about a book he wrote

I wrote an awesome book about a guy, Johnny Blast, who has to drive a truckload of drugs somewhere to save his hot wife's life. He barely makes the delivery, and then he kills the bad guys and keeps the drugs. His wife dies, though.
 

about zealots

Think of someone you love, whose love for you is such a given that you sometimes take them for granted.

Imagine that person far away, the hostage of a violent zealot. Imagine your loved one, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, forced to their knees. Imagine that person positioned before a high-definition camera in the desert. Imagine, dressed head to toe in black, the zealot crowding in the picture with a highly polished knife.

The zealot speaks to the camera, his hand on your loved one's shoulder, telling you there is no choice. He tells you that forces beyond all three of you have forced this moment. The zealot tells you that your loved one will die, and that, although he will slit your loved one's throat, he did not choose to.

Imagine the zealot puts the knife to the throat of your beloved and cuts through the skin, tears into the muscles, saws through the tendons, and hits bone. Imagine your loved one gurgling, blood urging out. That's how they die.

about "A Land More Kind Than Home" by Wiley Cash

Wiley Cash might know the kinds of people he writes about in his debut novel, A Land More Kind Than Home, but the voices of his first-person narrators sound affected. To channel small-town North Carolina folk, Wiley carpet bombs the narration's sixth grade-level speech with double negatives and other idiomatic devices. This impression, omnipresent from the outset, hampered my enjoying the read. Beyond that, the action is largely predictable and the characters flat. Three voices narrate the plot: a young boy, an old woman, and a late middle-aged sheriff.

A fundamentalist, snake-handling minister is the villain; the protagonists are individually overmatched against him. But together the confluence of choices people make leave the villain dead and the fallen redeemed. A Land More Kind Than Home isn't a bad book, necessarily. It's just immature.

Something on the movie "Stone"

"Stone" opens on a domestic scene circa 1963: a young husband sits on the couch. His wallflower wife brings him a beer. After some hand-wringing, she says she's leaving him. He bolts upstairs, grabs their baby daughter and dangles her out the open bedroom window of their two-story home. He threatens to drop the child if the wife abandons him. She concedes, agrees to stay. The scene ends with the baby safely back in her crib, the wife slamming the window shut, killing a buzzing housefly. Silence.

The young man is now Jack Mabry (Robert DeNiro), a stern, privately devout parole officer wrapping up his career. His last case is Gerald Creeson, aka "Stone" (Edward Norton), a fidgety loser locked up for arson. Intent on securing his release from prison, Stone and his wife Lucetta (Milla Jovovich) start to work on Jack, intent on corrupting him through very welcome relations with Lucetta. The film traces this psychologically twisted triangle.

In the time before what he hopes will be his final hearing, Stone discovers and embraces a spiritual theory of redemption: one must become aware of his depravity, of all that surrounds him, and open himself to the possibility of redemption. The moment you're first aware comes inconspicuously; it may come, for example, when you first notice a small sound, maybe a breeze or buzzing insect. The film ends somewhat ambiguously, but the redemption theory provides a framework for interpreting each character's fate.

Edward Norton, Milla Jovavich, and Robert DeNiro give three fantastic performances.

Bias in prisoner swap story

Mainstream outlets cover the Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap from the Israeli perspective (i.e., "Israeli Solder to be Released") while others and foreign outlets go either way. In this case (pictured at right), only Al Jazeera takes an angle on the Palestinian prisoners.

Incidentally, the ratio of prisoners being freed (1000 Palestinians to 1 Israeli) is interesting because it lends itself to either of two diametrically opposed conclusions: (1) 1000 to 1? How many warmongering Palestinians are there?, or (2) 1000 to 1? How could the Israelis imprison so many Palestinians?