The Hall of Fire

I'm rooting for Malala. Such courage and clear vision ought to be held up as an example for the world.

tinwë is, unfortunately, entirely correct in his assessment of North Carolina's decline. It's shocking to see how quickly the state has turned around. And sobering to know that certain elements would like this to be the fate of the entire country.

Tolkien had a phrase for this: willing suspension of disbelief.

Jackson just tweaks it a little: unlikely suspension of all known laws of physics.

If a rabbit with a pancake on its head suddenly is worked into the remaining Hobbit movies, I will blame all of you for giving PJ the idea.

I'm glad you can be there with her, Impy. That matters so much.

I will pray for her.

*I* believe that we are capable of infinite joy and love and endless celebration, and trying to understand ANY of that while our feet are mired in this world is like trying to teach algebra to a pigeon. :) Pigeons define things by their experience, and understanding, of the world. A pigeon can be a...

"Trippy"? That's not exactly the sense I get from Tolkien.

My latest TV obsession was a marathon viewing of the BBC's "Broadchurch." What a powerful, honest look at a family's grief, at a town torn by accusations and guilt, at the corrosive effect of secrets. Oh yes, and an interesting whodunit as well. The acting was top-notch, especially by Davi...

"...an adventure, not a burden." Yes. I think that there is a central,unique essence of each of us that gets clouded and covered up by the pains and hatreds and separations of this life. Sometimes we get a glimpse of this inner person in someone else, usually when we are looking with eyes ...

It was very clear that he never read the book, just took the concept and ran with it. That was my problem with the movie, and I feel sure I would have felt the same if he had taken a similar approach to Tolkien.

Well, of course Dain will ride a wild boar. The characters can't all use rabbit sleds for transport, can they? That would be silly.

A contrarian opinion: I didn't care for the film of "Children of Men" because it strayed so far from the book, which I enjoyed. It was far from a purist vision. Technically, the movie was excellent, but I much preferred the deeper philosophical approach of the book (at least that is my rec...

It's been sobering to hear a slew of complaints about how OLD he is and that there will be less running, fewer fan girls, etc. ... since he's younger than me. He looks good to me. Very Doctorish.

True. And a future movie being promoted in ads during "Sharknado" is "Ghost Shark," in which a shark can appear out of any water at all ... seen in the ad: a teen being dragged into a bucket at a car wash and a kid encountering a shark on a slip-and-slide. This has "potentia...

I must confess this somewhere, so here's the where: This past weekend I deliberately watched, from beginning to end, "Sharknado" on the SyFy channel. And laughed myself silly. In fact, I don't think I've laughed so hard and so often for a long time. It is SO over the top and SO contrary to...

If you try to walk through rather than around a solid obstacle, you won't have a leg to stand on.



Thanks V&P.

When you need to cross the room at night when the power has gone out -- or when faith is feeble and seemingly inadequate to your struggles -- here's your guide:

Don't forget in the dark what you learned in the light.

And as one story pointed out, because of China's one-child policy, they were probably their families' only children.

And now that person has been found. Only two dead ... amazing.