[links] Link salad observes that the solstice is the end of the world as we know it

[jaylake]

Has Fiction Lost Its Faith? - Sort of weird reading this critique of religion in fiction from my perspective.

The 13 Dwarves In The Hobbit, Ranked By Hotness - Uhh...

Hammerspace - Hammerspace (also known as malletspace) is a fan-envisioned extradimensional, instantly accessible storage area in fiction, which is used to explain how animated,

Comments

[aiela]

Any hotness ranking that puts Thorin FOURTH is clearly wrong.

1. Kili
2. Thorin (I much prefer Richard Armitage clean-shaven, which is not normal for me, I usually much prefer facial hair)
3. Fili.

(I almost feel weird that I have an opinion on this, but there it is.)

[rekre8]

With you on that.

The feeling weird about having an opinion. And Kili winning.

[mcjulie]

Agreed. They were right about the top four, but Thorin has to be one or two.

I don't think it's weird. When I was a teenager and my best friend and I were obsessed with the Bakshi Lord of the Rings (it's true!) we ranked the characters according to hotness. Legolas won handily, but Aragorn held his own. I still have a fondness for that older-seeming, more grizzled take on Aragorn...

[tesserae_]

Excellent link set today - thanks particularly for the David Frum piece.

On a related topic, I've been shaking my head for years over this notion that armed civilians would be a better response to gun massacres than keeping the guns away from the people likely to buy them in the first place, and I've come to the conclusion that it's the gun nuts' version of "She was asking for it!" - i.e., an attempt at victim-blaming to cover the unwillingness to change society. Of course, it's a nasty and toxic kind of magical thinking, too....

[daveraines]

Re: Fiction and faith - the author doesn't treat genre fiction, which might be interesting. Judging from the shelves in my last church's library (always reliable data), Christian Romance is alive and thriving; Christian historicals also; and of course the Left Behind series is fantasy. Bad fantasy, but best sellers.

Science fiction, not so much. But then there's _The Sparrow_.

I should finish that novel one of these days.

[mevennen]

> I realize that to conservative Americans, the rest of the world is a series of Socialist hells that can be ignored, but a lot fewer people die in those Socialist hells of gun violence. Personal safety is a small price to pay for surrendering our gun pathology. Not that we likely ever will…

Accurate article. Most of us outside the US are just baffled by this gun thing, to be honest.

[ulfhirtha]

many of us in the US are too.

[mevennen]

Good to know. A lot of my American friends have been expressing similar sentiments to the ones in the article, I must say.

[houseboatonstyx]

piece of artillery designed to kill a hundred human beings in a hot minute

I went to the Slacktivist link hoping there would be more detail on which guns fit this description, but there was not. I wish some pro-gun-contrtol person with the right knowledge, would write up something detailing this for non-gun people. In internet discussion, as soon as someone favors a moderate policy of restricting 'assault' or 'military style' guns, the gun fans attack those terms. We need new, transparent terms and examples of what kind of guns can kill how many people per minute.

For example, the theatre Batman killer's gun jammed after less than 30 bullets. Normally it shot 50-60 bullets per minute, which could have wiped out everyone in front row seats.

[houseboatonstyx]

Sorry, only the first line should have been in italics, as a quote from the Slacktivist piece.