Earlier this week I listened to an NPR Interview about The Manga Bible: From Genesis to Revelation. The book blurb by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, says, “It will convey the shock and freshness of the Bible in a unique way.” The author and illustrator, Ajinbayo “Siku” Akinsuku, a trained Anglican theologian, says his interpretation is, “a way of making a relevant message contemporary … It was time for us to update the biblical message.”

The New York Times article does make a good point that when Europe was largely illiterate, stained glass windows were used to relate Bible stories. The western world may not be illiterate, but our society is definitely biblically illiterate.

Comics Worth Reading has a very thorough review of the comic. They are not too impressed, either with its graphics or its message.

The artwork doesn’t look very mangaesque. In fact, it is more reminiscent of English independent comics. This makes sense since the artist, Siku, got his start working for 2000 AD. I found the art dissatisfying. It reminds me of the sketches artists do when they are roughing figures into a panel to determine what pose to use and how everything will fit together. There are lots of stray lines that appear to have no purpose and only the foreground figures are drawn in detail. Often midground and far away figures are just outlines. The book needs a good art editor to clean up and smooth out the linework.

and regarding the text

The narrative reads like the scriptwriter is strip-mining scripture. He bulldozes over details and nuances in the Biblical text to move the plot along.

Using the story of Joseph as an example he concludes:

By reducing this part of Joseph’s life (his childhood) to just four panels, the Manga Bible plows under all the subplots and subtly of the original Biblical story. I understand the Manga Bible is meant to be a quick survey of the entire Bible. However, even a summary of the text should include the important details, such as Joseph’s dreams. If you can’t tell the story well, then maybe you shouldn’t tell it at all and simply direct the reader to the source material.

This Thursday, the 6th of March, the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce is once again sponsoring Taste Tri-Cities and you will not want to miss it! Last year my wife and I attended and were overwhelmed by the abundance of great food and adult beverages. Admission is only $10 at the door for non-chamber members and once inside, the food and beverage samples are free. You are asked to RSVP by calling the chamber at (509) 736-0510 or email

The event will feature over a dozen exhibitors, representing our region’s finest wineries, breweries, restaurants, caterers, and specialty stores. The event will run from 4:30pm to 6:30pm at the Pasco Red Lion Hotel. Vendors will include:

• Anthony’s Banquet & Event Center
• Atomic Bowl & Jokers Comedy Club
• Bin 20
• Bonefish Grill
• Bookwalter Winery
• Canyon’s Edge Winery
• Country Gentleman Restaurant & Catering
• Crows Nest at Clover Island
• Henry’s Restaurant
• Ice Harbor Brewing Company
• Marples Restaurant
• Tagaris Winery
• Tastefully Simple
• Terra Blanca Winery and Estate Vineyard

P.S. Bookwalter Winery will be giving away a fabulous prize to one lucky attendee.

NPR’s Morning Edition interviewed Geraldo Rivera regarding his new book His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S. Geraldo has not been on the winning side of many things lately and I fear this one will be the same. Politicians always need to find an enemy for us to blame for our problems otherwise they have no reason to “protect” us.

The hostility by some anti-immigrant activists against Hispanics is no different from that directed against earlier generations of Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants, Geraldo Rivera says.

“It’s a hysterical whipping up of a mob frenzy on an issue that should be recognized that it is part of a process that makes this country unique,” Rivera tells Steve Inskeep. “And by exacerbating the differentness of the newcomers, what they do is a gross disservice.”

Should we not be welcoming our neighbors from the south to come here and help our economy? I don’t know anyone who wants to work for minimum wage on a roof or out in a field all day. If all the ‘illegal’ immigrants left tomorrow, our economy would collapse. New homes would not be built. Landscaping would not get done. Crops would rot in the field.

I do think there are problems, but they are problems we created.

Citizenship? Why is it that being born in this country makes you an American? Citizenship should be hereditary and by application. If someone from Mexico, Canada, Zambia, or Timbuktu has a kid here, the kid should be a citizen of their parents country. When they are 18/21 they can apply for citizenship.

Welfare? Sure it needs to be fixed, but last I checked the rules were not created by folks south of the border.

Taxes? Bet they are paying most of their share, and if they are paid under the table it is probably because they are trying to hide from the INS. Let me ask, are they ever going to benefit from the Social Security taxes they have paid in under false IDs?

English? Give me a break. How long were there Dutch churches in the Midwest that continued to have sermons in Dutch?

According to news reports:

A rare giant squirrel has been shot and killed near Reno. Two Army Rangers tracked down and killed the beast after it had terrorized a number of Reno suburbs.

Thanks once again to The Welsh View for pointing out this human interest story.

My boys could not believe that the antics of our cat could be so well documented.

Just received a report that nearly 300 people attended TASTE Tri-Cities this past Thursday. The chamber considers the event to have been a huge success and I will be the first to admit that the food and beverages were superb. Probably the best $10 I have spent for a ‘dinner’ in a long time.

Marples Restaurant had a baklava desert that was out of this world. Bonefish Grill’s crab cakes were outrageously good. And the rest of the food was excellent.

