A message to students at the start of a new academic year: If you are determined to plagiarize, at least have the courtesy to do so as early as possible in the semester. Plagiarism is a heinous act of intellectual dishonesty. It is the attempt to pass off another’s work as your own, whether in their exact words or with minor changes. It deserves to be punished with at least an automatic failing grade for the class. But it is... Read more

Anyone who uses Strong’s Numbers has no idea how to read Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek (depending on the Strong’s Number). All that will spill from that person’s mouth is rubbish (mixed with that morning’s breakfast). — Michael Whitenton, “No, that’s not what it means at all (an open letter)” on his blog Ecce Homo Read more

A colleague sent me this link to a Huffington Post article about a course at Occidental College on Stupidity. Here’s the course description: Stupidity is neither ignorance nor organicity, but rather, a corollary of knowing and an element of normalcy, the double of intelligence rather than its opposite. It is an artifact of our nature as finite beings and one of the most powerful determinants of human destiny. Stupidity is always the name of the Other, and it is the... Read more

On a Romanian blog I learned of an open letter written by Lou Pritchett, a retired VP of Procter and Gamble, to President Obama. In it, he expresses a number of things that scare him about Obama. Even being in regular contact with conservative viewpoints, I was still taken aback by what Pritchett wrote: AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA Dear President Obama: You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you... Read more

I’m sure that the thought has crossed my mind before, and I’m sure that books I read about the Hebrew Bible mentioned this, but having been reading lately about ancient creation stories, perhaps my mind has been processing this familiar data from a different angle lately. What struck me this morning is the absence of any account in the Hebrew Bible of the origin of the gods. Their existence is denied by some late authors (e.g. Deutero-Isaiah) and assumed by... Read more

I toyed with the idea of calling or subtitling this sabbatical retrospective “the good, the bad and the ugly”. Certainly there was some of the latter: a severe case of bronchitis early on, and an attempted break-in at my house (I was out of the house for perhaps 5 minutes, came home and found the patio door had been opened, and heard someone trying to get in. I was extremely grateful for the mop handle that prevented it from being... Read more

Just a quick movie-related post. I just recently saw the movie Crossing Over. It offers a portrait of diverse experiences by a range of (mostly illegal) immigrants in the United States. It is very thought provoking. Be warned, however, that this is probably not a movie to show to a church group in order to get a discussion on immigration going (although obviously it depends on the church). The movie features really graphic sex, violence, and foul language in English,... Read more

Tony Jones has posted on a topic that I also touched on recently, sharing some personal accounts of the difficulties faced by people who, because of their chromosomes and/or their genitalia, might be considered heterosexual according to one country’s laws and homosexual according to another’s. Read more

Chris Tilling offered a link to some really excellent, top notch New Testament scholars in videos on YouTube. But how can they compete with this video from Aaron Rathburn, presenting the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews in Star Wars format? Read more

I am offering a shorter review than I usually tend to of The Science Fiction Handbook by M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), not because the book has lesser value, but on the contrary, because the book is so rich, diverse and complex that it is difficult to summarize, other than in the form of a recommendation that, if you are interested in science fiction, and in particular if you are interested in serious academic study of... Read more