Nifty: A Clock That Knits

No wonder this designer won an award. See the finished scarf and more about the clock at core77.

Thanks to Bridget for sending this!

It's All Downhill from Here

A little midweek humor. This is actually a brilliant combination of humor and observation (as most of the best humor is, I suppose). I love maps like this. Click through and see it large at xkcd, the creator of this geographic inventiveness.

Yes, I know it is running into the sidebar ... I wanted it as large as possible.

Deceptive Nature Documentaries

Chris Palmer is stirring things up in the wildlife documentary business. I was relieved to see that he says Planet Earth is legit and gets real footage without cheating.

"If you look back to the history of wildlife films, going all the way to the beginning of the last century, when people started to make them, there's always been manipulation," says Palmer. "The question is just the degree of it." In fact, according to Palmer, things have actually gotten better in some ways. "In those days, there was tremendous cruelty. Animals would be goaded to attack, and then [filmed]. They would put a python and a cougar in a small enclosure to fight.

"We wouldn't do that these days," he continues. "But we do other things now. We use animals that we pretend are free-roaming, but that are actually rented from game farms. Or we have Shark Week -- a program that demonizes sharks and makes them out to be dangerous and menacing man-eaters, at a time when we're trying to preserve them."

Read the whole story here. Thanks to Hannah for passing it along.

What Unitarians Know and Sam Harris Doesn't

I meant to post this earlier as I thoroughly enjoyed reading it in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. Marilynne Robinson, whose novel Gilead was one of my favorite books last year, thoughtfully and gently punctures Sam Harris's pretensions in her review of his new book, The Moral Landscape. Here is a bit to entice you and then do go read it all.

Sam Harris begins his new book with a celebration of the ideal of cooperation, a value that has been in eclipse among us, and whose absence we feel in every failed attempt to dislodge the country from all the tight places in which we find ourselves these days. The cult of competition has elbowed its way into the place in our national life once reserved for promoting the general welfare, and the general welfare has suffered in consequence. Mr. Harris's assertion of this value without so much as a nod to the claims of our brutish Pleistocene ancestry is tonic. He says: "As with mathematics, science, art, and almost everything else that interests us, our modern concerns about meaning and morality have flown the perch built by evolution."

What specific forms is cooperation to take? Mr. Harris is a little vague on this point. He strongly favors "maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures." He imagines potential human circumstances as landscapes of peaks and valleys, with different models of moral success on each of the peaks and of moral failure in each of the valleys. Probably because he deplores moral relativism, he offers no particulars about what these variants might look like. Many of his aspirations are highly respectable but they are neither bold nor new, at least from the point of view of certain religious traditions. If he were to articulate a positive morality of his own, he might well arrive at its heights to find them occupied by the whole tribe of Unitarians, busily cooperating on schemes to enhance the world's well being, as they have been doing for generations.

If You Liked the Archangel Images, You Don't Want to Miss This Art Sale

The gorgeous archangel art at Gryphon Rampant was much commented upon when I used it for the Feast of the Archangels. But there is much more to see in the gallery. Here's one sample of this gorgeous art.

Now I see that they're having a 25% off art print sale .... early Christmas shopping anyone? Go look around. There are some real treasures there.

All the E-Mail That's Fit to Blog: The "Interesting Sites" Edition

Planet Catholic

Caitlin tells us:

I'm creating an aggregator site, Planet Catholic, for all of the Catholic blogs out there.  Planet Catholic pulls text from the RSS of Catholic blogs and publishes an excerpt from each blog post (the first 250 characters) and then provides a link to the rest of the post. 

The Catholic Guide

Planet Catholic is not Caitlin's only interesting Catholic site:

Also, I've been running a wiki called The Catholic Guide.  The intent is to create an online information database all about the Roman Catholic faith that is built by volunteers.  It has been seeded by articles from the 1913 public domain Catholic Encyclopedia.  We have a few volunteers but the site really needs more exposure to attract volunteers.

Patheos Book Club
This had vaguely caught my eye at one time but The Anchoress sharpens my focus:

Patheos is starting a book club, where we feature Harper One books (and others) and this one, although it's not new, is going to be looked at b/c apparently there will be a PBS series tied in with it, starting October 11.

