About a year ago I mentioned my interest in creating a game that would illustrate the dynamics of canon formation in simplified form, in a way that was fun but also infirmative and educational. Some of you may have been wondering whether anything was going to come of this. If so, I have great news: the Canon card game now exists, as a physical reality with actual playing cards specific to the game, as well as rules for playing it! Why... Read more
From College Humor via Hemant Mehta. New commandment #9 is especially important, but so are many others. I don’t know about you, but I think there is something serious that emerges from this humorous video. What we prohibit and command as a society reflects our values. And yet even when there are shared values, we try to justify not practicing them ourselves out of self-interest or for the sake of our own convenience in spite of the effect on others.... Read more
Readers of this blog already know that a real life archaeologist doesn’t look like Indiana Jones. Rather than ask, “but what does a real life archaeologist look like?” there is a more interesting question: “What does the world look like to a real life archaeologist?” Thanks to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, now you can know the answer: Read more
The quote comes from George Zebrowski’s introduction to the volume Strange Gods edited by Roger Elwood. I was fortunate enough to happen across a copy in a second-hand bookstore recently, and snatched it up. Zebrowski’s statement published in 1974 seems no less true today. My first encounter with Zebrowski’s writing was when I was young and read his science fiction novel Macrolife, which deserves to be more widely known than it is – and not at all only among those... Read more
The Babylon Bee is sort of the Christian equivalent of The Onion, with spoof news and similar offerings. Today, they announced that Zondervan had published a Choose Your Own Adventure Bible: While the folks at Babylon Bee were using this idea to poke fun at the ways in which people read not only their own views, but a focus on themselves, into the Bible, I think there is a sense in which it is absolutely appropriate to view the Bible as... Read more
This joke shared in a comment seemed worth sharing in a blog post: An angel appears to the American Philosophical Association conference, and announces “God has deigned to answer one question. You have a week to decide; I will return and give you the answer.” Of course, being philosophers, they argue and can’t come to an agreement. Some want to ask about the correct ethical theory. Others want to know about free will. Others still demand further proof of God’s existence,... Read more
A piece that I wrote for the Latvian national music organization back in 2004 vanished from the internet at some point. I recently discovered that I still had the text of the piece in an e-mail, and so I thought I would share it here. Authentic Power and Gentleness: A Meeting With Pēteris Vasks Last week I had the unique privilege of introducing a group of American students from Butler University in Indianapolis to someone who is arguably Latvia’s most significant living... Read more
It should come as no surprise to anyone to learn that the chariot race from the original Ben Hur movie inspired the pod race scene in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. IO9 shared this video that intersperses the two for comparison: Is it just the chariot race, or is there more connection between these two tales of messiahs? And have any of you managed to see the new Ben Hur movie yet, and if so, what do you make... Read more
A McSweeney’s piece offered an alleged WikiLeaks reveal of faculty e-mails. What it depicts sounds like it could have been an exchange among some professors at my own institution. What about yours? It may or may not be an actual e-mail exchange from the author’s former institution of employment, but either way it deserves discussion. On the one hand, the article highlights ways in which faculty are just like students, except that in our case it is far less excusable. Faculty complain about students... Read more
Another great comic from Existential Comics. I think it makes some serious and not only humorous points. Do you agree? Read more
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