frosh supplement finally online

Yay! Check out three days worth of work and little sleep here.

an army of davids by glenn reynolds

I’ve wanted to order this book for the longest time now and I finally did this summer. I’m a big fan of  Glenn’s blog Instapundit and I adored the Glenn and Helen Show podcast when it was around, so I don’t know why it took me so long to buy his book An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government and Other Goliaths. I finally did, though, and it was well worth it.

If you couldn’t tell by the title, this dude is a staunch libertarian – and he does a good job of making libertarianism look pretty badass. It’s not really a political book, though. It’s more about optimism and ideas, which I am down with.

Here are some quotes from Chapter 6 I found especially applicable,

“And when ‘making’ media is cheap, and an unlimited supply of people are ‘making it,’ what happens to journalism? Something that journalists may not like: Journalism, right now, is in the process of reverting to its earlier status as an activity, not a profession.”

“….[T]he local-reporting angle is likely to be big. Most media coverage is wide but shallow. Individuals can actually outperform big news organizations when it comes to reporting on a single topic, and as it becomes easier for individuals to develop and market niche expertise, we’ll see more of that. How will Big Media respond? It’ll be interesting to find out.”

He also has chapters about  nanotechnology, space exploration, business, and how truly cool it is that free wi-fi access lets anyone work anywhere.  He’s seriously amped about technology. An alternate title could have been, “Look at all this f*cking cool stuff you can do!!!”

Which I think is awesome. As I am a blogger and have been ever since I started using the internet, it’s been fascinating to watch entrepreneurs grow and develop online, whether it be writers, programmers, advertisers, or search engines. (Anyone remember AltaVista? Hahahaha… Oh wait, it’s still around. Wow.)

this is the part where i judge a book entirely by its cover

My boyfriend and I went to Chapters the other day to find a book to read together, cause it’s a thing we do sometimes. Anyways, we wanted to find a Christian book but the dominating authors in the Christian section were Brian McLaren, Joel Osteen, and Joyce Meyer.

I’m pretty sure many authors write books simply to fill pages and pay the bills.

Let me say something about Brian McLaren – and this is completely an opinion, just a feeling I have. He’s an asshole.

“The Secret Message of Jesus.” With this very title he claims that Jesus has a secret and he, Brian McLaren, knows what it is. Which is sort of a jerk thing to do for Christians who do have a personal relationship with Jesus, have read the Bible extensively, and accomplish amazing things without ever hearing of  McLaren.

Using the word “secret” insinuates exclusivity. The readers of McLaren’s book have thus been let in on this secret that so many have apparently missed.

Back cover: “What if many have carried on a religion that somewhere along the way missed the rich and radical treasures hidden in the essential message of Jesus?”

You can’t simply read the Bible like so many Christians have done; you have to read McLaren’s book to find the “hidden” “secret” we’ve been missing all along. It’s not about Jesus’ message – it’s about McLaren’s.

This is the part where you tell me I can’t judge a book by its cover, even though I already stated that was what I was going to do. Okay, if anyone wants to review this book in its entirety I will host it on my blog. The ‘asshole’ wordcount must be at least 7.

I’m kidding.

sled island’s free song downloads

Seriously? Excellent. Check it out here. There’s apparently over 175 free songs to download.

Woodhands did a cover of I Kissed a Girl and I liked it. I basically love anything they do. They just yell and stuff and it’s great. (I know, my way with words is unrivaled.)

In other news I finally ordered An Army of Davids by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit. I’ve been meaning to get it for like…3 years now, haha. I should get it next week, I hope. It’s basically about the blurred line between amateur and professional media as a result of the intarwebs. I am working on a documentary about blogging in Canada and I would love to interview him. He’s not from Canada, but he’s pretty much a god in the blogosphere. I loved their podcasts…but now they stopped doing that and are doing more video with Pajamas TV. Eh.

Also, I ordered The Bible of Unspeakable Truths by Greg Gutfeld. He’s a hero as well. He is the host of the insanity fest known as Red Eye.

Yay books! I have been reading the God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer for over a month now…I’ve been really busy, I guess. It’s really good so far though. I like Francis Schaeffer – he just dishes it out. I like my theology with a side of hotsauce, not sugar coated. That’s a quotable quote right there. Savor it.

finals suck

…and so I will direct you to some other cool posts you should probably check out:

blogiraptor has a great post on the worst (and most hilarious) superheroes, like animal-vegetable-mineral-man. Good material for putting off studying =)

Remi Watts has a post about the various responses my book review has garnered on Facebook. Go here to contribute to the discussion about sex, lol.

