The Cybils Awards for 2008 have been announced. The Cybils come from children’s and young adult lit-bloggers who want to “reward the children’s and young adult authors (and illustrators) whose books combine the highest literary merit and kid appeal.”
Thoughtful Listening
Some interesting thoughts on the idea that we should “never deny, rarely affirm, always distinguish.”
It’s difficult to truly listen to someone words and sift them for the truth. It’s easier to reject them out of hand or even accept them the same way.
One Part of Obama’s Legacy
Sure, it’s too early to talk about a legacy for President Obama, but nominating David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General may be a sign post pointing the direction of part of his legacy. Ogden has legally defended all kinds of pornography in the past. According to Matthew Schmitz of The Public Discourse.com, “Completing a sort of multi-media grand slam, Ogden has sued to allow sexually-explicit content to be transmitted over the phone. Taking this quest to its absurd limits, he has even claimed in court that there is a constitutional right for pornography to be kept in firehouses.”
Ogden also helped write a brief applying racketeering laws to pro-life demonstrators. So smut is a constitutional right while speaking up for women’s health and children’s wellbeing is racketeering, according to Ogden.
I give this a post on our fine, considered, literary (and sword-fighting) blog because of the free speech angle of Ogden’s nomination, but after a little thought on it, I start wonder at the irony of the civil rights achievement in Mr. Obama’s election and the civil wrongs defended by people in his political party, particularly by Mr. Ogden. Let me ask an ugly question . . . Continue reading One Part of Obama’s Legacy
“We Cannot Do Without Myths”
Professor James A. Herrick (I’m sorry. The academic title is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College), author of Scientific Mythologies: How science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs has written for Christianity Today on certain sci-fi authors’ tendency to spiritualize their materialist or secularist stories:
Science fiction is important to scientists interested in transcendent themes such as the design and purpose of the cosmos and the future of humanity. Dyson, a devoted reader of Stapledon, writes, “Science is my territory, but science fiction is the landscape of my dreams.” Ironically, the universe that science stripped of the supernatural is being resupplied with deities and redemptive purposes by science fiction writers and moviemakers. Apparently, we cannot do without myths.
… The church must attend more diligently to the presentation of her true myth in public settings. The biblical account of human origins and purpose, of our predicament as well as our redemption, and of the nature and purpose of the cosmos we inhabit, is emotionally, spiritually, and rationally more satisfying than modern myths featuring aliens, starships, divine evolution, hidden knowledge, and biomechanical post-humanity.
Lead us, Evolution, Nobody Knows Where
It was Darwin’s birthday this week, and I should have thought to post this on the day. Not to worry. Here’s a wee bit edification for you from C.S. Lewis. (No, he isn’t talked about the Tax-the-Future bill on the verge of becoming law when he says, “Lead us nobody knows where,” though it would apply.)
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair;
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us.
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
Wrong or justice, joy or sorrow,
In the present what are they
while there’s always jam-tomorrow,
While we tread the onward way?
Never knowing where we’re going,
We can never go astray. Continue reading Lead us, Evolution, Nobody Knows Where
Slow Cooking Cookbook
I know you’ve waiting for that perfect way to use your crock-pot to make Overnight Oatmeal with Cinnamon and Bananas, and now the Slow & Easy cookbook for slow cookers has it for you. The Al Dente blog reviews it. “If you’re looking for a book where every recipe doesn’t involve a can of cream soup, you’re in luck! The recipes here are by nature simple–few ingredients, not many steps–but they also make use of basics from your produce and meat departments instead of prepacked, premade foods you just dump in the pot.”
Enjoy.
Short, short story: The Credit Counselor
(The following little scene occurred to me yesterday, and it amused me in my simpleminded way.)
Waldo Pfennig had just finished checking his e-mail, and was ready to start work when a man and a boy walked into his office. The man was tall and lean, his face dark and weathered. He looked like a cowboy in a movie, even to the coarse blue shirt, jeans, and flat-brimmed black hat, which he carried in red, cracked hands. Waldo couldn’t help checking to see if the man was wearing western boots. Nope. High top work shoes.
The boy was the man’s image, but shorter and less sharp at the edges. His fair hair stood up at one side, as if he’d slept on it badly. His face was hard to see, since his gaze was fixed on the floor.
“My name is Adonijah Fell. This is my son Jonas,” the man said. “This is… Credit Assistance Corporation?”
“That’s right, Mr. Fell,” said Waldo, getting up to reach across his desk and shake the man’s hand. “I’m Waldo Pfennig. Please have a seat, both of you. What can I do for you?” Fell had a grip like slamming your hand in a car door. He sat cautiously, as if it were an unfamiliar exercise. The boy slumped in the chair beside him, head down, elbows on his knees.
“You help people with debt problems, right, Mr. Pfennig?” asked Adonijah Fell.
“Yes sir. No matter who let the dogs out, we’ll pen ’em up again.” Waldo grinned. He was proud of that little joke. It always helped to relieve the tension.
Adonijah Fell just stared at him, puzzled. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I didn’t come about dogs.”
“No, no. It’s just a little joke. You know the song? ‘Who let the dogs out?’”
“Can’t say as I recall it.” Continue reading Short, short story: The Credit Counselor
The Friday Fight: Florentine
Will McLean writes: “Florentine was first used as a term for a weapon style within the Society for Creative Anachronism circa A.S.2 (1970 AD) to describe a fighting style involving the use of two pounds of spinach and a pair of salad forks. Later the spinach was either discarded or eaten (feasts often started late in those days) and the term came to denote any two-weapon style, or, alternatively ‘what medieval knights would have called fighting in tournaments with two weapons at once if they had ever done such a thing, which they didn’t.’ The style is sometimes referred to as ‘Too many swords.'”
For those interested in fighting with too many swords, Lukrain offers a number tips.
More on CPSIA
Overlawyered has a long list of links for people talking and reporting on the impact of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which went into effect this week. Even though some of this may be overreaction, congress and the commission are responsible for the confusion. Here’s part of a press release from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, issued last month. I hope this is accurate, not some kind of doublespeak:
The new law requires that domestic manufacturers and importers certify that children’s products made after February 10 meet all the new safety standards and the lead ban. Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards.
The new safety law does not require resellers to test children’s products in inventory for compliance with the lead limit before they are sold. However, resellers cannot sell children’s products that exceed the lead limit and therefore should avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit. Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or criminal penalties.
Especially for Lutherans…
But anybody who belongs to an organized religious body will probably get the joke. From the immortal Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.