There is a useful video from BioLogos explaining the genetic evidence for evolution, including the evidence of humans and chimpanzees sharing a common ancestor, with humans having one fewer chromosome as a result of chromosome fusion. Unfortunately embedding is prohibited and so I’ve only been able to link to it. Please share it with people you know who would benefit from seeing it! Read more
“The Awakening” is another relatively short episode (by the classic series’ standards, not by today’s, when most episodes are roughly an hour long). In it, the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough go to visit Tegan’s grandfather, and in the village discover that elaborate war games reenacting the time of the English Civil War are underway. The episode is entirely focused on the discovery, so typical in Doctor Who, that something which is thought to be superstition is entirely factual, but with... Read more
From Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller Read more
Doctor Who is a cultural phenomenon in both the UK and the United States, continuing to go from strength-to-strength as it approaches its 50th anniversary in 2013. Over the show’s long history on television—and in various spin-off TV shows, audio adventures, novels and comic books—religion and religious themes have consistently been a subject of interest. In recent years the show has attracted everything from Church of England conferences dedicated to its use in preaching to guest appearances by Richard Dawkins. Abstracts... Read more
I’m hoping to read three books with students who will be participating in the trip to Israel/Palestine in May 2012. The first I’ve already decided on, and it is A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground by Bruce Fisk. I’m also using it as a textbook in my historical Jesus class. Its focus on the historical Jesus in connection with actual sites in the Holy Land makes it seem an ideal choice to cover the historical... Read more
Internet Monk has a post “Creation Police at Toys-R-Us” about an article on the Institute for Creation Research web site, complaining about a children’s game and its depiction of Noah’s ark. Here’s the priceless quote: The Noah’s Ark Game looks innocuous enough, with a picture of colorful animals crowding the roof and deck of a boat barely large enough to hold them. But it misrepresents the Ark to such a degree that it undermines the feasibility of Scripture’s account of the... Read more
New Scientist posted some ways to get access to Wikipedia today in spite of the blackout. On the one hand, I think they are worth drawing attention to, since some of these would definitely be useful for other sites in other situations where the main original site is not working for some reason. On the other hand, I wonder about the appropriateness of a workaround that allows one to circumvent a blackout intentionally made in protest. Perhaps it reminds me... Read more
The episode “Warriors of the Deep” was the first from the final season of Doctor Who to feature Peter Davison as the Doctor. The show took a darker and somewhat more pessimistic turn with this episode, foreshadowing some of the direction in the most recent seasons. This episode marked a return of two related species from the Jon Pertwee era, the Silurians and the Sea Devils. The Silurians have since featured in the post-hiatus series as well. The Doctor and... Read more
Very shortly, Wikipedia and many other sites around the internet will be going dark for a day. When I mentioned this in class today, most students didn’t know about it. Since many people will be Googling PIPA and SOPA trying to figure out what is going on tomorrow, and Wikipedia ironically won’t be there to explain it to them, I thought I would say just a little about what is happening (since a far as I know, Patheos will still... Read more
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Web Yeshiva
Today I learned about the site Web Yeshiva, which has links to a wide range of important classic Jewish texts -the Tanach, Mishnah, Talmudim, Midrashim, other commentaries, and more. I’ve added it to the “Useful Sites” page as well. Read more