The Logical Choice?

Fascinating.
Can we all now live long and prosper?

More Sparrow

A couple of my favorite quotes from The Sparrow.

"He felt as though he were a prism, gathering up God's love like white light and scattering it in all directions..."
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"The Jewish sages tell us that the whole of the Torah, the entirety of the first five books of the Bible, is the name of God. With such a name, they ask, how much more is God?"
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"He found the life of Jesus profoundly moving; the miracles, on the other hand, seemed a barrier to faith, and he tended to explain them to himself in rational terms. It was as though there were only seven loaves and seven fishes. Maybe the miracle was that the people shared what they had with strangers."

TV Barn

When I first started using the internet, way back in, oh 1996 or so, I stumbled across what we would now term a blog called TV Barn. It was run by a fellow named Aaron Barnhart, tv critic of the Kansas City Star newspaper. He began by doing a regular email list about late night tv and wound up getting a gig with the paper, while still maintaining his website. I bookmarked it back then and I've visited it nearly every day since then, lo these ten plus years later. He's changed the look and feel of the site many times over the years (and even fought off leukemia at one point) and the balance he's got now is just great.

He covers tv related news and such in some well written and thought-out articles, but has also added a "what's working for me/what's not" featurette that's a great added bonus. And one of the star attractions remains his ticker, a running list of tv related news items. Now I'm not the biggest tv watcher by any stretch, but I've consistently enjoyed TV Barn and highly recommend you check it out.

Sparrow

So I recently finished reading The Sparrow a novel by Mary Doria Russell. I saw it mentioned a couple of times on Scalzi's blog and finally got a copy. The novel follows a Jesuit priest who, after we receive radio signals from another planet, decides that God is calling him to lead the first expedition to a new world. We jump back and forth in time as we find out what happened to the team and why only our priest protagonist survived. I've long pondered on what impact evidence of life elsewhere would have on religious thought here, and this novel took a look a this question. As it went on, I got more and more drawn in until I found myself wanting to read it all the time. Now I have to decide whether I should take a look at the sequel.

The Amazing Color Changing Card Trick

Movie Moments in Real Life

Remember that scene early on in The Road Warrior when Mad Max sticks pots and pans under a wrecked vehicle to collect the dripping gasoline, then goes over the road with a rag to make sure he sops up every last drop?

Nowadays, I think about that scene every time I fill up my tank.

They Tried To Kill Me With A Fork Lift