Maybe the crew of the Enterprise did travel back in time. Charles Q. Choi of LiveScience writes, “New handheld medical scanners coupled with regular cell phones resemble ‘Star Trek’ tricorders and could see what ails you with a push of a button.”
New Law in Oregon Against Distributing Sexual Material
Since January 1 in Oregon, giving sexually explicit material to anyone under 13 or material which intends to arouse the reader to anyone under 18 is a criminal act. The ACLU of Oregon and a group of bookseller and advocacies are suing to get it stopped. They say the law is too broadly written and could be abused by “overzealous police and prosecutors.”
Rep. Andy Olson (R-Albany), said, “This law was carefully written to respect Oregonians’ First Amendment rights. It is clearly targeted at individuals who use pornography to lure and harm Oregon’s kids. No adult and no bookstore should be in the business of providing kids with the kind of content that is specifically listed in this law.”
Priorities
The best quote of the day comes from Dirty Harry over at Libertas, in a piece on a couple new films about Che Guevera: “I can’t imagine what it must be like to hold an ideology where Wal-Mart outrages me more than the slaughter of 600 people.”
Baskin-Robbins Tonight
Get a scoop of ice cream for 31 cents tonight at Baskin-Robbins in support of The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
May 1: I took the family to the East Brainerd Baskin-Robbins last night after church. It was packed. The 5-6 people behind the counter could not stop taking orders. I heard one of them say she had never seen it that busy.
Another Way to Cheat on Exams
Here’s a story you won’t see in your local paper. A committee from a school board in Ahmedabad, India, is looking into what appears to be a full-fledged scam for passing high school final exams. Indian students can request a writer or exam-taker, if they are injured or unable to write the answers for their own exam. Naturally, the writer is supposed to put down only the answers provided by the student who should be taking the exam in the first place, and I think the policy allows academically weak students to stand as writers for other student. Presumably, the writer would not be able to help the other student. But if, say, you bribe a strong student or someone with answers to write for your son, well, if he gets a better grade, why should anyone complain? I ask you. Does the Bible say anything about taking someone else’s test in an Indian high school? No, it doesn’t, so what’s to complain about?
Telling Stories Online
Honor’s Kingdom, by Owen Parry
Honor’s Kingdom opens in the summer of 1862 in a London morgue, where a diverse group including Charles Francis Adams (son of John Quincy Adams and ambassador to the Court of St. James), his son Henry, an English Foreign Office official, a London policeman and a surgeon are gathered, along with the hero and narrator of the book, Abel Jones. Jones is a native of Wales and a veteran of the East India Company’s wars, but he’s now a major in the U.S. army and a secret agent of the American government.
He and the Adamses are there because the deceased, a Rev. Campbell (whose body was discovered in a basket of live eels), was an American. He was also (though they’re not mentioning this) another secret agent, and he had been investigating rumors that some British ship builder is building a warship for the Confederacy, in spite of the official neutrality of the government.
Ambassador Adams assigns Major Jones to find out who killed Campbell, and what it was he’d learned that got him (and two previous agents) killed.
Jones, in his methodical way, sets about an investigation which takes him from the halls of Parliament and the finest homes of West End London to the most miserable, soul-grinding slums of the city. He meets the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone, as well as a colorful variety of thieves, pimps, con men, music hall entertainers and prostitutes. Eventually his investigation extends to Glasgow, which is (amazing to tell) an even more miserable place to be poor in than London. His life is threatened by (among others) footpads, East Indian assassins and a mysterious man in a red silk mask. He chances to encounter Anthony Trollope, James McNeil Whistler, Karl Marx and William Booth along the way.
It’s jolly fun—exciting, engaging and sometimes moving. Educational, too. Continue reading Honor’s Kingdom, by Owen Parry
Screenwriter Depicts Realistic J. Austen
The screenwriter for a new British TV drama called, “Miss Austen Regrets,” wants the show to depict a realistic woman as Jane Austen. “She was lively and ferocious. Some of the comments about her neighbors make your eyes water,” writer Gwyneth Hughes said.
“The vegetable is gorgeous!”
We married off the Older Niece down in Iowa this weekend, and it was one of the better weddings I’ve attended, I think. They chose to do the whole thing low-key, low pressure.
So I had to make my own pressure.
I left too late. I should have left at 7:30 a.m. at the latest on Saturday, but I thought that if I waited till 8:00 I could drop off the package I’d promised to mail to my new publisher at the Post Office, and still have plenty of time.
Unfortunately the Post Office doesn’t open till 9:00.
So I hit the road (taking care to go around the area where they’ve closed off Highway 35 south, at Highway 62, for repair). We had snow on the ground, and a nasty west wind was shooting across my bow. Continue reading “The vegetable is gorgeous!”
New Granta
Granta, the magazine of new writing, has done something new with its website, so take a look.
Do you subscribe to any literary journals? Which ones or which ones would you subscribe to if somehow that special something made you do it–whatever that is?