An interesting article by Robert Nozick. Excerpt:

The (future) wordsmith intellectuals are successful within the formal, official social system of the schools, wherein the relevant rewards are distributed by the central authority of the teacher. The schools contain another informal social system within classrooms, hallways, and schoolyards, wherein rewards are distributed not by central direction but spontaneously at the pleasure and whim of schoolmates. Here the intellectuals do less well.

Via 2 Blowhards.

Even Steven den Beste thinks that Hayao Miyazaki is pretty darned cool. If you’ve not seen Spirited Away, yet, go thou and buy.

My husband, kids, and I recently returned from a week up near Hayward, WI. We
rent a log cabin on a lake, stock the fridge with easily prepared food and
relax without phone, TV, computers or local/state/national news. We spend
the evenings playing cards and eating popcorn, the mornings and late
afternoons either fishing or napping and generally ignore the rest of the
world for a week. It is heavenly, especially now that the kids are old
enough to take care of themselves without supervision.

I pack a bag of books that would stock a small library and spend my time
either on the couch or in the deck chair reading myself half blind. Series
books are great because you can chew them up at a fantastic rate. Light
murder mysteries have been my book of choice the last few years when up
north, so when I discovered Ngaio Marsh I tossed an armful of hers into my
book bag. I had packed a half dozen or so of Wodehouse also but we went to
town and I found another series I hadn’t seen before. But that’s a different
review.

What’s so fun about Ngaio Marsh is that she takes her general formula and
varies the locale so completely that each book is both familiar and unique.
Death at the Bar takes place in a small fishing village where a famous
lawyer has been poisoned when playing darts. The pub owner pleads with
Inspector Alleyn to come down and solve the mystery when his pub’s honor is
besmirched by the unsolved murder.

Colour Scheme takes place in New Zealand at a hot springs spa similar to
Rotorua though not quite so popular. The War is in progress and a ship has
been torpedoed just off the coast from the spa. Strange lights and signals
have been seen. And one of the spa’s residents has found his way in the
dark into a hot mud pool under suspicious circumstances. Marsh throws a
twist into this one that amused me no end though it was fairly apparent at
the outset what she was doing.

Death of a Fool takes place back in England. In a small village the Winter Solstice
is celebrated with a local variation of the Morris Dances using real swords
and ancient stones. The local aristocracy has always hosted the village
event and the local blacksmith’s family has always performed the dance.
Publicity is avoided at all cost so when a folklore specialist, who happens
to be a Nazi refugee and completely annoying to boot, discovers it, everyone
is put out. And then, in the middle of the dance, the blacksmith is
discovered decapitated behind the stone alter, in full view of the village.
And no one knows how it was done.

Black as He’s Painted is the most recent of the four in this review. The
dictator of an emerging African nation, former colony, is insisting on
coming to London. He’s had several assassination attempts on his life before
and the police are nervous. Fortunately, he’s a school chum of Detective
Alleyn’s. And he commissions Troy, the detective’s wife to do a state
portrait of him. When his Ambassador to London is discovered pinned to the
floor by the ceremonial spear his body guard is carrying during a gala
celebration, Alleyn just naturally has to investigate.

Of the four, I disliked the last one. Marsh is much better with the local
village or the New Zealand setting than emerging African nations. This one
bordered on silly, something her books to date haven’t done. However, on the
whole, I am again amazed at how well she takes her basic plot and uses
settings and characters flesh it out and make it unique. They haven’t gotten
repetitive at all, so far. I plan on reading the rest of her stuff, so we’ll
see.

Chapter 28 and Chapter 29 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia! are now available for your delectation at Once-Told Tales.

So I went out and got a copy of the
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen–not the novelization,
but the book that collects the six comic book episodes into a single
graphic novel. Ian Hamet will no
doubt pleased (even as he’s no doubt wondering when I’m going to get to
the Nevil Shute novel he gave me. Soon, Ian! Soon!

Now, I don’t read comics much. Back when I was in grad school I picked
up most of the episodes of Cerebus the Aardvark, which was mostly good
fun; I still have them around somewhere, though the paper was lousy and
they are probably ready to fall apart. A few years ago (as long time
readers will remember) I picked up the full set of
Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman”, which I enjoyed thoroughly though it
had what seemed like quite a ridiculous amount of sex and violence
(especially violence). Cerebus was quite remarkably tame by comparison.
Sex and violence-wise, the Gentlemen are pretty much on a par with the
Sandman.

The plot is straightforward. At the behest of a rather unctuous fellow
named Campion Bond, Mina Harker gathers together Captain Nemo, Allan
Quatermain, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Invisible Man to carry out
a mission for Bond’s boss, the mysterious Mr. M. Things are not as they
seem, of course, and a rollicking tale ensues.

