Weekly Meanderings

I am in Atlanta at the Annual Meeting of SBL. I will be giving a paper on the theology of the KJV New Testament translation, and the picture to the right is the title page (of the KJV, not my paper!). The KJV will be 400 years old in 2011.

Why I love church … by Fr Rob. Speaking of church, are you interested in kids ministries? (HT: HZ) More speaking of church, check this out with Dan Kimball and Deb Hirsch.

Rejoicing with April and Brian.

Andy Rowell gives advice on giving advice, and it’s wise. Whitney Jones on forgiveness: desired, choosy, difficult.

Patrick‘s taking some hits for me in Ireland. Thanks brother. And JR Briggs pondering how songs can get inside and transform.

You scientists, check this out. Wowzers. What does it mean? (HT: JT) Speaking of science and nature, Derek begins a series on CS Lewis and miracles.

Nobody but Karen can get by with this much snark: “If Mama Palin can manage to keep the Freshman 20 off and keep up the botox injections she might be in the limelight for the next six years. The American public will tolerate a lot of things – stupidity for one and loose jowls for another – but the one thing that sure as shooting will keep Hollywood from calling and Americans from electing a woman president is a big arse.” [By the way, Karen’s post is a commentary on the American public, not Sarah Palin.]

A quick sketch of the Church Calendar.

A quick sketch of where Illinois fits.

Mark Roberts on the deity of Christ.

Meanderings in the News

1. Ruby! “It’s that continuing inequity that spurred Bridges to pursue educational activism. She travels around the country giving talks at schools and now, as her hometown of New Orleans tries to build an education system better than the one it lost after Hurricane Katrina, she’s turning her attention local. “

2. Emily Pilloton and Bring back shop class! “In short, we believed we could bring back shop class, infuse it with design thinking, and build real community progress in a struggling rural place like Bertie County. Bertie has a total population of 20,000, with 27 people per square mile; one-third of the children live in poverty; and 95 percent of all public school students receive a free or reduced-rate lunch.”

3. Cell phone health dangers: “The 737 minutes that we talk on cellphones monthly, on average, according to the C.T.I.A., makes today’s typical user indistinguishable from the heavy user of 10 years ago. Ms. Davis recommends keeping a phone out of close proximity to the head or body, by using wired headsets or the phone’s speaker. Children should text rather than call, she said, and pregnant women should keep phones away from the abdomen. The F.C.C. concurs about the best way to avoid exposure. It is not by choosing a phone with a marginally lower SAR, it says, but rather by holding the cellphone “away from the head or body.”

4. Louise Knight, Jane Addams and a review by Ruth Graham: “It takes nothing away from Addams’ progressive bona fides to conclude that her views on peace, poverty and womanhood weren’t as tidy as we assume today. But maybe that makes her all the more a modern kind of saint. As she once told a “rough-looking” heckler during a speech in Chicago, “while I did not intend to be subsidized by millionaires, neither did I propose to be bullied by workingmen.” That would be a fine motto for independents everywhere.”

5. David Clark Scott: “Are night owls really more intelligent than morning larks? Does it matter? London School of Economics researcher Satoshi Kanazawa says that folks who stay up late have higher IQs than people who start their day early He also suggests that this is a relatively new phenomenon in the span of human history. Nocturnal activity was a dangerous thing prior to the advent of fire. He says today’s night owls are defying ancestral-genetic tendencies, according to his article in Psychology Today. Kanazawa is also writing a book, scheduled to be published next year, titled: “Escaping Biology: Why Intelligent People Do Unnatural Things.”

6. Robert Sapolsky: “What are we to make of the brain processing literal and metaphorical versions of a concept in the same brain region? Or that our neural circuitry doesn’t cleanly differentiate between the real and the symbolic? What are the consequences of the fact that evolution is a tinkerer and not an inventor, and has duct-taped metaphors and symbols to whichever pre-existing brain areas provided the closest fit?”

7. They earn it, they deserve it, they can have it.

8. We’re living longer: Saletan at Slate with some good graphs: “Like everybody before you, you’re going to die. But thanks to modern medicine and health practices, you’ll probably live much longer than your ancestors did. On average, at age 50, you have more years of life ahead of you than your great-grandparents had at age 40. Not just more years of decline, but more years of health. And these changes in life and health expectancy aren’t just happening in rich countries. They’re transforming the world.”

9. I don’t get the hullabaloo about the body scanning machines at the airport. That’s all I have to say about it.

10. Sad divulgences: “WASHINGTON — A secret history of the United States government’s Nazi-hunting operation concludes that American intelligence officials created a “safe haven” in the United States for Nazis and their collaborators after World War II, and it details decades of clashes, often hidden, with other nations over war criminals here and abroad.”

Meanderings in Sports

Bears win, that’s incredible. Beat the Vikings, even more incredible.

NCAA basketball begins anew. Yah, baby!