There are several upcoming events in Indianapolis related to refugees and justice, a subject that has been very much on my mind, as I’ll be teaching a course that will run over the entirety of the next academic year, in parallel with the Butler Seminar on Religion and Global Affairs, the theme of which for the upcoming year will be “Religion, Refugees, and Migration.” We’ll have a number of guest speakers and local panelists, including Joshua Landis, M. Jan Holton, Miguel... Read more
Paul Levinson had fun with the announcement that NBC’s decision to cancel the time travel TV show Timeless has been reversed, exploring the possibility that this change was a result of time travel – and what that would imply in the realms of philosophy and physics. It was interesting during the last season to get involved in a conversation with a friend about whether the show’s depiction of time travel was incoherent – and if so, whether that was an issue with the... Read more
The program for Gen Con was made available online on Sunday. That means that you can search for keywords such as “gamification,” “education,” or “McGrath and find the session that my Butler University colleagues and I are hosting. I was somewhat dismayed to see that they have scheduled a session about using games to teach information literacy at the same time as ours, not to mention several others focused on education. It is just like the AAR/SBL annual meeting, finding... Read more
The episode “Oxygen” begins with the Doctor saying “Space: the final frontier.” He then talks about space, the void, wanting to kill us. The first scene after the credits features the Doctor lecturing about how space kills us (eventually leading to a student asking what that has to do with crop rotation). Responding to a distress call, the Doctor says, “You only see the true face of the universe when its asking for your help…we show iurs by how we respond.” The... Read more
 Kevin Frank shared this on Facebook, and it seemed the best thing for me to share for this occasion. Happy mother’s day, whether you are a mother, or celebrating with your mom, or remembering a mother who is no longer present. Everyone can find a reason to celebrate today – whatever you may or may not think you see on your toast this morning! 🙂 Read more
Here’s the audio of the full performance of the LibCats at the opening ceremonies of the Butler Summer Games on Wednesday. I set a video camera somewhere hoping to be able to share a video of the performance. However, some of my colleagues ended up playing giant Jenga in between the camera and the band! And so here is a video with just the audio of the performance. Please do feel free to skip past “Viva La Library” which I already shared here,... Read more
Laura Robinson wrote on Facebook: You know, whenever Trump’s at his usual evil worst, I’m not even that angry at him. I’ve known what Trump was since I was eleven years old and saw him on television. I’ve never expected him to be anything else. The people I really get mad at are the people from the Religious Right who looked at that man’s greed, sexism, racism, authoritarianism, and violence and decided to call a man like that a Christian... Read more
This is a recording of the first ever live performance of the information literacy song, Viva La Library. This took place at the opening ceremony of the Butler Summer Games on May 10th, 2017. Performed by the LibCats. Â Â Read more
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The Mandaean Book of John: Critical Edition, Translation, and Commentary
I was delighted to see the following in the latest De Gruyter catalog: I have no idea why it is in the “church history” section of the catalog. But it is good that this project is so close to being wrapped up and completed that the publisher has begun spreading the word about what I am convinced is a very important forthcoming work! Read more