Nick Walks the Dinosaur is a cute webcomic and also a nice distraction from studying.

You know, how about you just check out my blogroll. You’re bound to find something you like there.

Also, I just finished reading the Bacchae studying for my Mythology final. Dionysus is bat-shit crazy.

The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti

zomg it’s a blog post about a book! Like the good old days! Yay!

Back in January, I had this undeniable urge to buy two books: Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent and The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti. I’m not a feminist at all, really, but I guess I was interested in what people were saying about gender roles and blah blah blah. I meant to write about them, but then school got in the way. Then recently, through the wonders of Twitter, I saw that CastingShade was looking for a review of The Purity Myth. “Hey, I read that!” I thought, and signed up.

So finally here is my review (don’t worry, I re-read it, I didn’t base it all off memory) hosted at the lovely blog CastingShade.

Also, be sure to check out CastingShade’s own review of The Purity Myth by Seb =)

And I will write about Self-Made Man soon, because it is hilarious.

the geriatric teenager

www.toothpastefordinner.com

via Mark Steyn:

“I see some young people in the audience,” said President Obama in Ohio the other day. Not that young. For he assured them that, under Obamacare, they’d be eligible to remain on their parents’ health coverage until they were 26.

The audience applauded.

Why?

Because, as the politicians say, “it’s about the future of all our children”. And in the future we’ll all be children. For most of human history, across all societies, a 26-year old has been considered an adult, and not starting out but well into it. Not someone who remains a dependent of his parent, but someone who might well have parental responsibilities himself. But, if we’re going to remain dependents at 26, why stop there? Why not 36? An Italian court ruled recently that Signor Giancarlo Casagrande of Bergamo is obligated to pay his daughter Marina a monthly allowance of 350 euros – or approximately 500 bucks. Marina is 32, and has been working on her college thesis (“about the Holy Grail”) for over eight years.

America is not yet as “progressive” as Italy, so let us take President Obama at his word – that, for the moment, your 27th birthday marks the point at which a boy becomes a man and moves out of his parents’ health insurance agency. At what point then does an adult re-enter dependency?

Well, in Greece, a female working in a “hazardous” job can retire with a full government pension at 50. “Hazardous” used to mean bomb disposal, and mining. But, as is the way of government entitlements, the category growed like Topsy. Five hundred and eighty professions now qualify as “hazardous”, among them hairdressing. “I use a hundred different chemicals every day — dyes, ammonia, you name it,” 28-year old Vasia Veremi told The New York Times. “You think there’s no risk in that?” Not to mention all those scissors. TV and radio hosts can retire at 50, because they use microphones which could increase their exposure to bacteria. Is column-writing also “hazardous”? It used to be, what with the significant risk of paper cuts. Takes its toll over the years.

So working life is now an ever shrinking window of opportunity between adolescence and retirement. These two happy conditions are the contribution of the advanced social democratic state to the traditional life cycle. In the old days, you were a child until 13 or so. Then you worked. Then you died. And that’s it. Now the interludes between childhood and adulthood and between adulthood and death consume more time than the main acts.

Read the entire thing.

I don’t know how some people can hang on to dependence so much when I crave independence. I greatly admire people who work hard and make a life for themselves, even if they don’t seem to have very much spare time to party or anything. What’s the deal with partying all the time anyways? I sound so uptight, but I can’t handle partying more than once a month…well, maybe once every 3 weeks. The way I see it, I’m in university, living at home, and desperately trying to figure out what my “grown up” life is supposed to look like. I want to “grow up” as fast as possible, and the way I see it, it should have happened a long time ago.

There’s the financial aspect of being an adult, but there’s also the psychological aspect. Take political correctness, western entitlement, or the lady who filed a human rights complaint against a comedian who offended her. We want our world padded and protected like a child’s playroom where there is no chance of anything hurting us. Well, let’s please all grow up. It’s a tough world, and the sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you can overcome it.

Anywho, that’s my little rant for the day.

Ronald Reagan: An American Life

Who else to tell the story of Ronald Reagan than The Great Communicator himself? Reagan’s autobiography is full of the ideas, conviction and faith that guided his life and political career, but thankfully unaccompanied by self-reverent narrative pomp.

