupted, and the lava was threatening one of the leaders’ farms. The heathens in the assembly immediately pounced on this as evidence that the old gods were angry.
At that point Snorri the Chieftain (who happens to be a character in my novel West Oversea) stepped up and asked, “Then who were the gods angry at when this lava around us flowed?” He was referring to the rugged Icelandic landscape, which is all formed of cooled lava. The argument was dropped, and eventually the Icelanders agreed to be baptized (thus becoming, I’m told, the only nation in history to adopt Christianity through legislative action).
I tend to agree with Snorri (though he’s hardly my favorite saga character). I won’t go so far as to say that signs never come in our day, but I’m leery of them. Whenever I’ve thought I’ve seen a sign in my own life, it’s turned out to be an embarrassment. My church body believes that, in our time, those who have the Scriptures don’t need any further input on divine matters.
And yet, sometimes… Continue reading It’s probably nothing, but boy, that sure looks like four horsemen…
Pardon Me, Your Pants Are on Fire
Robert Feldman from the University of Massachusetts talks about his research into our patterns of bearing false witness. In short, we lie a lot.
“We are not very good at detecting deception in other people,” Feldman says. “When we are trying to detect honesty, we look at the wrong kinds of nonverbal behaviors, and we misinterpret them.”
On this topic, some researchers think lying is mentally harder than telling the truth, so asking suspect to do something specific while recounting their story could help separate the liars from the honest. Of course, some people can’t handle the truth and make themselves look bad.
In related news from our How Things Have Changed Department, Time magazine has an old article on the lies presidents have told us.
In 1960, when the Russians shot down Gary Powers’ U2 spy plane, it was the Secretary of State, not President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who claimed a weather-research plane had gone off course. “So intense was the desire to not have the President lie,” says presidential historian Michael Beschloss, “to not break the bond of trust with the American people, it was left to others. Eisenhower never spoke an untruth.” Of course, Ike was never the focus of an investigation by a grand jury, either.
Read This Book
Russell Moore on Hunter Baker’s The End of Secularism, also known as “The Sky Has Fallen: What I Learned While Dating Bertrand Russell.”
“Better is One Day in Your Courts”
Mike Adams over at Townhall.com (sorry for the pop-up rich environment) posts what seems to me a splendid piece today. It’s in the form of an address to his students at UNC-Wilmington, which he plans to give at the start of the school year. In it he throws down a gauntlet, declaring that he plans to violate the school’s speech code, and see how the administration defends the suppression of ideas in an academic setting.
By the time these three speakers are finished, at least one of you will have filed a formal complaint claiming I have created a “hostile environment.” You’ll be relying, of course, on one of our university’s illegal speech codes.
I will respond by doing something that may surprise you: I will use the same illegal speech code to claim that the speech in your complaint is hate speech, which creates a “hostile environment” for people of faith.