Evidently next they will be reading God is Not One, which I'll be reading and reviewing ... as soon as my copy gets here. Looking through the various reviews around the interwebs it struck me as a similar take to Huston Smith's Illustrated Religions of the World, which was eye opening when I read it many years ago. I'm curious to see how this compares.

Aliens in This World Reviews Secretariat: "Ahead of the Pack"

You don't have to just take my word for it that Secretariat is a really good movie. Aliens in This World, where you can count on a thoroughly realistic point of view has a review with which I agree completely. Yes. You don't see that every day, do you? I'll say it again. Completely.

Here's a bit and then go read it all at Aliens in This World.

I really enjoyed this movie, and it was exactly what I needed. It had heart, humor, drama, factual interest, and it even let me travel back in time to the Seventies for a bit (without too much of the bad stuff). Family was very important, and they played with that theme in various interesting ways. There was a surprisingly topical theme of maintaining American unity despite deep political disagreements (though it wasn’t shoved down anybody’s throat either way). It was maybe not a great movie for all time, but it was solidly enjoyable and interesting. It also came out and said some good things about horse thinking, which a lot of horse movies are too sappy to remember.

Love is Spelled: T I M E

What good is home-schooling our children in the Catholic faith, if we can't miss one day of pre-planned lessons to help babysit some older siblings of an extremely sick child?

What good is attending a Pro-Life Committee meeting if on the exact same night a family in our parish whose child struggles with a life-threatening disability has no one to say a rosary over their sick baby's crib in the NICU?

There's a sickness of "busyness" among Catholics that is extremely dangerous because we crowd out God with our previously scheduled God appointments.

I have been following with great interest the story of newborn Tess and her parents, as told by her mother at Abigail's Alcove. Tess endured one ailment after another, culminating in an 18" length of IV line having to be removed from her heart. (Yes, it is an "and then what next" sort of story that these poor people have gone through.)

It all ended well. But in enduring the trials, something became very clear. I do not think this is reserved to Catholics. I think that "extreme busy-ness" is an American disease. We'd like to think that we're better than that. But obviously this is not the case.

Do go read the whole story at Abigail's Alcove. It takes a special sort of love to set aside plans and step up to help. We must pray that we have that love and, even when we don't feel it, we must do it anyway.

Jesus didn't give lip service. He gave his whole self. We must go forth and do likewise. It is the only way to be whole Catholics.

UPDATE
I meant to mention also that today is St. Therese of Lisieux's feast day. (Read more at this very good post at The Anchoress's.) This saint of little things would appreciate the problems we must overcome in ordering our time properly so that we put others first. St. Therese pray for us.

Aquinas and More's Clearance Sale Ends at Midnight

Great prices on Catholic books and gifts. Be there or be square.

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained: Expected Versus Surprise

"Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist, 'Give me the chance to do my very best.'"

Babette quotes Achille Papin, Babette's Feast

Sometimes the artist does their very best and the marketers manage to mess it up or never give it a chance. We know what this results in:

• Hollywood sequel after sequel.
• Prepackaged standard radio playlists.
• Derivative tv shows.
• Boring ads that never get a first glance, much less a second one. 

Of course, none of this lack of creativity is exactly new. That's why "you can't judge a book by its cover" is an old, old saying. It's still as true today as it was back in the day some frustrated author or reader came up with it.

Why?

Here's a key reason. More importantly, here's a solution.

Surprise! (or why unexpected creative works)

“Expected.” Attach the word to a creative campaign and you might as well roll up the sidewalk and go home. You’ll never get the results you’d like. When you tell your story the same way it’s been told a thousand times before, why would your audience take the time to listen? You haven’t given them any reason to.

But surprise them and they can’t help but pay attention. The Old Spice “Look at your Man” campaign is a recent example. Not only is the style and stream-of-consciousness of the script original, but it engages by stepping out of the stream here and there.

When creative concepts venture into the realm of the unexpected it can have a surprising effect on the marketer as well — fear. This is the moment when deep breaths are required. It’s important to combat marketing stage fright with logical reasoning. One has to wonder about the initial client reaction when the agency presented the Old Spice campaign.