His life is fascinating. He lived through the depression, played football in college, became a sports announcer, actor, television host, public speaker, and eventually a politician. At first he was reluctant to enter politics and had to be prodded along to run for the governor of California. After his success in California though, he was ready to move up – America agreed, and in 1981 he became President of the United States, a title he would hold for the next eight years.

Reagan’s writing style is very engaging, thankfully, which means you can learn all about history, economics and politics without feeling like you’re reading a dusty old textbook (or even a new one, for that matter.) You can really feel Reagan’s optimism and conviction through his words; the way he writes impacts you as much as what he writes. I imagine his public speaking was the same way – engaging, inspiring and substantial.

If you want a clear-cut understanding of classic Conservative ideology I highly recommend this book. Also to be found: romance, guns, Molotov cocktails, assassination attempts, Russians!, hostages, terrorism, riots, pending nuclear war, football, international trade disputes, guerillas, treaties…my word, this book has it all.

Save the Males by Kathleen Parker

Save the Males looks at feminist culture in North America and explains how it is now detrimental to men and boys growing up. The first wave of feminism gave women the right to vote, the second wave gave them abortions and divorces, and the third, current wave of feminism has made women into pornstars. It’s not so much about equality anymore as it is about “goddess worship.”

Parker asserts that the importance of fatherhood is being undermined and efforts are being made to prove it as completely unnecessary. “Now becoming a single mother isn’t so much an accident as, for some, a goal.” Artificial insemination and adoption among single women is on the rise and men are taking note. If their role as good role models and fathers really isn’t that important, then why bother stepping up to the plate to be just that?

On television, nary is a program found where the father isn’t a bumbling buffoon and, well, thank God he’s got a wife to take care of him; The Simpsons, Family Guy, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Malcolm in the Middle come to mind.

I picked up this book because it’s been an issue I’ve been following here or there on the internet (Dr. Helen’s blog comes to mind). I love men and the idea of chivalry, manliness, and the fact that, no, I really can’t open this jar by myself; yes, I really would prefer a man in the house to defend me in case of an intruder, and no, I don’t think that every guy I see on the street is a potential rapist.

She covers other issues in the book such as women in the military, pornography, The Vagina Monologues, child support and unfair divorce proceedings that favor women over men.

Kathleen Parker asks for a fourth wave of “reasonable” feminism to come around, one that encourages men to be as amazing as we know they are capable of, not just “non-threatening” waxed-up metros with great style. Nature is being thrown out of whack with all this “men aren’t necessary anymore” banter. Women need to get over themselves, stop standing over mirrors and realize that.

The Four Loves by C.S Lewis

So, I have been reading lots the past month, I’ve just been too lazy/busy to write about it. But here we go, hopefully I’ll have some good fall features for ya.

Anyways, I read The Four Loves a few years ago, but decided to re-read it because, well, I’ve always been interested in the many different facets of “love” and figured brushing up with some of C.S Lewis’ thoughts might do some good. It did, as it always does.

Lewis starts by differentiating between Need-loves and Gift-loves. That is, a Need-love would be the love a child would have for his mother because he is in dire straits without her. Gift-love is the love of the mother for her child, as she gives her time and commitment to taking care of him. Regarding God, man’s love for god must be nearly entirely need-love, “for our whole being by its very nature is one vast need.”

He then discusses two interesting concepts of nearness to God: nearness by likeness and nearness by approach. Being made in the image of God, we are already nearer to him than, let’s say, animals are. But this is merely an image. Nearness by approach is “taking the long way around,” the hard road that seems to least resemble heavenly glory. I thought it was fascinating when he said, “Man approaches God more nearly when he is in a sense least like God.” “I must decrease, and He must increase” as Paul said. The less of ourselves we have in sight, the more God can fill our vision.

So the four loves are these: affection, friendship, charity and eros. He points out that while God is love, love is not God. “A faithful and genuinely self-sacrificing passion will speak to us with what seems the voice of God. Merely animal or frivolous lust will not…We may give our human loves unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God – Then they become gods, then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also destroy themselves.”

The idolatry of erotic love was the great error of 19th century literature, where falling in love equaled sanctification.

He then talked about pleasure: Need-pleasure (drinking a glass of water is pleasurable when you are thirsty) and pleasures of appreciation (walking through a garden). “The need love, like the need-pleasure, will last no longer than the need.” Our need of God can never end, but our awareness of it can.

