IF I DID IT, by Orenthal James Simpson–Book Review

  This book should have been titled WHY I DID IT.

  Mr. Simpson, who once famously promised to devote himself to finding his wife’s “real” killer, spends all of his time demonstrating what an awful person the mother of his children was–and what a wonderful person he is.  Nicole bad; OJ good.

  If you want to read of him expressing outrage at her murder, this won’t be the book.  This is his confession (although he mentions in passing that the murder scene itself is “hypothetical”).  Clearly someone helped ghost this book (OJ doesn’t “spel reel gud”, as you might recall if you ever saw his handwritten notes), but other than cleaning up the spelling, they didn’t contribute much “literary value”.  The book sounds like OJ’s usual rambling on in conversation.

  Most revealing of him is the transcript of his interrogation by police, if you haven’t already seen this.  If you are familiar at all with narcissistic personality disorder, this is a classic manifestation: There is no “I don’t recall” or “I genuinely don’t remember” about anything, and he has an answer for everything.  And, of course, outrage that he’s even being questioned.  Don’t they know who he is?!!

  Speaking of “outrage”, the book to read on the Simpson affair is OUTRAGE, by Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor who put Charles Manson away). 

  Read both of these books (IF I DID IT is floating around out there on the Internet), and there can be no doubt about who committed these crimes.

IF I DID IT, by Orenthal James Simpson–Book Review

  This book should have been titled WHY I DID IT.

  Mr. Simpson, who once famously promised to devote himself to finding his wife’s “real” killer, spends all of his time demonstrating what an awful person the mother of his children was–and what a wonderful person he is.  Nicole bad; OJ good.

  If you want to read of him expressing outrage at her murder, this won’t be the book.  This is his confession (although he mentions in passing that the murder scene itself is “hypothetical”).  Clearly someone helped ghost this book (OJ doesn’t “spel reel gud”, as you might recall if you ever saw his handwritten notes), but other than cleaning up the spelling, they didn’t contribute much “literary value”.  The book sounds like OJ’s usual rambling on in conversation.

  Most revealing of him is the transcript of his interrogation by police, if you haven’t already seen this.  If you are familiar at all with narcissistic personality disorder, this is a classic manifestation: There is no “I don’t recall” or “I genuinely don’t remember” about anything, and he has an answer for everything.  And, of course, outrage that he’s even being questioned.  Don’t they know who he is?!!

  Speaking of “outrage”, the book to read on the Simpson affair is OUTRAGE, by Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor who put Charles Manson away). 

  Read both of these books (IF I DID IT is floating around out there on the Internet), and there can be no doubt about who committed these crimes.

So. Carolina Library Cancels Summer Reading Program

  Continuing on with the theme of the blog post below:

  “A South Carolina library system has closed down its summer programs for young adults after receiving threats and allegations that it was trying to promote “witchcraft” and “drug use.”

  “The Pickens County Library System’s half-hour summer programs for middle and high school students were supposed to take a light-hearted look at the topics “Secrets and Spies: How to Keep a Secret by Writing in Code or Making Invisible Ink” and “What’s Your Sign?” Another program was to examine astrology, palmistry, and numerology; and others were to feature tarot cards, tie-dying t-shirts, how to make a Zen garden, and yoga.

  “Now the programs are cancelled in the wake of phone and e-mail threats from the community, believed to emanate from a single local Baptist church. The astrology program was labeled as “witchcraft” by callers, while the Zen garden and yoga programs were objected to as “promoting other religions.” The t-shirts workshop? “Promotes the hippie culture and drug use,” callers said….[Rest of article]

Hey, The Author Said It–I Didn’t

   This is a real book.

   Written by an Evangelical Pastor.

   Available at Amazon.

   I would not make something like this up.

   Honest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

LibriVox

  Ah, I’ve discovered one of the things I want to volunteer for after my retirement (113 days!).

  I came across the LibriVox site when I read about it in a book just now.  They offer free ebooks (which I’ve become interested in, having finally bought an iPod) recorded by volunteers, and which are of books that are in the public domain.

  You’ve been able to get the texts of public domain books from Project Gutenberg for quite a while now.  It’s nice to be able to get the recorded texts.  There’s an active forum of volunteers there (some books are recorded by more than one volunteer–I think I would prefer going the solo route) organizing which books to record.

  Someone is already working on TARZAN OF THE APES, by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  (You’ll recall my love for the Tarzan books and movies which I have posted about here several times).  I’m inclined to volunteer for JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN–which was the second Tarzan book I read as a kid.

  I’ve got several thousand dollars worth of recording equipment–so there shouldn’t be a problem with quality.  There are instructions on the site for recording with free software that is available, along with a twenty dollar microphone you could pick up almost anywhere.

  It’s worth checking out the site!

The US Civil War in Four Minutes

Got a minute with a computer, so…

[Update: I'll be darned. The video is no longer available. It was being linked to all over the web and HAD to have been great publicity for the site linked to, but...someone in their great wisdom decided to take it down, instead of drawing a few hundred thousand people to their site. Read the below-referenced book instead]

Source:

Best one-volume of the Civil War ever: BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM, by James M. McPherson.

