This is cool. I’m reading JXIIH’s novel, The Dark River, the sequel to The Traveler, and just finished a part describing free runners in London. “Ever hear of the Vast Machine?” one of the London characters asks. “It’s the computer systen that watches us with scanner programs and surveillance cameras. The Free Runners refuse to be part of the Vast Machine. We run above it all.”

Now I see an article on an actual free runner climbing walls and jumping between buildings. “Free running,” reports Brendan O’Neill, “or ‘le parkour,’ its original French name, is all about overcoming obstacles.” Sadly, these men and women give themselves to overcoming constructed obstacles when real, harder obstacles abound, but I don’t really blame them. I do the same thing in a quieter way.

First of all, a Philistine update. I think we can all agree that it’s a sad commentary on our times that so little attention gets paid to the Philistines anymore.

This item from Mirabilis reinforces, I think, my contention that the Samson story in the Book of Judges was not intended to provide a role model for us all (see my previous post about him here, which generated some controversy in Comments). Archaeologists have learned, according to this article, that the Philistines were regular consumers of pork and dog meat.

We already know that Samson broke his Nazirite vows by touching the carcass of a lion. It now appears probable that during all those Philistine banquets he intended, he ate pork and dog meat.

Like a knife in his mother’s heart, I’ll bet.

My view of Samson is that he’s an example of a guy who was given great gifts by God, but wasted them on his own passions and pleasures. A cautionary tale, a typological picture of Israel, but not a story for emulation.

Speaking of misusing your gifts, I found a very weird story from Poland by way of the New Zealand Herald. Ever wonder whether the people who come up with those grisly scenarios in the crime thrillers might not be a little twisted themselves, a little corrupted in their souls?

Apparently, at least one of them was. (Hat tip: World Views.)

So think twice before you attend your next book signing.

I know for a fact that every time a pagan deity materializes or the space-time continuum is violated in my neighborhood, the police put me under surveillance.