Those who temporarily turn to God in need or tribulation are not insincere – they are aware of their need- who wouldn’t?

“Nature gives us images – terror, gloom, jocundity, cruelty, lust, innocence, purity…In them each man can clothe his belief, but we must learn our theology and philosophy elsewhere….A true philosophy may sometimes validate an experience of nature, and experience of nature cannot validate a philosophy.”

On affection:

“As gin is not only a drink in itself, but also a base for many other drinks, so Affection, besides being a love itself, can enter into the other loves and color them all through and become the very medium in which from day to day they operate.”

On friendship:

“Friendship has least commerce with our nerves.” It is biologically unnecessary. Eros provides conception, and affection, upbringing. Companionship, a biological need for a social species, is the matrix of friendship, but not friendship itself. “Friendship was exalted in ancient and medieval times because it was most independent or even defiant of mere nature…The deepest and most permanent thought of those ages was ascetic and world-renouncing.”

America Alone by Mark Steyn = FIN

I have finally finished America Alone. I can’t believe it took me so long, but what can ya do. Regardless, it was pretty much super awesome. He talked more about Europe, how welfare states require higher birthrates, and since European birthrates are definitely not high enough to sustain the large chunks of welfare being handed out, they are relying on immigration to keep the system going. So influx of Muslims + decreasing “Westernized” inhabitants = decrease in Western culture and increase of Islamic culture. With me so far? Yeah, I’ll just let Steyn do the talking now. I wrote down most of the page numbers, but sometimes I forgot to:

“When I made my observation about multiple Mohammeds in the news, Merle Ricklefs, a professor at the National University of Singapore and South-East Asian Editor of the sixteen volume Encyclopedia of Islam, remarked sarcastically, ‘Deep thinking, indeed.’ Well, gosh, maybe it’s not terribly sophisticated.”
-pg 64

“Mohammed is

a) the most popular baby boys name in much of the Western world
b) the most common name of terrorists and murderers
c) the name of the most revered prophet of the West’s fastest growing religion”

-pg 65

“Oil isn’t the principle Saudi export, ideology is – petroleum merely bankrolls it.”

“When you’re up against a globablized ideology, you need to globalize your own, not hunker down in fortress America.”

“In the 1930’s there were plenty of ‘moderate Germans,’ but a fat load of good they did us or them.”

On apologetic Christianity: “There’s no market for a faith that has no faith in itself.”

Product of U.S Military presence in Europe = Europe has spent no money on its own defense.

“Men of intemperate mind can never be free; their passions forge their fetters.”
-Edmund Burke

“Stability is a fancy term to dignify inertia and complacency as sophistication.”

“Sir Richard Turnbull, high commissioner of Aden, remarked bleakly to Defense Secretary Denis Healy that the British Empire would be remembered for only two things – ‘the popularization of Association Football’ [soccer] and the term “f-ck off.” Instead of their bizarre self-flagellation, the British might usefully deploy the latter formulation toward those kinky Eurofetishists who think the future lies in liquidating English law, custom and parliamentary democracy within the conglomeration of failed nation states that make up the European Union.”
-pg 168

America Alone by Mark Steyn

So, let me just start off my saying that Mark Steyn is pretty much my hero. Oh, the Human Rights Council or whatever crazy group has dropped the lawsuit against him! Yeah, yeah!

Anyways, the book starts off with demography – birth rates and such. Basically, Canada and Europe’s ‘Western’ countries and communities have a significantly lower birthrate than that of Muslim countries and communities. The Muslim population is growing, and a high percentage of that population is under 17. Also, since most of Europe’s birth rate is so low, it means that the socialist system there is slowly collapsing because more people are retiring and receiving welfare than are working and putting money into the system. Welfare states require higher birthrates. Woot.

That’s the first part of the book in a nutshell. I’m about a third of the way through this book, so you’ll see more posts later. =) But here are some of the excerpts and notes I have so far:

“Nothing makes a citizen more selfish than socially equitable communitarianism: once a fellow’s enjoying the fruits of government health care and all the rest, he couldn’t give a hoot about the general societal interest;; he’s got his, and if it’s going to bankrupt the state a generation hence, well, as long as they can keep the checks coming till he’s dead, it’s fine by him.”

