Skip to main content

Conference Platypus

Houston has been a bustling place this fall with a host of conferences, lectures, and debates.  For as many as we've made, there have been two or three that we missed.  Of particular note for us was the Providence Classical School Colloquy which turned out to be an even bigger success than the one two years ago.  All the plenary and breakout sessions are now posted online at the school's website.  We've also enjoyed the seasonal round of Lanier lectures, but of particular interest was the HBU debate on the existence of God between Reynolds and Barker (now on Youtube).  Our seniors attended the lecture along with an assortment of teachers and family making for a particularly fun and informative evening.

All of this, of course, is really an elaborate apology for the lack of content on my blog this month but it's also an update to let you know some of the things we've been doing (it also consoles me just a little for missing all the amazing things that have been going on at Biola and the Gettys -no, seriously, every time I get the Getty newsletter I want to bang my head against the desk.).  There's also been the usual round of reading and teaching too which will hopefully produce its share of blog posts in due time.  All that to say: as soon as I get a minute to process all this stuff I'll be sharing it with you.  Until then, the Platypus still speaks Truth.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane: The Platypus Reads Part CCLII

I needed a break from A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (too many authors and too many styles coming in too fast) so I decided to turn back to an author whose work I've enjoyed exploring: Robert E. Howard.  This time, however, I decided to skip over Howard's famous Conan yarns and instead take a look at one of his earlier creations, Solomon Kane.  The idea of a puritan occult detective was too intriguing to pass up.  I have the whole collection of Kane's tales and I do intend to blog them all.  Right now, my little literary detour has only encompassed the first two short stories so I'm going to record my thoughts on them right away and get back to the rest as I have time. Skulls in the Stars Solomon Kane makes his debut with this classic bit of English Gothic including a haunted moor, a vengeful ghost, and a solitary miser.   Howard's Kane fits the portrait of the archetypal puritan: grim, principled, metaphysical, with an iron sense of right and wrong.  I h...

A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (Cont.): The Platypus Reads Part CCLI

Wow, it's hard to read anthologies at anything other than a slow crawl.  The change from author to author and style to style is exhausting.  Slowing down is a good thing, though, if it makes time for reflection.  That seems like one good reason to create an anthology: to force readers to slow down and reflect. With that as a preamble, let's move on to today's selections. The Black Ferris by Ray Badbury I didn't expect to see this Sci-Fi heavy hitter in a Fantasy collection, but there you go.  I've tried to get into Bradbury once or twice and failed.  His Martian Chronicles , in particular, resisted all my best efforts.  This short story, however, worked like a charm.  The sense of atmosphere in particular is masterfully done (a sort of Tom Sawyer strays into Edgar Allan Poe).  My only complaint is that there isn't more of it, but apparently Bradbury already fixed that by expanding the story into Something Wicked This Way Comes. This raise...

My Broken Wings: The Platypus Watches Trinity Blood

My questions were not all answered.  That's par for the course when dealing with anime.  Most anime is based on manga.  That means that an immense amount of plot and character development from a 24+ volume series must be condensed into 24 30 minute episodes.  In many cases, the anime is produced before the manga is even finished.  Thus, not having a satisfactory conclusion to an anime series is par for the course.  Most times, I accept this and shrug it off.  In the case of "Trinity Blood," however, I found its incomplete ending oddly fitting.  Let me explain. "Trinity Blood" is chiefly about brokenness.  The ending song with its chorus of "my broken wings" gives it away.  The setting, a post-apocalyptic Europe, gives it away as well.  In fact, every one of the characters in the world of "Trinity Blood" is broken in some way.  We see a young Pope, broken by the political machinations of his older siblings.  We see a y...