Genie in a bottle

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 6:24 pm By Fred Clark

Sorcery is illegal in Saudi Arabia, a crime punishable by death. Some of the activities apparently covered by this law — fortune telling, the lifting or leveling of “curses” — are ancient cons, scams perpetrated to fleece the gullible. Laws protecting Saudi citizens from such scams might make sense, although the death penalty for low-end grifters does seem a bit excessive. But apparently those hoary rackets preying on the superstitious are not what the Saudi law is designed to restrict.... Read more

Things I don't understand

Last updated on: December 30, 2009 at 4:37 pm By Fred Clark

One of the things that has mystified me over the past year has been the opposition to the proposed closing of the United States' offshore prison in Guanatanamo Bay, Cuba, and the related proposed trials for the terror suspects imprisoned there. I haven't been able to address these topics because I haven't been able to engage the arguments against these things. I haven't been able to engage them because I haven't been able to locate them. It's not easy to... Read more

Emmanuel

Last updated on: December 25, 2009 at 1:30 am By Fred Clark

It's a whole bunch of strangers, all of them clearly very damaged — working their way back slowly, but not yet real attractive. The people back in Berkeley AA all seem like David Niven in comparison, and I'm thinking, Who are these people? Why am I here? … That's from what might just be my favorite Christmas story, Anne Lamott's Advent Adventure. "God has set up a tent among us and will help us work together on our stuff." All... Read more

Beyond belief

Last updated on: December 24, 2009 at 5:34 am By Fred Clark

Over at Pandagon, Amanda Marcotte is rightly irked by a peculiar verbal tic employed by many American evangelical Christians when expressing their disapproval of homosexuality. In a post mainly celebrating the milestone election this month of an openly gay mayor in Houston — Houston, Texas — she quotes from an article on the election in which one Houston resident says, "I don't believe in homosexuality … I think that's a sin." Amanda notes that this doesn't make much sense when... Read more

TF: Anna Nicolae Carpathia

Last updated on: December 18, 2009 at 4:31 pm By Fred Clark

Tribulation Force, pp. 126-128 Nicolae Carpathia abruptly remembers that the Event was just three weeks ago and may have some lingering effects, what with a third of the world's population getting disintegrated, hundreds of thousands of people dying in the aftermath, and that whole no children anywhere anymore thing: "Millions have vanished. People are scared. They are tired of war, tired of bloodshed, tired of chaos. They need to know that peace is within our grasp. The response to my... Read more

"Yes we can"

Last updated on: November 28, 2013 at 11:41 pm By Fred Clark

NPR’s All Things Considered had a fascinating story last week on the Tea Party movement, focusing on a recent convention in Dallas — the one time home of the National Indignation Convention, an identical movement during the Kennedy administration. You can listen to the piece on npr.org or read the entire transcript: “Tea Party Activists Harness Anger to Push Message.” It’s astonishing. NPR is judiciously reserved in its reporting. The story consists primarily of members of the Tea Party movement... Read more

Javanese metallurgy

Last updated on: December 8, 2009 at 10:05 am By Fred Clark

Hope you had a good weekend. If it didn't go that well, you might take some consolation from the fact that it still may have been more enjoyable than the past few days have been for dozens of interns at Fox News, talk radio and the Republican National Committee. Those kids probably expected to do whatever passes for fun in such circles, but their plans were spoiled by the recent attention drawn to the posthumous publication by Duke University Press... Read more

TF: Spies like us (and we like spies)

Last updated on: December 4, 2009 at 1:10 pm By Fred Clark

Tribulation Force, pp. 113-117 On page 111 of Tribulation Force we read about Nicolae Carpathia's insidious breaking down "of the barrier between the superior and the subordinate" through the clever manipulation of office furniture. Two pages later, Jerry Jenkins spends half a page describing Hattie Durham's sneaking back into the office to rearrange that same furniture to reassert Nicolae's authority over his subordinates. Buck thought that very strange, this seemingly scripted arrangement of the entire meeting, from the formal announcement... Read more

Father to Fearless

Last updated on: December 4, 2009 at 5:18 am By Fred Clark

I nearly always give it my best shot "Father & Son," Cat Stevens"Father Explains," Daniel Amos"Father Feed Me," The Clock Work Army"Faust Arp," Radiohead"Favorite T," The Lemonheads"Favourite Hour," Elvis Costello"Favours," The Delgados"Fear," Jeffrey Gaines"Fear," Sarah McLachlan"Fear Only You," The Choir"Fearless Heart," Steve Earle Read more

The fatuous foolishness of the Manhattan Declaration

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 6:39 pm By Fred Clark

I had meant to conclude with a final post on this subject reserved simply for laughing at the Manhattan Declaration and the comical preening of its pompous prose. It provides a hilarious, real-world example of the kind of wince-inducing misplaced self-importance and lack of perspective that I’ve always enjoyed when it’s performed by people like Ricky Gervais or Rowan Atkinson or Steve Coogan. The document begins with the authors comparing themselves to those who defended Christendom against the onslaught of... Read more