Did I like it? Well, it was OK. It wasn’t the Sandman. Frankly, the
Extraordinary Gentleman seemed insufficiently extraordinary; and although
the premise is good fun, I came away thinking that Mr. M could have
accomplished his ends much more simply with a few stout young men and a
few months of training.

The artwork was pretty darned cool, though, especially the pictures of
the Nautilus.

The book ends with a novella (really, a genuine words on a page story)
about Allan Quatermain, in which (through the medium of a prose so purple
it was almost opaque) Alan Moore has the audacity to bring together Allan
Quatermain, John Carter of Mars, Randolph Carter, and H.G. Wells’ time
traveller in one big H.P. Lovecraft pastiche. I nearly
choked when I read that Randolph Carter was John Carter’s great nephew.

So, all in all, a pleasant afternoon’s entertainment…but nothing
life-changing.

Bill Whittle has produced yet another excellent essay, this time on the topic of personal Responsibility. It’s a good essay; you should go read it. Pardon me if I don’t wait, as it’s looooooong. Then read the comments. If you don’t read both the essay and the comments, you might as well skip the rest of this post.

One significant thread involved whether being Pro-Choice or Pro-Life were “responsible positions”. Lost of the related comments seemed to me to be somewhat beside the point, being mostly thoughtful restatements of the individuals’ positions on abortion, rather than saying much about personal responsibility per se. I think it’s because the writers were so supportive of personal responsibility being a Good Thing (as it is) that they forgot that there are other values. A responsible act need not necessarily be a good act.

For example: consider four women who find that they are pregnant. All are single, and none can really afford to take care of a child. One immediately chooses to have an abortion, and does so. The second dithers for four or five months, and then has an abortion at the last minute. The third is opposed to abortion, and so has the child; but she gets no pre-natal care, and when the baby arrives she neglects it. The fourth is also opposed to abortion, but gets pre-natal care, has the baby, and finds some way to take care of it (or puts it up for adoption).

Responsibility involves accepting the consequences of your actions, and dealing with them. Clearly, the first and the fourth women acted responsibly; the second and third do not. So one can act responsibly or irresponsibly whether one chooses to have an abortion or not.

This is the second book in Flint’s “Joe’s World” saga; it’s a fun ride,
though it intersects oddly with The Philosophical Strangler,
the first book in the series, and though very little seems to actually be
resolved at the end of it.

In fact, “odd” describes the whole book remarkably well. For example,
the bulk of it is narrated by a family that witnessed the whole thing: a
tribe of body lice that live on one of the main characters. Then there’s
the section that consists entirely of very long chapter headings. And the
world in which the action takes place resembles your typical fantasy
world, but only slightly. In fact, the whole place seems to have been
created, long ago, by this guy named Joe, though it seems to have gotten
away from him. I have a vision of a Dungeons and Dragons world, worked
out in great detail by some teenaged gaming nerd, that has been steadily
developing on its own since he got to college and discovered girls.

One of the blurbs compares Flint with Terry Pratchett, and
while that’s wishful thinking on somebody’s part the book is genuinely
funny, if a bit purple and crude by turns.

Except for the annoying titles, these books are actually a lot of fun. They
take place in Loon Lake, Wisconsin–somewhere up there north of Wausau and
in the vicinity of a bunch of tourist towns catering to fishing and hunting
each in its own season. After spending a week a summer for nearly all of my
45 years in the northern part of either Wisconsin or Minnesota, I have come
to the conclusion that folks who name lakes have a limited vocabulary. The
list goes like this: Sand Lake, Stone Lake, Loon Lake, Deer Lake, Moose
Lake, Wolf Lake, Timber Lake, Pine Lake, Goose Lake etc etc etc. Sometimes,
they got fancy and tossed a Native American name in there which you have to
be a local to pronounce. Try Chequamaghon on the tongue. It’s pronounced,
stay with me here, sha-KWA-ma-gun. Actually, I cheated. That’s a National
Forest. Sissibagama is the lake we stay on when we go. We call it Big Siss
so as not to confuse it with it’s neighbor, Little Sissibagama, known as
Little Siss.

Anyway, the books were lots of fun, especially when read on a lake with
loons calling on the water. The local retired dentist, Paul Osborne, meets
the Chief of Police, Lew Ferris when the local bait shop owner sets up fly
fishing lessons for him. Lew is a healthy, attractive and
very opinionated woman who can outfish him in a heartbeat and who uses
fishing as relaxation from the rigors and stresses of running a police
department on a short budget amidst a well-entrenched good-ole-boys network.
Osborne’s wife died a couple years back and he’s looking for a hobby.
Fly fishing fits the bill. So when he discovers a body during their first
lesson, she instantly deputizes him to do a forensic dental exam on the
victim. Thankfully, he did forensic dental work in Korea. And apparently,
nothing grosses him out since he’s digging his ungloved hands into a mouth
that’s been dead and in the water for a couple days. Plus, he’s a marvel
because he recognizes the teeth even though all the gold has been drilled
out after death. That happened a couple times thru the series and I kept
wondering if MY dentist would know my teeth just by looking at them without
the chart and face to match.

