BABY NAMES OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS: …In Christian nomenclature, the so-called “humiliating names” or “shameful names” form a distinctive group. These names, when not defamatory, were sometimes used by some faithful as a life-long act of modesty, precisely because of their unpleasant significance… more (via Amy Welborn) Read more

THIS STORY OF TREES IN NIGER strongly reminds me of Hernando de Soto’s excellent The Mystery of Capital. Read more

THE THIRSTY MUSE: TIM POWERS, THE STRESS OF HER REGARD. Just finished the third novel I’ve read from this excellent dark fantasist. I had more problems with this one than with Declare or Last Call: For the first time ever with this guy, I thought occasional sentences were simply overwritten; the structure didn’t always work for me; and at times the “he intuitively understood that the magic worked in way X and not way Z” stuff got intrusive and handwavey.... Read more

IT IS THE BEATING OF THAT HIDEOUS HORSE!: (I’m so sorry. Can you tell I’ve been waiting months to use that headline?) Some thoughts on Eyes Wide Shut–a movie, I should say, that I’m still mulling over. It can’t be dismissed, even if my ultimate judgment remains “tries hard, finds subject difficult.” I apologize, once more, for the length of this. First, The American Scene links to Lee Siegel’s defense of the movie. The first half of it isn’t addressed... Read more

“BLOG FOR ALL THINGS SQUID“: Via Ratty, of course. Of all the names I’ve been called in my life, “Madam Chairsquid” is one of them. *waves tentacles menacingly* Read more

THE END OF TIBET: It has been only a few months since Zangmo and her friend fled Tibet on foot over the Himalayas to this squat, block-shaped center for Tibetan refugees in India. The two women had been imprisoned along with a group of other nuns, some for as long as sixteen years. They were first arrested in 1990 for staging a protest in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to demonstrate their outrage over China’s continuing presence in their native... Read more

FIGURED THIS WOULD INTEREST MANY OF MY READERS: After watching the film of Children of Men*, I didn’t go back to P.D. James’s originating novel, which I’ve never read, but farther back, to Brian Aldiss’s Greybeard, first published in 1964, a novel I last read somewhere between ten and fifteen years ago. I went back to Greybeard because other than remembering that it is about a future Earth where humans are infertile, I had no memory of its incidents or... Read more

WAKING UP IS HARD TO DO: In which I revise and extend my remarks on Eyes Wide Shut. First of all, I should reiterate that the whole “EWS as horror movie” thing is 100% Sean Collins’s insight, and 0% mine. A couple people have given me props for it, so again, it isn’t my idea, and I doubt I would ever have gotten it on my own. Viewing EWS as a horror movie totally added not only to my understanding... Read more

MASTODON IVORY AND MARTYR’S PASTE. Read more

YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO HOME, BUT YOU CAN’T STAY HERE: I’ve already raved about Tim Powers’s incredible novel, Declare. And yes, you should read that right this second. I’ve managed to snare at least three people into reading it, and all three have admitted that it was great. I recently finished an earlier Powers novel, Last Call. I don’t have a huge amount to say about it. It struck me as fantasy-horror, not just fantasy. Lots of people I... Read more