The palpable idiocy of the new best-selling book: “The Secret”

Here’s a good way to save yourself $23.95: Don’t buy The Secret.  It’s not that I’m against secrets in general, it’s just that I want to spare you from wasting your money on a hot new book called “The Secret,” a book that has hit a new low in shallow, self-absorbed and insipid hype.  There is almost nothing in this book worth reading, which is a pretty amazing thing to say about a a book that is featured prominently at Borders and other large bookstores.  It’s has even become the number one best selling hardcover advice book according to the NYT.  And why wait to make it into a movie?  Truly, why wait?

I don’t know much about Rhonda Byrne, the author, or her gaggle of “great writers, leaders, philosophers, doctors, and scientists.”  Byrne presents an unlikely image of a sage.  She attempts to strike a pensive blonde pose on that the inside flap, yet obliviously presents herself as strained, contorted and out of her element. Much like her book.  Or am I too contaminated by the shallow, self-absorbed and insipid hype that one finds wrapped in that beautifully designed book jacket? Truly, the book jacket is gorgeous, though you would get equally helpful advice (perhaps more) by trying to “read” a Persian rug.

You’re impatient, though.  You want the goods.  Here they are: What can you say about a book based on the following premise: “Everything that’s coming into your life you are attracting into your life.  …

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To the Power of N

This is not about math. I just had a pre-somnolent image of a cluster of words that I just have to let out. In less pretentious language: I thought of this as I dozed off last night.

“A mnemonic pneumonic gnu’s knees.”

Nglish is a weird language. Note that of the 4 words that are all pronounced as though they start with en, none actually start with en. They also came from four different root languages to English (Latin, Greek, Khoikhoi, and German).

We are taught spelling in school as a sort of faith: This is how it is because it is. The root of spelling (in non-pictographic languages) is to produce a stream of characters (letters) to represent the series of sounds (phonemes) that make up each word. So why do we use three different letters for the same hard-K sound? Four if you count eks. Let’s knot forget the mental knife we use to silence kay itself in several common words. Why have we lost the letters for hard and soft ch? Greeks still use chi (χ is not x). Can you spontaneously spout the 5 pronunciations of “ough”?

Basically, why are so many words pronounced differently than they are spelled? The simple answer is, teenagers.

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Happy Birthday to Dangerous Intersection

One year ago, I made my first tentative post to this blog.  It was really a test more than a post, as were the handful of posts for the next two weeks.   We really didn’t get running until mid-March, 2006.  

In that month of March 2006, “Grumpypilgrim” and I were happy to see that, on average, 29 people visited this site every day.  Probably 20 of these daily visits were me. This month (February, 2007), there have been almost 2,000 visits to this site every day.  I guarantee that most of them are not me.   Over the life of this blog, we’ve now published 830 posts and we’ve received more than 3,000 comments.  

I am honored that so many people would take the time to visit this site and to actually stay for awhile.  The average visitor reads three pages, the most commonly read page being the home page, which consists of the ten most recent posts.  

I am truly fortunate to be sharing this space with my co-authors.  Some of them, such as Jason, have been my friends for a long time.  Others are people I’ve met (in person or electronically) more recently.  I carefully read everything each of them posts to this site.  

Many people ask whether I can tell who is visiting the blog.  The answer is no.  My traffic software does not provide me with any meaningful identifying information.  It does show me, though, that most visitors are from the U.S.   Next in line are “unknown,” …

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“It Was A Pleasure To Burn…”

February's Big Read in Missouri has selected a surprising novel--Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I should not assume everyone today has read it, so briefly it is a novel about a future in which it is illegal to read books.  The fire department, because all houses are built of fireproof…

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The alleged problem with “Me too!” comments

One of our earlier posts concerned the efforts of evangelicals to relegate early hominid fossils to the back room of Kenya’s National Museum.   That post recently drew this comment from James Davenock:

It seems that many here could simply replace the name Sam Harris, with Jesus, Newton or Sullivan in their writings. Many keep quoting others in an attempt to get their point across rather than just trying to get their point across. You could say “Dave, I admire Jesus’ viewpoints” or “Dave, I admire Sam Harris’ viewpoints” or “Dave, I admire Newton’s viewpoints”. . .

 The difference between Science and Religion is Science has a process by which to prove its ideas while Religion does not and requires you to simply accept or excommunicate. I have found the same smugness in both religious and science types and that is a bit disquieting.

The wise man first says “I do not know”

I started responding to James Davenock’s comment at the location of that earlier post, but it grew long enough to justify posting at this separate location.

Davenock raises a good point.  I suspect that there are many non-believers out there (all of us, some of the time), who “hero-worship” people like Richard Dawkins just like many theists hero-worship James Dobson or Jesus. You can quickly spot these folks by their writings, which essentially amount to “Way to go, Charles [Darwin]!”  Or “Way to go, Jesus!”  This lack of thoughtful content is no more informative than the rote prayers …

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