New HBO competitor to launch online before broadcasting via cable or satellite. Studio 3 Networks is the effort of three major movie studios to create “an entirely new category of entertainment service for consumers that is unlike anything that currently exists.” The site will be called “epix” and allow Netizens to watch full length recent and classic movies from these studios as well as see “directors’ script notes, outtakes, auditions and other extras like trivia and games.”
The Title Says It All
At first glance, I thought this book by Robert Kaiser was about the “stimulus” bill in congress, but I see it’s about the election process. The title and cover say it all.
Chattanooga Libraries Need Work
Consultants were hired; a report submitted. Apparently, the Chattanooga-Hamilton County library system needs work. The Times-Free Press reports:
The Chattanooga libraries spend about $2.04 per capita on materials, almost $2 less than most other libraries in the benchmark group. The money the library does spend is overwhelmingly used for books and periodicals for adults — 88.5 percent — which the consultants called a poor allocation of resources because almost 35 percent of materials checked out are for children and teens.
Many materials in the library are rarely used, such as federal documents, which are largely available online but take up nearly an entire floor of the downtown library, the consultants said.
At one library branch, Ms. Kent said she found a college guide from 1998, something that should have been discarded years ago.
“They kept it because they didn’t have the money to replace it and figured something was better than nothing,” she said. “There are a lot of instances when nothing is better than something.”
The report says visits to the library are down, but an earlier article claimed they were up, in part due to job seekers using the Internet. Note this beautiful sentence from the library director (I believe this was spoken, not written, so maybe the verbage is understandable). “Our library circulation has gone up at 4 days a week at the branches over what it was when it was 5 days a week in the branches and the book budget is lower than it was in 1985.”
Honestly, I don’t know what to think about this. I know the system needs improvements, but I don’t like hearing complaints about ugly public buildings. I fear it means raising taxes, and I’m fairly suspicious of that at the moment. I want to hear wisdom and restraint from my government leaders at every level. If we need fund-raisers for the library, great.
Starving or Something Like It
Sherry reviews Suzanne Collins latest book, The Hunger Games. “The Hunger Games are a yearly event in Panem in which two selected participants, a boy and a girl, from each of 12 districts, are forced to fight to the death in a prepared, and hostile, environment. No one gets voted off this ‘island,’ however, and only one person can win, the last man or woman left alive.”
Pray Against the Tide of Evil in Africa
Here’s a note from a missionary I know. It’s a few days old, but for those of us who know nothing about life in parts of Africa, it’s revealing.
On Saturday, a contact told my friend “that the Lord’s Resistance Army (a rebel group from Uganda that has been terrorizing northern Congo and the Central African Republic (CAR) throughout the past year) are advancing on Assa, a mission station near the CAR border, and moving toward Zemio. There is a large church, a Bible School, a small hospital, and a town that used to have around 8,000 people. People are beginning to flee in panic.
“A general field conference was to begin Monday at Zemio. People usually come in the thousands to attend these conferences. They are trying to get word out to the distant outlying areas to warn them not to come. Please pray for God’s protection for a virtually defenseless people. The LRA are heavily armed and known for their atrocities and brutality. They burn houses, steal the few possessions and food owned by a poverty-stricken people, rape, kill, and capture children and young people for their army.”
If you’ve been watching 24, I believe this year’s storyline uses an African warlord who kidnaps young boys for his army, like this one from Uganda. May the Lord pour out his rage against the LAR and save many of those abused kids and the innocent people they are attacking.
Meditation on fame
Years ago, I was walking across the campus of Augsburg College in Minneapolis with my roommate. We were discussing our personal weaknesses. My roommate confessed that he coveted wealth. I replied that my inordinate lust was for fame.
I have one autograph (Sissel’s), but I didn’t ask for it. My Viking friends procured it for me (no doubt by means best left to the imagination). I’ve always had an arrogant idea that I’m the kind of person who gives autographs, not one who asks for them.
This meditation on fame was sparked by this piece by James Lileks today, in which he talked about old local radio personalities (WCCO Radio used to be the commonly accepted broadcast public square of southern Minnesota. Nowadays, not so much), in which he mentioned Cedric Adams. Adams is almost forgotten today, even here, but in his day he was both the most popular columnist and the most popular radio personality in the Twin Cities. Airline pilots said they could always tell when his show was done, if they were flying over the metropolitan area, because all the house lights went out at once. Continue reading Meditation on fame
Updike
Author John Updike, 76, has passed away. I remember a college friend reading the Run, Rabbit, Run and having conflict with himself over whether to recommend it to any of us. He liked so much but hated so much of it that he could only talk about it in a tongue-tied fashion. Updike is certainly an important author, but I wonder if his work exemplifies one of the major problem with modern literature. He wrote realistically and too much about sex.
But I should stop talking about this. Bloomberg has the facts.
“New Consumer-oriented Book Event”
The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association is hosting a new book convention, the Christian Book Expo Dallas 2009. The EPCA states, “This event, a first for ECPA and the first Christian book fair of its type, will bring together publishers, authors and consumers. ECPA is holding this event to reach a critical demographic – anybody making or influencing book buying decisions.”
I suppose that could be more broadly defined–can’t think of how at the moment. The event is affordable ($50 for three days) and open to the public.
The ECPA president says, “We are trying to build future retail sales. We believe these influential Christians will experience these authors and their message and take that message back to their friends and church families and in turn refer them to their local retailer. Our goal is for awareness and exposure.”
Poe: Boston, Baltimore, or Philadelphia
On January 19, the day before our government stepped up the pace on taking away the earnings of the disfavored, Edgar Allan Poe was born–200 years early. Today, three cities are fighting over his legacy. “For a poet and short-story writer devoted to elegy and horror, a man whose great subject was death, such posthumous popularity is rich in irony,” writes Julia Klein for Obit Magazine.
Let us quote Poe’s own words to apply to this situation: “… it may well be supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum.”
Longfellow on Milton
I pace the sounding sea-beach and behold
How the voluminous billows roll and run,
Upheaving and subsiding, while the sun
Shines through their sheeted emerald far unrolled,
And the ninth wave, slow gathering fold by fold
All its loose-flowing garments into one,
Plunges upon the shore, and floods the dun
Pale reach of sands, and changes them to gold.
So in majestic cadence rise and fall
The mighty undulations of thy song,
O sightless bard, England’s Maeonides!
And ever and anon, high over all
Uplifted, a ninth wave superb and strong,
Floods all the soul with its melodious seas.
(BTW, Maeonides is a reference or name for Homer, who is thought to have been blind, so here Longfellow is naming John Milton an English bard like Homer.)