Author: Crowhill Report

Canada stabbings suspect has 59 prior convictions, documents show

Redemption is a great thing. We should hope that people can repent and be forgiven.

That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be executed, or spend the rest of their lives in jail.

I went down a little rabbit hole on my jog this morning, then tried to reproduce it as my sweaty shirt dried and my brain cooled down. It’s an attempt to organize some mad reflections on the things in the title.

I’ve spent many years and a lot of time and energy talking to people about God and religion. I’ve come to believe that a big part of the problem is that people are too reactionary and not very thoughtful. They respond to any fact, any argument, any perspective as if it must be immediately pigeonholed as for or against some particular religion, or religious idea.

That’s not the right way to think about things. You have to have a soup of ideas swimming around in your brain.

Anyway, if you want to hear my idle ramblings, here you go. It’s just short of 22 minutes.

So — what do you think about when you jog?

I watched the first two episodes last night. It wasn’t as bad as I feared.

My knowledge of the Silmarilion (on which this series is allegedly based) is not nearly as good as my knowledge of The Lord of the Rings (which I’ve read at least ten times, and probably more). So I don’t want to be too strict about things, but a few stood out, which I’ll get to in a minute.

First, I pity the people who have to pick the actors. Regular movies — ordinary movies — already have the most glamorous, beautiful people they can find. The Rings of Power will probably involve Numenoreans, who are a cut above normal men, and elves, who are supposed to be so beautiful that they impress the Numenoreans. I don’t know how you live up to that expectation.

If you think about the kind of world Tolkien lived in, a man might see a particularly beautiful woman every once in a while. If there was a really gorgeous woman in a town five miles away, it was worth the walk just to get a glimpse of her — fully clothed and everything.

We’re absolutely surrounded by beautiful people. In that environment, how do you make a woman who is so gorgeous that she makes you forget to breathe? That’s how beautiful these people are supposed to be.

I’m not trying to diminish any of the actors and actresses in the show. Morfydd Clark, who plays Galadriel, is a beautiful woman. But she’s not possibly going to live up to the hype that would seem to be appropriate.

Speaking of Galadriel, I don’t recall (and I tend to doubt) that Galadriel was some sort of fierce warrior princess. Maybe, but I suspect that’s more from the woke agenda than from Tolkien. And it’s not just Galadriel. The show goes out of its way to make most of the brave characters women. It’s annoying.

There certainly were no Hobbits back in those days, but Hobbits are appealing characters, so they try to get around that by using Hobbit-like Harfoots. I don’t know if there were Harfoots back then, but we do know that Smeagol was pretty old, so something Hobbit-like goes back at least a little ways. I’m not going to worry about that too much.

I suspect that the best way to enjoy this show will be to consider it fan fiction, and not to expect it to be faithful to the books. In other words, it’s a Tolkien-like world, riffing on Tolkien-like themes, but don’t expect it to be the actual story Tolkien told. With that expectation, it might be fun to watch, provided it doesn’t get too woke, in which case I’m tuning out.

I can’t imagine why anyone would get that impression.

This is a big deal.

A pair of attorneys general said on Thursday that they have unearthed the Biden administration‘s sprawling effort to censor and suppress content online, which was revealed through the private communications of dozens of government officials with social media companies.

The attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana, who are working with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, made details of the communications public in a court case seeking access to records that the federal government is withholding. In a court filing, they said the communications reveal that federal officials engaged in a “Censorship Enterprise” spanning 11 federal agencies. …

“We have already received a number of documents that clearly prove that the federal government has an incestuous relationship with social media companies and clearly coordinate to censor freedom of speech, but we’re not done,” Mr. Schmitt said in a statement. (Source)

The federal government cannot restrict free speech, and when private companies become an arm of the federal government, the same rules apply.