Everything Is Miscellaneous

   I’m about halfway through and very much enjoying this book by David Weinberger (who also cowrote THE CLUETRAIN MANIFESTO, and which I also enjoyed).

   You might be interested in reading the prologue and first chapter available here.

 

Read more, people!

 

Mitt Romney, Scientology, And BATTLEFIELD EARTH

  Ah, the juxtaposition of so much that I find intriguing.

  Apparently, Mitt Romney (Republican running for President) was asked recently what his favorite science fiction novel was and he answered with L. Ron Hubbard’s BATTLEFIELD EARTH–sending Romney’s “weirdness factor” (in the minds of many) up even higher.

  Romney, as you may well know, is a Mormon.

  Hubbard invented Scientology.

  Now–what I like about Mormonism and Scientology is that every single person in the world agrees that the proponents of one…or the other…or both perhaps, are just stark-raving goofy.  These two “religions” unite us in that.  We can all smugly say, “Boy, I would never be so foolish as to believe something as ridiculous as [Mormonism]/[Scientology]!!  I’m sure glad that I believe in the One True God instead!!”  Even the Mormons would say this (about the Scientologists)–and the Scientologists about the Mormons. 

Both of these religions have “holy books” that go on and on and on (demonstrating that some people really get a kick out of writing “holy books”–even spending years and years on them, all the while knowing that yeah–they’re goofy, but that eventually millions of people can be persuaded to believe in them).

There are now more Mormons in the world than Jews.  And there are apparently millions of Scientologists, too.  Do not assume from the tone of this entry that I am making fun of these religions or disputing that perhaps one or the other is indeed the One True Religion that we all should follow.  They make as much sense to me as any other.

My real point in making this entry is to say that I read BATTLEFIELD EARTH thirty years ago, and I loved it!  So there! 

Here’s an interesting article from the BOSTON GLOBE about the whole flap:

When asked recently by a Fox News interviewer to name his favorite novel, Mitt Romney’s answer, the 1982 science-fiction epic “Battlefield Earth,” raised eyebrows across the political spectrum. As if reassuring the general public about his Mormonism wasn’t enough of a hurdle for the GOP presidential hopeful, now Romney was praising a book by…L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology?

“There must be something we can learn about Romney by examining this answer,” wrote Slate’s John Dickerson, capturing the sentiment of the pundit class. But after cracking a few jokes about the book’s far-fetched plot — in which a ragtag band of humans struggles to rid earth of its alien overlords — and Hubbard’s slipshod prose style, Dickerson shrugged his shoulders and lamely concluded: “You simply need a deep level of weird to like ‘Battlefield Earth.”‘

Unlike the other pundits and bloggers who’ve weighed in on this topic, Dickerson admits that he hasn’t actually finished the book. But some of us who have devoured the 1,000-plus pages of “Battlefield Earth” bristle at the notion that there’s something inherently kooky about doing so….[rest of article]

GOD IS NOT GREAT–The Book

This really surprises me. I’ve always considered Lou Dobbs as pretty darned conservative, and thought that he might be a Fox “News” mole who had infiltrated CNN. Yet at the end of this interview he calls this book “brilliant” and tells us to “Buy it!”. The book they are discussing is currently #4 at Amazon. I haven’t read it yet, but will soon. (It was sold out at both Barnes & Noble and Borders–I’ve had to order from Amazon). I’m hoping that it is not as combative and strident as Richard Dawkins’s THE GOD DELUSION or Sam Harris’s LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION–lest it fall on even deafer ears (as if many “people of faith” are even reading these books anyway). I do think that it is a healthy sign that these books are making it onto the bestseller lists so consistently. Even those of you fortunate enough to have found the One True God would have to agree that it is important to intelligently discuss the foolishness of the other people who–despite outnumbering you–just have it so very wrong, unlike yourselves:

Who Is John Galt?

  If you’ve been following the blog the last several days, you’re aware that this is temporary unofficial headquarters for the Hayley Clatterbuck Fan Club.  Hayley acquitted herself well on the JEOPARDY tv game show on Tuesday and we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that she’ll get a Wild Card slot in the finals, since she ended up second to a Stanford guy (while handily whooping a Yale boy’s butt!)

  She was the only one to correctly answer the Final Jeopardy Question: “What is the first line from the book ATLAS SHRUGGED?”–which gives me an opportunity to tell you to READ THIS BOOK!!  It is available, of course, at Amazon right here.

Hayley is a philosophy major, so perhaps had some advantage over the other two contestants on this question (especially the Yale dufus).  The author Ayn Rand, an immigrant from Russia, was one of America’s most important 20th century novelists and thinkers–and I can only hope that Hayley has read some of her works by now.  (It probably hasn’t hurt that Hayley grew up just a few blocks from our neighborhood’s “John Galt Boulevard” either–named thusly by real estate developers who were obviously fans of Ms. Rand). 

I have, over my lifetime, bought Ms. Rand’s book THE FOUNTAINHEAD six to ten times–not for myself, but because it is the one book I have read that I have wanted all of my friends (and family) to read.  This book is a little more “accessible” than ATLAS SHRUGGED, being somewhat shorter than ATLAS’s, gulp, 1200 pages.  You’ll need to set aside some time for it…

These are two of my desert island books.  People I’ve bought them for have had their lives changed.   Have fun!