“These [social] programs would be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a check to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen’s sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree.”

Europe’s government becomes to the citizen what a pusher is to addict.

“I don’t think everything is about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 percent of everything is about demography.”

“We’re the ones who will change you. Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.”

-Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar

“As clashes of civilization go, this one’s between two extremes: on the one hand, a world that has everything it needs to wage a decisive war – wealth, armies, industry, technology; on the other, a world that has nothing but pure ideology and plenty of believers. Everything else it requires can be picked up at Radio Shack: cell phones and laptops, which, along with ATM cards and some dime-store box-cutters, were all it took to pull off September 11.”

“Nobody wants to be unpleasant or judgmental, do they? What was it they said in the Cold War? Better dead than Red. We’re not like that anymore. Better screwed than rude.”

Ours is a “…present tense culture of complete self-absorption.”

“Appeasement is a vote to live in the present tense, to hold the comforts of the moment.”

What a hero. I’ll help Mark Steyn increase the birthrate anyday.

I’m kidding!

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius – Fin

So, I finished Meditations last night – I had to. I had to just get it done. I mean, I loved it to bits and it’s totally on my top favs now…but sometimes he said the same thing over again in different words. Which was good sometimes because it stated a point more clearly than before, but other times it seemed redundant.

But the main thing I came away with (among other things, of course) was indifference and having no opinion. That seems to be his solution for a lot of human ills. Of course that’s a bit of a miss-statement…let’s see, it was more like “indifference to that which deserved no opinion.” Right and wrong should be observed and justice should be carried out, but at the same time “it is in thy power” to not get offended at trifling things. “It is not the thing that offends thee, but thy opinion of it.”

“Thou hast not the leisure [or ability] to read. But thou hast leisure [or ability] to check arrogance; thou hast leisure to be superior to pleasure and pain. Thou hast the leisure to be superior to love of fame and to not be vexed at stupid and ungrateful people, nay, even to care for them.”

Sometimes he was a bit confusing…he kept on saying, “It is in thy power” to do this, to do that, which to a degree is true – but not always. He says, “Who is he that shall hinder thee from being good and simple?” and “It is in thy power to let no badness be in thy soul.”

Then Book 10 (of 12) opens with Marcus asking himself “Wilt thou then my soul, never be good and simple and one and naked, more manifest than the body which surrounds thee?” Obviously something was hindering him at some points.

I don’t know about Marcus, but my own self hinders me from being good and simple, lol. Perhaps it is in my power…only my power is weak and fails me.

And Marcus’ answer is to “Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up if thou wilt ever dig.”

Oh dear. Been there, done that…the fountain is muddy. Maybe that’s just me.

Marcus Aurelius was a very wise man, but I’d have to disagree with what I understand to be his view of human nature. I mean, I do believe that one can make integrity a part of their soul and personality – but only to a point. We’re so fallible that even after living upright for 60 years our morals, rationality and integrity can still be undone. It is beyond our power sometimes, and we have to rely on something more.

But like I said, he was still quite wise and has super awesome things to say. I’ll leave you with a few of my favorites:

“There is no man so fortunate that there shall not be by him when he is dying some who are pleased with what is going to happen.”

“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all other men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.”

“A cucumber is bitter – throw it away. There are briars in the road – turn away from them. This is enough. Do not add, “And why were such things made in the world?”

“Receive wealth and prosperity without arrogance and be willing to let it go.”

“How soon will time cover all things, and how many it has covered already.”

Dave Barry in Cyberspace

Can words explain how much I love Dave Barry? This book was written in 1996, thus bringing a wave of nostalgia. Windows 95? Chatrooms? Webdings?? Remember when they were all a big deal? I do.

Seriously though, do “chatrooms” exist anymore? What gong shows they were.

Here’s a taste of Dave’s brilliance:

“Q. Wow! How can I get on the web?
A. It’s easy! Suppose you’re interested in buying a boat from an Australian company that has a web page featuring pictures and specifications of its various models. All you have to do is fire up your World Wide Web software and type in the company’s web page address, which will probably be an intuitive, easy-to-remember string of characters like this:

http//:www.fweemer-twirple~.com/heppledork/sockitomesockitome@fee.fie/fo/fum

Q. What is I type one single character wrong?
A. You will launch U.S nuclear missiles against Norway.

Q. Ah.
A. But assuming you type in the correct address, you merely press Enter, and there you are!

Q. Where?

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Soo…I’m loving this. The world needs more stoic philosophy and less…non-stoic philosophy. Right. Anyways, a few of these quotes put into words exactly the way I feel about some things, like this:

“Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.”

