“Why Short Films Don’t Work in Church”
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.
Book-ordering day, 2009, fall edition
Today was one of the great, dreaded days of my year as a bookstore manager. I finally had in hand the book orders from all (and by all I mean most) of the instructors, for texts they want their students to have this fall. So I sat down at the phone and started placing orders, relying on my efficient and elegant Microsoft Xcel-based system.
And it went pretty well. I finished all the orders, I think (got to double-check tomorrow), except for the one publisher who put me in a call queue this morning until I gave up, and then put me in a call queue this afternoon when I tried again. I left my number on voice mail.
The most harrowing order is always Zondervan (last in sequence because it starts with “Z”). They have a fully automated ordering system which depends entirely on pressing the buttons on the phone dial. I ought to love it, as it involves no actual human interaction, but I think I fear numbers even more than I fear people.
It’s an odd phenomenon I’ve noticed in the last few years, that I never seem to experience particular satisfaction anymore when I finish a major task. Even when I complete a whole novel, I’m left with the feeling Flashman had at the end of Flashman at the Charge, when he’d finally made his way over the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, having fought, lied and skulked his way through fire, blizzard and carnage, to reach a British post at last, and all the official had to say to him was, “Very good. This is a customs post, among other things. Have you anything to declare?”
The reason for the dysphoria, of course, is that I don’t try enough new things.
Oh well. I can live without particular satisfaction.
Understanding Health Care Legislation
Congress: “We all agree that the system is broken. We can’t agree on how to keep it that way.”