In a Facebook group I am a part of, Geoffrey Jones shared this helpful collection of excerpts from Jewish and Christian texts indicating that the ancient interpreters of the Bible understood the firmament to be solid: “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, the middle layer of water solidified,and the nether heavens and the uppermost heavens were formed. Rab said: [God’s] handiwork [the heavens] was in fluid form, and on the second day it congealed; thus... Read more
Although I’ve been involved in singing in church for a while now, I had never before today sung a song as a solo. Today, with some help from my son on the violin, I sang “You Raise Me Up.” Even though I found it challenging (while as nervous as I was) to play and sing at the same time, forgot lots of important things my voice teacher has told me, and felt my voice crack on the high note, I... Read more
Via George Takei on Facebook Read more
The quote is from the conclusion of a recent post on John Pieret’s blog, “Thoughts in a Haystack”: Now, it is true that, within the scientific community, there are more atheists and fewer “traditional” believers than in the population at large. But whose fault is that when the “traditional” believers drill into their children’s heads that to accept the power of science to know the workings of the natural world is atheism and materialism? It is not that science, or... Read more
The quote from Rachel Held Evans (“It’s not capitulating to culture to change your mind based on new information. It’s wisdom.”) was a Facebook status update. The background image comes from the Archaeology News Network. It seemed to me an appropriate image to go with the quote – people unearthing new data. Of related interest, here’s a video with Karl Giberson talking about Intelligent Design. If it doesn’t show up as an embedded video, clicking what looks like a picture... Read more
David Hayward’s cartoon which I’ve shared above illustrates one of the ways that people use the Bible. The Bible, of course, includes plenty of material for dividing and separating people. But it also includes a lot of dynamite for busting holes in such walls and knocking them down altogether. What you choose to use this collection of human writings for says more about you than it does about the collection of writings itself. On a related note, after seeing the... Read more
HT Bob Cargill Read more
Yesterday, I didn't even know that there was such a thing as the national “nerd rankings” which IO9 shared. Today, I know I live in nerd paradise. I suspect that Indiana is probably even nerdier than its current rankng indicates, what with WhoNA and GenCon. Read more
From Viz magazine, via Matthew Morgenstern. I know some of you who are reading this will be very disappointed that this isn't a real thing… Read more
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