…and this:

“As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.”

Also, I’ve come to realize all my blog posts are pretty much excerpts and quotes. Umm…you know, that’s okay though…I talk far too much in real life so it’s nice to let other people say things for once =P

Oh, and these are not just quotes…they’re POWER QUOTES. RAAAARRR!!!

“…the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil.”

“…For we are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act against one another is then contrary to nature.”

“Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.”

Present Concerns: Ethical Essays pt. 2

I think this is making it onto my favs list, every essay is so excellent! It’s really cool reading his opinions on the current events and issues of his day.

Here’s the first post I did on this book, and I’ll just continue giving a few quotes from each essay. I don’t summarize, because he states things more clearly and eloquently in one sentence than I could explain to you with a paragraph.

Modern Man and His Categories of Thought: “The effect of removing this [classical] education has been to isolate the mind in its own age, to give it, in relation to time, that disease which, in relation to space, we call Provincialism.”

“Where God gives the gift, the “foolishness of preaching” is still mighty. But best of all is a team of two: one to deliver the preliminary intellectual barrage, and the other to follow up with a direct attack on the heart.”

Talking About Bicycles: Lewis discusses four periods of enchantment in relation to riding bicycles. The first stage is un-enchantment. As a toddler, a bicycle was just another strange machine in an adult world. As a boy who could now learn how to ride and experience the freedom that came with it, he became enchanted. Soon, dis-enchantment came, when riding was not always freedom, but peddling up-hill “to and from school, in all weathers.” After many years came the re-enchantment, where the bicycle brought him back to those first feelings of joy and freedom, giving him an almost greater joy than what was originally experienced. Lewis quotes Owen Barfield saying that “Each great experience (enchantment) is ‘a whisper, which memory will warehouse as a shout (re-enchantment).’”

On Living in An Atomic Age: “For really, the naturalistic conclusion is unbelievable. For one thing, it is only through trusting our own minds that we have come to know Nature herself. If Nature when fully known seems to teach us (that is, if the sciences teach us) that our own minds are chance arrangements of atoms, then there must have been some mistake; for if that were so, then the sciences themselves would be chance arrangements of atoms and we should have no reason for believing in them.”

words, words, words

Another great thing about reading is that it increases your vocabulary (“Elementary,” said he). What I like to do when I read (which could contribute to how slow I am at it) is take notes and write down cool quotes and words I don’t know so I can look them up later. For example, C.S Lewis uses a lot of Latin phrases that I can only hope were common in his day because I sure haven’t heard of them.

So here’s some words and phrases that I learned (I looked them up on Google and Wikipedia), and maybe you’ll learn something new too!

Foetid -having a foul odor

Mendacity -the tendency to be untruthful

Absit omen – ‘may there be no evil omen’; may no harm result

Present Concerns: Ethical Essays

Again I am reminded just how much I really love C.S Lewis. Love, love, love. This book is a collection of essays much like Fern-Seed and Elephants: and Other Essays on Christianity, only the subjects are more political. Here we get to see what Lewis thought of political and social equality, modern education, satirical cartoons, etc. So far it reveals Lewis to be quite the conservative, which rocks. I’ve only read about halfway, so I’ll give a brief description of each essay I’ve read or a quote from it.

The Necessity of Chivalry – “The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in the hall, a gentle, modest unobtrusive man.”

Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys

What the heck is up with guys? Why are they the way they are? How do they think? DO they think?

Well, for answers…you could buy this month’s edition of Glamour magazine, the annual Man Issue. Over 2, 000 guys answer questions such as, “How would you feel about being with a woman who makes a lot more money than you do?” and “How much is too much cleavage?”

But these are all “Yes or No?”, “Alba or Biel?” poll questions. Sure, we have the answers, but why are these the answers we got?

Look no further than Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys. Delve into the male psyche from the developing stages of childhood (“…boy toddlers will imagine that they are large meat-eating dinosaurs and stomp around the house in their disposable diapers trying to bite the dog.”) all the way to being a full grown guy (“As guys grow older, and produce more testosterone, they become less mature. This is especially true when they’re in control of automobiles.”).

Here is an excerpt: