I can’t seem to do a direct link, but if you go to my author’s site, and scroll down to “Latest Additions and Updates,” you can download a .pdf of the map that will appear at the beginning of West Oversea.
Free Chocolate Today
Free Chocolate from Mars today and every Friday. Mars is giving away 500,000 coupons for free chocolate at realchocolate.com for those who register.
If there’s *no* God, how do you account for evil?
Novelist and neocon Roger L. Simon hasn’t started believing in God again, after a lifetime of atheism.
He’s just beginning to have some doubts.
The doubts rise, not from an experience of God, but from a confrontation with Evil. He writes of his experience at the Durban II conference:
Well, just as there are no atheists in foxholes, maybe no one is an atheist when confronted with what he finally acknowledges to be Evil. If there is Evil, there must be Good, no? And some force governing this game, something that, well, looks over it.
I know I am being irrational here, so I will stop. Being in the presence of Ahmadinejad’s evil, fleeting and haltingly put me in the presence of something else.
Tip: Gene Edward Veith at Cranach.
Flag at half mast
Publishing update: Looks like the new book will actually be released sometime around May 22.
On Monday, I replaced my desk flag.
It must have been late in 1968, my first semester at Waldorf College, Forest City, Iowa, when I bought a miniature Norwegian flag on a stand-up base for my dorm room desk. It’s been with me ever since, in several states, and in several states of being. But only recently I noticed that, in addition to being kind of limp and faded, it had actually started to show holes, produced not by any kind of friction, but just by the aging of the fabric (nylon, I think).
So I sent away to Ingebretsen’s Scandinavian Shop for a replacement. And I had to discard the old flag.
This makes me sad. Continue reading Flag at half mast
“A Defense of Quiet Loners”
From the American Spectator Online:
On the other hand, I could come up with hundreds or thousands of homicidal maniacs who were anything but quiet and who seldom kept to themselves. Jesse James was rowdy. Charlie Manson charismatic. Al Capone a celebrity. I remember reading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Of the two killers in that book, only one (Perry Smith) might be called moody or somewhat introverted. The other, Dick Hickock, was a high-living, woman-loving rambler. Few homicidal maniacs were creepier than John Wayne Gacy, and yet here is how Gacy is described by his biographer Martin Gilman Wolcott: “John Wayne Gacy was never a loner, never someone who kept a low profile and lived a secluded, quiet life.”
About time somebody said it.
If you like e-books
I should probably be more embarrassed than I am to realize that all my books from Baen have been available as e-books from the git-go, and remain available here.
You have to pay for The Year of the Warrior and Blood and Judgment. Wolf Time you can get free.
Phil, can we make this a permanent link over on the right?
(Thanks to Ori Pomerantz for bringing this to my attention.)
Odd Hours, by Dean Koontz
What could be better than a new Odd Thomas book in paperback?
I’ve said before that I consider Dean Koontz less than an ideal author in the technical sense. His word choices are sometimes poor, and he’s not always as funny as he thinks he is.
On the other hand, he continues to improve as he works. And as he’s found his voice and theme as an author, his books have become—taken as a whole—sources of joy; almost means of grace.
Technically, Koontz is a horror writer. But the average horror writer explores the mystery of evil. Koontz has taken on a much more difficult task, exploring the mystery of goodness. Anyone who’s ever tried to create a good character that is neither a prig nor a wuss understands how brilliant Koontz’s achievement has been, the creation of innumerable characters who are good without being insufferable.
Chief among these is Odd Thomas, almost his only continuing character.
Odd Hours is the fourth Odd Thomas novel, and is just as good as the others. Continue reading Odd Hours, by Dean Koontz
Wikipedia Isn’t Verified?
An Irishman punked journalists through Wikipedia, not realizing beforehand that many modern journalists don’t verify their sources. Time crunch, no doubt.
Great Online Resources and Reviews
Reformed Books: “Our goal is to honor Christ by equipping Christians in the truth by pointing you to the finest classic and contemporary resources of historical Reformed orthodoxy.”
Puritan Library: More Bible teaching than most of us could read in a lifetime.
Are Evangelical Churches Ignoring Christ?
David Nilsen reviews Michael Horton’s book, Christless Christianity:
One famous Evangelical pastor has recently made popular the phrase, “deeds, not creeds.” Evangelicals have their doctrine right, this pastor tells us, they just aren’t living it. Against such sentiments, Dr. Horton argues that many Evangelicals actually do not have their doctrine right, or at least they aren’t preaching it correctly. Evangelicals have confused the important categories of Law and Gospel, turning the Gospel message (which is supposed to be the good news of something that Christ has already done for us), into the Gospel program. If you’ll only live out the Gospel (by reading your Bible every day, joining a certain group at church, and learning how to be a Christ-like example to others), you’ll be healthy, wealthy and wise. The question to be answered is, “What would Jesus do?” rather than, “What has Jesus done?”