My only disappointment was how many trips I had to make to each of the wine booths in order to get the equivelent of a full glass of wine.

I will be looking forward to the event again next year!

Paul Thurrott on his Windows Weekly podcast mentioned a new browser plugin, Haute Secure, that looks very interesting. It is designed to take a multi-prong approach to block web based malware from getting to your computer.

According to the Haute Secure web site,

Most web surfing begins on a search engine. It’s also where the threat of data theft begins. Malware writers often create entire sites to infect users. And many good sites with web 2.0 content such as Flash video, widgets, and blogs have pages infected with user-submitted malware. Haute Secure makes searching safer by providing three types of information about the URLs in their database, each linked from icons right next to the listing:

• Community relevance: stats from sites like Digg and Delicious help filter results
• Social safety rating: a voting tally from the overall Haute Secure user community
• Malware warnings: if a URL is on our suspicious on banned lists, you’ll find out here

The site also says it helps protect your computer with some other techniques, I will check it out for my personal use and for our office and report back. Oh, and yes, it is free.

I have been enjoying listening to the archives of the Ravi Zacharias podcasts, Just Thinking and Let my People Think

In a 4 part series on “The Gospel In A Consumer Society” Stuart McAllister looks at how materialism has taken over our society including the family and the church. As part of his talk he quoted another pastor as saying:

The gospel came to the Greeks, and the Greeks turned it into a philosophy; the gospel came to the Romans, and the Romans turned it into a system; the gospel came to the Europeans got it, and they turned it into a culture; and the gospel came to the Americans, they turned it into a business.

Ouch.

If you want to listen to this here are links to the 4 parts ( 1, 2, 3, 4 )

A gal called in to Tom and Ray on the NPR Car Talk radio show this weekend to find out if there was any problem just using a bungee cord to keep her driver’s door closed or if she should seek a better solution. As funny as the question is, what got my attention was her name, Kozbi, which she claimed was a ‘biblical’ name. My ears perked up. I thought I knew my Bible fairly well, but that name didn’t ring any bells. She continued in her explanation that the name belonged to a ‘lady of the evening’ in the bible and that she thinks her parents named her Kozbi to ‘tweak’ their own parents.

So, I did a little research and sure enough, the name Kozbi, or more commonly, Cozbi shows up in Numbers 25. Israel was camped outside of Moab on their way to the promised land. A plague had broken out and God told Moses it was because the people were following the idol worship of Baal-Peor and whoring with the local women. As Moses was explaining to the elders of Isreal that the leaders of this rebellious idolatry must be purged from their midst, Zimri, a leading Simeonite, entered camp with Cozbi, the daughter of the prince of Midian, carousing with her “in the sight of Moses and in the sight of the whole congregation of the people of Israel.” Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, picks up a spear and follows them into their tent, killing the beast with two backs with one thrust.

This zeal of Phinehas stopped the plague on the people of Israel.

openculture.com linked to this great montage of the great portraits of women in art. The video morphs the 90 subjects, from one painting to the next, in a semi-historical line. If you want to know more about each of the works of art, another person has taken the time to identify each painting.

Maybe it is the medium, but I like this more than a similar video by the same guy, Women in Film

Wednesday, March 19th 2008, is the date for Second Harvest Tri-Cities’ 3rd annual signature fund raising event, “Taking a Bite Out of Hunger”.

Twenty or more of the areas finest restaurants will be providing samples of their best main dishes and as well as exquisite hors d’oeuvres and desserts. More than 15 wineries will be featuring their award-winning wines as well as beers from 4 microbreweries. During the evening guests will have an opportunity to bid on hot ticket items at the silent and live auctions.

While taking a bite, yourself, all who attend also are taking a bite out of hunger in our local area since all the money raised is used locally to help those who are in need.

For more information on how to donate an auction item, become a sponsor and/or attend the event, contact Second Harvest Tri-Cities at (509) 585-3924

Fighting Hunger, Feeding Hope

Second Harvest Tri-Cities’ website, they bring community resources together to feed people in need through empowerment, education and partnerships. Although not a traditional food bank, 2nd Harvest Tri-Cities functions as the distribution warehouse to other food banks. Food donations that arrive at the 2nd Harvest Tri-Cities warehouse are distributed through a network of agencies serving non-profit food banks, food-feeding centers, and churches. According to the Director, Kathye Kilgore, “It’s literally the food bank to the food banks.”

Second Harvest Tri-Cities is committed to ensuring a safe and nutritious supply of food is available to families, children and seniors in need in our neighborhoods. Thanks to generous community partners, Second Harvest is able to provide six pounds of donated food for every dollar donated. The 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Kennewick distributed 3.2 million pounds of food last year. This makes every donation to Second Harvest a valuable investment in fighting hunger and feeding hope.

