I’ve been a big fan of Ian Rankin for a long time. When I was in England on sabbatical five years ago, I binge read all the volumes in the John Rebus series I had missed before. Here’s the pre-pub summary from Amazon on this latest 384 page crime thriller…. “Rebus’ retirement is disrupted once again when skeletal remains are identified as a private investigator who went missing over a decade earlier. The remains, found in a rusted car in... Read more

The story of Freddie Mercury is in some ways the tragic artist story. Here’s just a brief note from Wiki about his background which none of us really knew about until recently. “Farrokh Bulsara (5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991), known professionally as Freddie Mercury, was a British singer, songwriter and record producer, best known as the lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. He was known for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range. Mercury wrote numerous... Read more

First of all, thanks to the ever alert Jim for sending me this story along…. https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/740092/biblical-prophecy-messiah-return-israel-western-wall So…. what’s wrong with this picture in the story? Lots, it turns out. In the first place, there is no prophecy in the Bible about a snake crawling out of the Temple Mount wall being a sign of the coming or return of the Messiah. This idea comes from Jewish mysticism of an ultra-orthodox sort, and is not Biblical at all. But there is... Read more

First of all, this should certainly get a nomination for picture of the year. It’s terrific, and both Vigo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali deserve acting awards. Secondly, this is a true story, and so very timely with the resurgence of racism and all sorts of prejudice in our culture. It is set in 1962 basically in the South, and sadly we white Southerners (and other Americans too) have not made nearly enough progress since then in regard to the sin... Read more

Here’s an excellent recent article from the NY Times interviewing a variety of young Christians, some of whom identify as Evangelical. See what you think…. BW3 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/young-evangelicals-politics-midterms.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage Read more

Here’s a very helpful moderation of some of the rhetoric about early Christian literacy by my friend Larry Hurtado, whom I ask you to continue to pray for now that he is done with his radiation treatments due to leukemia…. BW3 Literacies in the Roman World by larryhurtado A few decades ago, it became fashionable in some scholarly circles, including NT/Christian Origins, to hold the view that in the Roman period there was an extremely low level of literacy, and... Read more

Sometimes an author needs to quit while they are ahead. Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindewald is frankly not very good (40% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and most of the criticisms are deserved. The movie is too long, the plot is too convoluted, the characters are not always clearly identifiable, and worst of all– the beasts get neglected, despite the title of the movie. And furthermore, it was Newt’s relationship with the beasts in the first of these films... Read more

Andrea and Matteo Boccelli (father and son), have just released an album together. Here is the lead single….so powerful….. I’ve recently lost a dear friend who died suddenly, and this brings some comfort…. Read more

There was a special exhibit at the Natural History Museum entitled Unseen Oceans. It’s focus was mainly on plant and critter life in the very depths of the ocean which we normally never see. Of course one can do many other things in NY, go to Times Square… wait for the ball to drop…. It’s a long wait if you are there in October! You can go out and see the bright lights day or night in Times Square… But... Read more

There is a whole floor of this museum where the natives are restless…. and I don’t just mean Native Americans, though there are plenty of those here, but also native trips from the Orient, the Pacific, South America, but Africa and Indian are notable by their absence. A helpful map of where the various tribes were in early America. These two are Seminoles from Fla. A lodge… Comanche or Apache, not sure which. Of course it was Margaret Mead who... Read more