![]() While this attention to detail was normally celebrated, there was one instance when a hysterical news media-and even Christie herself-became alarmed that she may have taken things too far. ![]() With few exceptions, her descriptions of dosages, reactions, and mortality rates were rivaled only in specialist texts. She had volunteered to become an apothecary’s assistant at a hospital during both World Wars, acquiring a vast knowledge of drugs she then utilized in her detective fiction. Slipped into nightcaps, eye drops, even seeping from wallpaper, a variety of fatal chemicals provided her characters with mysterious ailments and puzzling clues that made for ideal murder material.Ĭhristie’s assured handling of poisons came from first-hand experience with pharmaceuticals. ![]() ![]() While her fictional victims were always subject to being stabbed, shot, or pushed off a cliff, the primary method of disposal was poison. Arsenic, cyanide, even nicotine: No toxic substance escaped the attention of Agatha Christie, the celebrated mystery writer of over five dozen novels. ![]()
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![]() ![]() Thor functioned primarily as a protector-god, although stories concerning him also explained natural phenomena, thus linking him with the etiological type of myth (one which explains how some aspect of life came to be). Like almost all of the Norse gods, Thor is doomed to die at Ragnarök, the end of the world and twilight of the gods, but falls only after killing the great serpent with his powerful hammer Mjollnir, dying to its poison his sons Magni and Modi survive Ragnarök along with a small number of other gods and inherit his hammer which they use to restore order. The majority of the tales featuring Thor, in fact, put him in conflict with a giant or with his nemesis the Midgard Serpent ( Jörmungandr, the “huge monster”), a monstrous snake who coils and twists itself around the world. ![]() Thor was the defender of Asgard, realm of the gods, and Midgard, the human realm, and is primarily associated with protection through great feats of arms in slaying giants. ![]() He is the son of Odin, chief of the gods, and Odin's consort Jord (Earth) and husband of the fertility goddess Sif, who is the mother of his son Modi and daughter Thrud his other son, Magni, may be from a union with the giantess Jarnsaxa. Thor (Old Norse: Þórr) is the Norse god of thunder, the sky, and agriculture. ![]() ![]() Now, to be fair, du Mez did not state that she has definitively concluded that she supports LGBT rights as such - although Jesus and John Wayne made it crystal clear where her sympathies lie. It was du Mez’s implication that it was Burk’s theological views which were primarily shaped by culture rather than her own. What struck me about this debate, however, is not that Denny Burk, a conservative Baptist and staunch pro-lifer, and Kristin Kobes du Mez, a progressive scholar who displayed thinly veiled contempt for pro-lifers through her recent book, have much to disagree on. ![]() There is obviously much the two disagree on, and their back-and-forth on LGBT issues was an interesting exchange, with both penning blog posts to articulate their disagreements more clearly. Kristin Kobes du Mez accuses biblical Christians of being shaped by culture instead of Sacred Scripture.Įarlier this month, conservative evangelical Denny Burk, pastor and professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, faced off on Twitter with progressive Kristin Kobes du Mez, whose book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation has been the toast of the mainstream press for the past year. Liberal Christianity comes not from a closer study of Scripture, but of culture by Jonathan Van Maren for Life Site News ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In An Immense World, science journalist Ed Yong dives into the vast variety of animal senses with a seemingly endless supply of awe-inspiring facts. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong For a deep look into reproductive anatomy or a memoir connecting music to physics, check out some of Smithsonian magazine’s favorite science books of 2022. From those, our editors and contributors have picked ten favorites that explore our universe through the lens of creatures ranging from a tiny virus to a dedicated anthropologist to extinct dinosaurs. In between the breaking news stories, we dug into longer works on a variety of fascinating scientific disciplines. And the James Webb Space Telescope unfolded to capture breathtaking images of our universe. ![]() Mpox (formerly known as monkeypox) spread around the United States, while global deaths from Covid-19 topped six million. ![]() Researchers discovered lost cities in the Bolivian Amazon after flying over the rainforest. This year in science was filled with amazing discoveries, sobering stats related to mounting illness and death from viruses, and major technological achievements in space. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() With the FBI and Memphis Police Department working hard to build a case against Dmitry and his brother trying to kill him, he is forced to tell Royal of his true identity, but Royal also is keeping a secret one that changes everything. Only, his brother Ivan comes to the Memphis from New York City bent on a murderous revenge. Falling in love with the clueless Royal makes Dmitry want to break the code, leave his empire and start a life far away from the perils of the Thieves in Law. ![]() ![]() What she does not know is that her knight in shining armor is also the head of the Medlov Organized Crime Family, a faction of the elite Russian mafia Vory v Zakone. After she accepts his job offer, she soon accepts his gifts, his bed and his lifestyle. What she finds is the seven foot, blonde millionaire Dmitry Medlov, who offers her a job as the manager of his new boutique Dmitry’s Closet. Orphaned virgin Royal Stone is looking for employment in one of the country’s toughest recessions. Nelson, author of the epic romance Ivy’s Twisted Vine, comes a story about Memphis, TN, a deadly faction of the Russian mafia and an innocent woman who dismantles an empire. ![]() ![]() Watson’s appearances in prologue and epilogue are pitch-perfect his stand-in on this case-fusty, grumpy Ivan-suffers by contrast. ![]() While the framework of a new narrator, pseudonyms, and deep masquerade creates space for improvisation, it’s a double-edged sword that invites comparison to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic duo. In addition to its overarching case, the book makes moves to address the “locked-room mystery” of Holmes as a person. With a compelling central mystery, the novel makes excellent use of familiar historical figures to evoke a complex social world. The task leads from Parisian art galleries to van Gogh’s deathbed, where suicide more closely resembles murder. They are tasked with finding several Old Masters paintings after the Louvre discovers that the ones they’ve been displaying are fakes. Holmes, masquerading as Monsieur Vernet, travels with a continental art historian called Ivan. ![]() Styled as a latter-day continuation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, Timothy Miller’s novel encompasses famous painters and shady art world figures as Holmes attempts to track down a ring of forgers and solve Vincent van Gogh’s suspicious death. Watson, who did not participate in the case, begins to read. Watson inherits his private papers, and a posthumous sorting yields an unexpected treasure: an unpublished manuscript detailing a case in France. ![]() After a long retirement and longer life, Sherlock Holmes is dead. ![]() |