After all, stepping out on a limb allows for the possibility that branch will break off and plummet into the void. But unexpectedness attracts eyeballs to your brand. Yes, this may be as terrifying as it is mesmerizing, but keep in mind that if your message is spot on – as it is in the Old Spice ads — those eyeballs will stop looking and start buying.

OnMessage blog

Expected.

Or, as Rose said to me yesterday upon hearing the resolution to a recent creative disagreement with this very subject at its center, "Lame."

Yep. Safe. But "lame."

Surprise doesn't have to be wacky or outrageous. It just has to show us something in a way we hadn't considered before. That's called ... right ... creativity.

OnMessage is a client of ours and when Tom saw this blog post he sent it my way. Spot on.

It's All Downhill from Here

Having just missed the middle of the week, beginning that slide to the weekend (yay!), here's a little Catholic (very Catholic) humor from The Crescat.

Grandma Snark is in the House Blogosphere

New blog Extra-ordinary Monkey Business gets snarky with ... what else ... liturgical abuse. I found this entry particularly diverting. Your milage may vary. Sadly, there is obviously no shortage of grist for Grandma's mill. Drop by and say hi to Grandma.

Here's my favorite.

Xenu's body thetans invade Catholic church

Children were reported to have run from the church, screaming in fear.

And Still More Book Reports

Finishing catching up on the most interesting things I've read lately.

• Better Than Homemade by Carolyn Wyman: Extremely enjoyable little essays about the origins of such American staples as Instant Breakfast, Minute Maid, Wonder Bread, Velveeta. A quick read that takes us down memory lane to a time when we weren't guilt-wracked over what we ate ... well, except to want it to be more nutritious or technologically modern. Oh, those were the days.
  
  
• The Trials of Rumpole by John Mortimer: I haven't picked these up for years but vastly enjoyed revisiting John Mortimer's turn of phrase which so eloquently draws a portrait of Rumpole and his trials both in court and in personal life. I had forgotten until rereading these that there are always two to three plots in each story, no small feat. The main trail, office politics, and home life all have a linked theme and yet each can stand on its own, often in a humorous way. If you haven't ever read one of the Rumpole books, then do give them a try. You needn't read them in order, although there is character development from book to book of friends and coworkers (and even of villains defended, like the Timson family). Hannah is reading the Rumpole books for the first time and working her way through the entire series, so we know they hold up well no matter your age.
  
  
• Hamlet - Arkangel audio performance: Inspired by Chop Bard podcast, I checked this out of the library and was blown away listening to this excellent audio version of the play. Between the two resources of the podcast and audio performance I was on the edge of my seat and truly loved this play. (Read Thomas L. MacDonald's review of Arkangel Shakespeare.)
  
  
• Roots of the Faith: From the Church Fathers to You by Mike Aquilina: I would do a full blown review of this but, thanks to David Scott, I actually sold it to Pittsburgh Catholic. It will not appear online so go buy one of their papers! Here's the quick version. Roots of the Faith takes a "time travel" look at some very familiar Catholic concepts like the Mass, confession, and teachings against abortion and then goes back to see what the early Christians actually practiced and believed. How does he know? The Church Fathers, of course, wrote a lot of it down and if there's something we can count on Mike for, it is knowing what the Church Fathers said about things. This is highly practical and something we can use when coming up against those folks who think the Catholic Church has changed everything around from the way it was in the early days of the Church. An excellent book - highly recommended.
  
  
• Through the Wall by Cleveland Moffett: A noted detective is getting ready to go to Brazil for an important job. He drops by Notre Dame where a young woman he never met says a few sentences to him that leave him pale and canceling his trip. A young woman, deeply in love, spurns her lover's marriage proposal because she loves him too much. A international celebrity is found mysteriously killed in a variation of the locked room mystery. All these events are connected and are set in 1909 Paris, where the atmosphere is romantic and mysterious and the art of detective investigation is very much to the fore in the story. This was on a list from Michael Grost's list for Mystery Scene magazine of classic mysteries that you should read but probably haven't. Here is a piece about this book which I believe was written in 1907. It is a locked room mystery, which I normally do not like, but the way the author slowly uncovers layers truth behind the mysterious situations is already very apparent. It has the effect of a book of one cliff-hanger after another and I am hooked. Final word: what a splendid plot and story telling. Truly this is the story of a master detective pitted against a master criminal, all wound around a tale of love and friendship. I got this from the library but I'd bet it is available free at Project Gutenberg. I plan on  reading this on Forgotten Classics.
  
  
• Carnacki: The Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson: Whenever Carnacki finishes a tough case of tracking down the supernatural he calls together his three friends to have dinner at their London club and tells them the story. Sometimes he discovers the supernatural, sometimes a hoax, and occasionally an intriguing mix of the two. Thus we get seven fine ghost tales from William Hope Hodgson who is better known for The House on the Border Land, which I have never read, but surely shall someday. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which I picked up from Amazon for free and read on the Kindle. I would look at Project Gutenberg for it as a free public-domain book if you can't find it anywhere.

Better Privacy: Find Those Cookies and Delete Them

BetterPrivacy is a Firefox addon that is able to delete a special kind of cookies: Local Shared Objects in short LSO's which are placed on your computer by a Flash plugin.

This has been a topic of interest to me ever since I heard Dan Carlin's podcast about the 4th amendment and the way we live today.

What I especially liked was that his comments about the way to control tracking of our personal info (just ask them to let us edit it the way that Amazon does with our preferences) showed a high degree of common sense. His commentary was sparked by the article The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves.  At the time he pointed out that no political leaders were speaking up on this ruling ... although it looks as if that is not the case now.

The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects' vehicles to track their every move.

Read more at Wired

Gee. I'd rather have them not speaking up than going for the Big Brother option.

Anyway, that is what made me interested in the BetterPrivacy addon. I can keep the cookies I want, and dump those I don't. Most importantly, I can find them.

Book Reports

A bit more about what I've been reading in the last month or two. Just highlighting the good stuff. (You can find all the books I've read this year ... and more ... at Goodreads which I like quite a bit for keeping track of such things).

• Jane Eyre: Looking for some fiction, my eyes fell on Jane Eyre and I realized just how long it had been since I read it. You tend to remember the big events of a favorite book but rereading has reminded me of just how many small things get lost in memory. This book is truly delightfully and subtly written, for all the over-the-top elements it contains. And just how could I have forgotten the old gypsy? It was even more wonderful than I remembered. This has everything ... true love, sacrifice, redemption, steadfastness ... and that crazy cousin who Jane may have understood and admired but I certainly couldn't. Talk about giving me someone to hate. Oy veh! If you haven't read Jane Eyre for a while (or ever), just go get it.
  
  
• One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz: UFOs, aliens, an empathetic dog, a crippled girl, and a host of supporting characters overcoming past traumas to reach out to others all are combined by Dean Koontz in a book that is the most compelling statement I have ever seen made about the right to life, no matter what one's condition. As always with his novels, few things are what they seem.Two basic plots run parallel before their heroes find themselves coming together to fight off a very evil villain. "What is one door away from heaven," is a question that one character has asked another since her childhood. The answer, along with the overall theme of the book, is enough to make us all examine our lives more carefully ... and be thankful that Koontz's writing reflects his beliefs so honestly. A favorite for rereading and that's what I'm did ... reread it and it held up beautifully.
  
  
• The Case of the Missing Servant (Vish Puri #1) by Tarquin Hall: I learned about this series from Mystery Scene magazine. A judiciously quirky Indian detective (meaning realistic) and his operatives are highlighted, as well as his Mummy who sets out to solve a  mystery that her son does not take seriously. This was an enjoyable "cozy" sort of mystery, like a trip to India, and also somewhat frustrating as I have to look up many of the native words in the glossary in the back of the book. I understand if a word requires complex descriptions, as do some of the common terms. For example could not the author simply have used the native word for gardener and then put "gardener" in parentheses? Yes, I am just that lazy, or possibly there are just that many native words used in this book. Ultimately, this was a classic mystery in many ways and yet it still managed to fool me. Extremely well done and gave a bird's-eye view of India without needing tons of info-dumps. Highly recommended. (P.S. I am a big fan of his Mummy.)
  
  
• The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing (Vish Puri, #2) by Tarquin Hall: I enjoyed the first in this series so much that I was delighted to find the second book had just come out. A few chapters in, there is the main mystery in which a professional skeptic who exposes fraudulent, famous gurus is apparently murdered by a manifestation of Kali, in full view of a group of friends. Then there is the sub-mystery which Vish Puri's Mummy is investigating and taking Vish's wife, Rumpi, along for the ride. I love the Punjabi characters and see that the author says that one could say Punjabis are the Texans of India. No wonder I like them! All the characterizations were very enjoyable as were the insights into Indian life. However, if the author is going to continually use native terms then they should all be included in the glossary. I don't have the first book available for comparison, but I feel that the glossary was much more complete than in this second book, where sometimes there would be a sentence with no translation following and which was not in the glossary either. Now, the argument can be made that there was context, and so there was, but one could make that argument for many of the terms that were in the glossary. I felt the main mystery was unnecessarily complicated. I understand that Vish Puri explores the big mysteries but this felt rushed and with too much crammed into it ... still recommended, I just didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first book. I will still look for the third book when it comes out though.
  
• Sweet and Low by Emma Lathen: John Putnam Thatcher, Wall Street senior vice president at The Sloan (one of the largest banks in the world), has been named as a trustee on the Dreyer's Chocolate charitable board. Think "Hershey's" and you'll get a good idea of Dreyer's power and money. Early in the series of meetings, a cocoa buyer is found murdered in the hotel pool. Luckily Thatcher's long experience on Wall Street means he has a deep experience of that always-present commodity, human nature. Only Emma Lathen could make Wall Street riveting as happened in every one of her mysteries (yes, I know the author's name was a pseudonym for two cowriters ... don't care). Written with understated humor, these books are a joy to read and reread, which is what I did, being a big fan of the Lathen mysteries. It is too bad that so few people seem to have heard of Emma Lathen these days.

Cheating The Habit of Being

Is that a great title or what?

And, it works in so many ways in Elizabeth Scalia's (The Anchoress) latest at First Things. Here's a taste and then you can go enjoy it all.

This sister gave an example: “When we were in our habits, a fellow with an Italian ice barrow would always insist on giving us free ices, but why should he? Why shouldn’t we pay like anyone else? Why should we deprive him of his living because we were in a costume?”

[...]

Sister was operating under a willful delusion; she justified forsaking the habit with appeals to solidarity, compassion, and humility, but her story illustrated egoism and presumption. She bemoaned a possibility of cheating a man out of his wages. In fact, she wascheating that man, but not in the way she imagined.

The ice-barrow man was not giving sister a free ice because she wore a habit, but because a man who revered (or at least respected) God saw an opportunity to demonstrate his regard in a little way that St. Therese might have applauded.

Reviewing "Let the Right One In": A Study of Evil

Oskar is a lonely and bullied 12-year-old. Eli is the 12-year-old girl who moves into the apartment next door. They form a friendship over puzzles and Morse code. Except that, as Eli tells Oskar, she is not a girl. He must discover for himself that those puzzling words mean she is a vampire. Naturally, one cannot have a vampire in the neighborhood without missing people and murders, which leads to an interesting and telling sideplot about someone who is attacked but lives through it.

This is a Swedish vampire movie and, as such, is somehow completely Swedish with contemplative photography, neutral colors, and the square, Ikea-ish buildings. It is also somehow completely a vampire movie in the truest sense of the word with evil dominating everything once Eli shows up. That evil is expressed through gore that is also somehow completely in line with a Swedish movie because we are as distanced as it is possible to be from it. Much more immediate is the bullying that Oskar must endure, which is an interesting contrast to the unworldly vampirish sort.

At one point we had to pause the movie for some reason and I told Tom that this was not the "great movie" I had seen praised by so many. He said, "Well you can look forward to the American remake. They'll probably have an explosion or two to liven it up." I had to laugh ruefully. How true.

However, our appreciation of this film grew greatly through reflection and conversation as we put together the puzzle pieces more completely. In fact, I am now going to be curious to see the American remake because we all wonder if the Americans will not somehow find it irresistible to muddy the moral message.

It is definitely worth seeing for the artistry and for the unflinching examination of evil, our attraction to it, our own muddling of what we know to be right and wrong in order to grasp what we find attractive, and the fact that we have the power to turn evil away or invite it into our lives. Oh, and for the cats scene in the apartment. Definitely for the cats scene. Never have cats been so ennobled in the fight against evil.