The whole series goes from there. Osborne has a neighbor who is apparently
good looking, intelligent, full of heart and who refuses to work at legal
occupations but is a dynamite poacher and tracker/field guide. Oh, and he
leaves messes of panfish at the local convent in return for excellent fried
chicken and potato salad so he’s gotta be ok if the nuns like him. He wears
a trademark hat with a stuffed trout sitting crosswise on it. And we find
out more and more about what a crummy marriage Osborne had with his dead
wife as he starts falling in love with the Chief of Police who is a good ten
years younger than he is and causes him no end of angst about whether he is
worthy.

The series is totally entertaining in a mindless way, especially if you
enjoy the silly stuff she writes about. I especially enjoyed it since she
fills it full of local Wisconsin color that is instantly recognizable if you
live in the state. Somehow, the light hearted tone and the small town
eccentrics reminded me a little of Mitford. She even tosses in a Dooley-like
character in the third book. There is a fourth out that I googled for after
coming back home to the computer and that I plan on having my local
bookstore owner order for me when I go to town today for groceries.

This is a difficult book for me to review. I’ve read it at least a dozen
times, and as it’s a short book I’ve internalized almost all of it. It’s
also a classic of Christian literature, and one that I’ve found both
educational and inspirational over the years, which means that it’s
difficult for me to talk about it in any detail without talking
non-trivially about my Christian faith as well. I usually avoid that, as
I figure people come here to read about books, not about religion.

That said, I love this book. Lewis has long been one of my favorite
writers; there are few I know of who can discuss complicated matters so
simply and clearly. I’ve found, recently, that this is true not only of
his fiction and his Christian apologetics, but also of his scholarly
work, which was in the field of literary criticism. It’s true, Lewis’
brand of criticism is completely out of style, driven out by the
postmoderns and the deconstructionists–but the one thing I understand
about deconstructionism is that deconstructionist writings are by
definition impossible to understand. I have faith that some day clear
speaking will once again be valued in academia, and perhaps then Lewis
will once more be highly regarded.

But all that is to the side. The Great Divorce is a book
about Heaven and Hell. The narrator (Lewis himself) finds himself in a
dreary town. The only place he sees any sign of life is at a bus stop,
and for lack of any better idea, he attaches himself to the queue–a
queue filled with argumentative, obnoxious people. On the bus, he
discovers that the dreary town is Hell; the bus is taking damned souls on a holiday to
Heaven, where they can stay if they choose. Each of the damned souls is
met by someone they knew (or knew of) in life, whose job is to persuade
them to stay in Heaven. Some do; by far the most do not.

If this review were printed on paper, I’d suggest that you underline that
word “choose”, for choice is the essence of this book. Lewis-the-narrator
meets the soul of George MacDonald, a writer whose book
Phantastes initiated Lewis’ own journey of faith.
I will quote two of the things Lewis-the-author has MacDonald say:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy
will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will
be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice
there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires
joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is
opened.

and also,

The choice of every lost soul can be expressed in the words, “Better to
reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” There is always something they
prefer to joy….

The question in every case is, what is it that the soul prefers not to give
up? And how does this effect the choices they made in life? That should
be emphasized as well–this book is by no means intended to present any
kind of factual picture of Heaven or Hell. It’s about the choices we
make in life, and how they tend to lead us to reign in Hell or to serve
in Heaven. And it’s done through a series of character sketches that are
appallingly similar to people I’ve known–and, most likely, people I’ve
been.

One more thing, and I’m done.

Somebody out there is sure to ask themselves, “Does he really believe
this? Does he really believe that some people go to Heaven, and some to
Hell?” And the answer is, “Yes, I do.” And given that, some might
accuse me of damning people to hell simply because they do not agree
with me. This is a point of view I find puzzling. It doesn’t matter
whether people agree with me or not; I don’t set the standards. I’m
sure I find those standards as irritating and inconvenient as anyone
else, and if God were to reveal to me that he was only kidding I’d
be more than pleased.

But morality is, to some extent, beside the point. God isn’t Santa
Claus, bringing the nice people to Heaven and sending the naughty ones to
Hell. None of us are nice people by God’s standards. But through Christ’s
sacrifice on the cross he’s enabled all of us to reach Heaven–if, and
only if, we will accept Christ’s help and lordship. It’s all about who I
will have as my master–Christ, or myself.

It’s as though I’m on the roof of a house in a flood, and Christ is
overhead in a helicopter, dangling a rope ladder in front of me. I am
free to take hold of it, or not. But I am not free to both take hold of
it and remain on the rooftop. And once I take hold of it, I must hold on
tightly.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Now available for your reading pleasure: Chapter 26 and Chapter 27 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia!