Tag Archives: books

The Da Vinci Dog

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Priceless!

"If you know someone gullible enough to take a pulp airport novel as ‘evidence’ that Jesus Christ was not divine—but rather a horn-dog rabbi eager to “hook-up” with a former hooker, in order to father a race of bumbling French kings…do you really think the answer is to argue with him? Using, you know, reason? You might just as well pick up the book, smack him on the nose and say ‘No! Bad! No! Very bad!’ That’s likely to be more effective, and a heck of a lot more fun."

(Fedora Tip: Dom Bettinelli)

Ayn Rand Goes to Hollywood?

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So Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie might be in a screenplay of an Ayn Rand novel. While Rand’s rampant sense of individualism lends itself to Hollywood egos, I’d like to ask Angelina Jolie what Rand would have to say about saving the children in Cambodia and whatnot? I try to think of a connection and can only shrug.

 

LibriVox

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I promised I’d write about this a long time ago. Sorry, Jim.  Mea culpa. From The Life and Times:

"I am always amazed to find something new and really useful on the internet, and how that changes how we can entertain ourselves. This find is one people should know about. Recently I came across librivox.org which is a volunteer collaborative project to make audio recordings of books in the public domain. access to these recordings is free. They read from texts of books in the public domain from another great website http://www.gutenberg.org/ which has already put 2,000,000 ebooks on line and 17,000 of those are available free. Anyway, back to librivox, some of the recordings are by single readers and some are collaborative efforts with multiple readers. Quality can vary, but some of it is excellent[…]"

"Is anyone out there interested in collaborating and/or coordinating a recording the ‘Lectionary’, the readings common to many christian religions on a three year cycle. The church year begins the first week of advent, so we could start now for a December release of the next cycle. The readings are short, but best with three different voices for each week. We could also do different biblical versions to accomodate different religions or nuances. Perhaps they could be released on a weekly timetable, so it would not be too much work at any one time."

If you are interested, reply to this LibriVox forum post

Pro-Family Atheist

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Atheist Peter Wall is afraid that something like “Brave New World” is on the horizon.

“…I can…see the seeds of legal arguments that may give traction to the idea of removing reproduction from the hands of individuals…If both the mother and the father, both of whom are still required to contribute gametes for successful reproduction,…have no incentive or desire to take responsibility for the fruits of their reproduction, the argument only strengthens that this function be taken from them. It will get even stronger as the universal pre-school movement progresses and the two eventually meet up and create a continuous, state-mandated and state-controlled child-production facility. (I know that sounds crazy, but just keep watching. The historical trend has been going for over 150 years now; we’re closer to the end than the beginning.)”

I don’t know about you, but I’m not used to support for traditional families coming from atheists.

Gutsy Move

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My kilt-wearing buddy, Adam Graham, has added an interesting twist to the 2006 Bloggies.

"The blog awards, particularly in the field of politics are an ideologial monolith. Still, I’ve got to tell you I’ve been getting some hits off the awards page (39 so far). I’m not nominated, but I’m giving the prize for the political blogs, a copy of the Screwtape Reports."

&quo;You read it right folks, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Crooks and Liars, Firedog Lake, and Wonkette are battling out for an award where the biggest prize (other than bragging rights) is MY book, a book by a Conservative Christian Republican."

"The humor and irony of this situation is thick. I was prepared for the possibility of a Liberal blog winning the Bloggies when I offered it, but not the absolute certainty of it."

"Of course, whoever wins, I’ll send the book to. Will they want it? Will they accept delivery?"

Be sure to read the rest of the post as well as the follow-up posts to find out how the left wing of the blogosphere has reacted thus far.

For the record, I am not a Republican, nor am I a Democrat. I am a disgruntled Independent who registers with whichever party is politically useful at the time. If Pennsylvania had open primaries I wouldn’t have to do that. But I digress. My point is that I have no horse in this race. I’m just interested to see how this thing plays out.