Caution for viewers: Rated R. There is, of course, vampire induced gore and violence. As well, there is a one second flash of nudity (Eli's genitals). Scott Nehring at Good News Film Reviews rightly points out that this is child porn. However, and this is a big however, the moment when this happens is well telegraphed. We know Oskar is going to look ... and with that warning ... we can not look. I avoided plenty of this movie's vampire violence in that way and wish I had done so for that moment of nudity. Having read Scott's comment, however, I was curious though wary about exactly what he meant. He's right. It adds nothing except some disgust. Do what I say, not what I do. Don't look.

Further reflections upon the message ... with POSSIBLE SPOILERS
(I have tried to do this without spoilers, but for those who want absolutely no clue about the story then this is something to skip.)

Unbelievably, I have seen this called a tender and pure love story. That is far from the case, if we are seeing it clearly and sorting out all the evidence that we are given right up to the very end of the film.

It can be difficult to sort out the evil and our feelings because we see that 12-year-old girl and want to find some redemptive value in the friendship she has with Oskar. Again and again we are shown her monsterish habits and yet somehow still shake them off because they come in the sympathetic guise of a pretty young girl. This leaves us turning against what our brains tell us to be true as we watch victims lured to their end and instead relating to Oskar, who is at best emotionally stunted since he wants not just relief from the bullies but the ultimate revenge which he is too weak and afraid to exact.

At the end of the movie, we are left with the contrast between the actions of the attack victim who could tell what she was becoming, the fate of Eli's original companion, and the deliberate luring (some might say wooing) of Oskar. In considering the fate of Eli's original companion, we see what Oskar's fate is. That fate is not any semblance of love. It is the result of cooperating with pure evil.

So An Existentialist, Two Atheists, and a Catholic Walk Into a Podcast ...

... to talk about Mindswap at SFFaudio. Which I still think should have been called "Bodyswap." AND which I did not pick up on as being existentialist. No wonder the last third of the book made no sense whatsoever.

Hey, I call it like I see it. But it did lead to some interesting conversation. Especially when we began discussing whether the universe has meaning and what is truth.

Oh yes. Interesting as in "may you live in interesting times."

And yet we could all have a drink together later. If we lived close enough to each other to do that, that is.

So Very Quotable

I like Mike  Flynn's books ... just as much as I enjoy reading his blog, which is not at all about his books (most of the time anyway). Here's a sample of why.

Quote of the Day:

"Isn't it great to live in a society where the penalty for lying to a congressman can be up to 30 years in jail, but the penalty for a congressman lying to you is another two years in office."

-- Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun sports writer, concerning the indictment of Roger Clemens

Bonus Quote of the Day:

“Any entity – no matter how many tentacles it has – has a soul.”

— Guy Consolmagno, one of the Vatican’s astronomers, on whether he would baptize an alien.

 
It's a Good Thing He Ain't Bush:

The Obama administration has urged a federal appeals court to allow the government, without a court warrant, to affix GPS devices on suspects' vehicles to track their every move.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/09/public-privacy/

Quick Updates

Not Always Happy ... Again: well, this is going to have to be chalked up in the "lose one" column. Durn it. In a kind of funny way, that is possibly how those I have been dealing with may halfway view it also. Although I understand that in this issue I am under their authority (like St. Francis or St. Teresa with the Church ... now if I only had their saintly qualities also) and so must obey, I also am powered by the force of my convictions (yes, stubborn like them too) and undoubtedly am causing cringing every time my email is popping into various inboxes. I'm not wanting to be a pest. I just believe that everyone doesn't really understand all sides of this issue. Ahem... So moving on ...

In Non-Kindle Related News: about Zapp, Hannah's foundling mostly German Shepherd puppy who was so hostile to other dogs. In an astounding display of adaptability and exhibition that pack behavior is, indeed, the norm, this little guy is now out from behind the dog gate and happily mingling with everyone. He and Zoe especially delight in each other's company and run and play with abandon. All three of us marvel that just three weeks ago, he wouldn't look at a human being and tried to tear the face off of any dog nearby. Seriously. Just three weeks ago.