Event Info

• Location: Three Rivers Convention Center, 7016 W. Grandridge Blvd., Kennewick
• Date: Wed Mar 19, 2008
• Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
• Table Sponsorship: $500 - seats 8
• Advance tickets: $50 per person in advance
• At the Door: Not Available
• Contact: (509) 585-3924
• Website: 2nd Harvest Tri-Cities

An email from LearnOutLoud.com today linked to a Cato Book Forum from last year featuring John Stossel talking about his book Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel—Why Everything You Know is Wrong. (More about the actual broadcast after I have a chance to listen to it.) I noticed that besides being able to watch the video, they had a link to download the event as a podcast and with a few more clicks of the mouse I found that the Cato Institute publishes 2 podcasts on a regular basis. My first impression is that these will make great additions to my regular podcasts subscription list.

The first is the Cato Daily Podcast which, according to the website, is broadcast 5 times a week and allows experts and scholars affiliated with the Cato Institute to respond and comment on relevant news in a conversational, informal manner. By presenting issues in a concise and engaging way, the podcast invites listeners to rethink their assumptions about liberty and the proper role of government. The podcast seeks to present issues in a concise and engaging way, inviting listeners to rethink their assumptions regarding liberty, public policy, and the proper role of government.

The second is the Cato Event Podcast which publishes the audio from policy and book forums, Capitol Hill briefings, and other events from the Cato Institute. The Events Podcasts is designed to keep listeners up-to-date on a wide range of essential contemporary issues through presentations by leading national authorities.

About CATO

The Cato Institute was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane. It is a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute is named for Cato’s Letters, a series of libertarian pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution.

The Cato Institute seeks to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace. Toward that goal, the Institute strives to achieve greater involvement of the intelligent, concerned lay public in questions of policy and the proper role of government.

I just finished listening to Beauty and the Beast by Marie le Prince de Beaumont as part of the Librivox Short Stories Podcast (feed). Being ruined by the Disney adaptation, I was not expecting to enjoy the ‘real’ story quite so much.

I have really enjoyed listening to this podcast over the last couple weeks. Although the podcast only ‘publishes’ one story per week, I have been catching up on the past podcasts, listening to a story a day for these last couple weeks. Now I must content myself to receiving one story per week.

It is nice to be able to escape into the world of captivating classical literature, spending time with the likes of Poe, Irving, Dunbar, Dickens, Kipling, Stevenson, O. Henry, Hawthorne, Saki, Anderson, Chekhov, and Tolstoy. I am not sure how the stories are chosen but I have enjoyed what I have heard so far. I have not read most of these stories and it is nice to have them come to me on a regular schedule.

Once a month LearnOutLoud.com offers an audio book for free. For March they are giving away an audio book they are calling Greek Gods. The 2 hours of audio contains the full entries for the twelve Olympian gods and a few other deities from the 1880 classic Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology edited by William Smith along with a team of thirty-five classics scholars.

These 14 stories serve as one of the most comprehensive guides to classical mythology, sketching the origins of the gods, what they ruled over, the key myths they were involved in, their artistic renditions, where they were worshiped, and much more. These entries from the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology drawing from a wide array of sources in Greek and Roman literature.

The gods featured are (with Roman names in parentheses):

• Zeus (Jupiter)
• Hera (Juno)
• Poseidon (Neptune)
• Demeter (Ceres)
• Apollo
• Athena (Minerva)
• Ares (Mars)
• Aphrodite (Venus)
• Hephaestus (Vulcan)
• Artemis (Diana)
• Hermes (Mercury)
• Hestia (Vesta)
• Dionysus (Bacchus)
• Hades (Pluto)

If you are curious about these characters known as the Greek gods or want to better comprehend references to them in literature, art, and culture then this audio book is a great start.

I just finished listening to the March 13, 2008 Book Forum from the Cato Institute that featured Mickey Edwards* discussing his book, Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost — And How It Can Find Its Way Back (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Listening to the forum I realized Edwards was voicing many of my own reservations of being called a conservative. Today’s conservative no longer is a champion of limited government or of individual liberty. The only thing they seem to be “conserving” is a stand against gay marriage as a token to keep the religious right in the fold. The Republican Party of today cannot claim to be, in any way, the champions of limited government or individual liberty. Instead, they have abandoned such conservative principles and now champion the very big government that they used to battle.

Mickey Edwards argues that “conservatives” have gutted the system of checks and balances, abandoned due process, trampled our cherished civil liberties, and threaten the entire constitutional system of government by advocating an imperial presidency that claims executive privilege whenever it suits them and uses signing orders to set the executive above the law. American Conservatives, who once championed a constitutional government that limited government and upheld individual liberty is in danger of becoming the constitution’s most dangerous enemy by endorsing unprecedented assertions of executive power; from the creation of secret prisons to illegal wiretapping.

As the title implies, Edwards does not leave the reader in despair, but ends the book with a blueprint for reclaiming the essence of conservatism in America. There is hope, but only if we are willing to have three equal branches of government that are not above the law or the constitution.

Listen to the book forum for yourself, let me know what you think. I, personally, cannot support any party or candidate that does not advocate limited government and does not uphold personal liberty. For me to support a party it must be a party of principal, a party of liberty, a liberty-arian party.