{"id":18834,"date":"2013-11-07T08:59:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=18834"},"modified":"2013-11-06T18:58:28","modified_gmt":"2013-11-06T23:58:28","slug":"7-things-9-oclock-11-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/11\/07\/7-things-9-oclock-11-7\/","title":{"rendered":"7 things @ 9 o’clock (11.7)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

1.<\/strong> Caleb Wilde, who blogs at Confessions of a Funeral Director, writes about \u201cThe Day the Pallbearers Dropped the Casket<\/a>.\u201d Tell me you don\u2019t want to read that<\/em>. (I believed all of it right up until the last line.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>2.<\/strong> Trajectory<\/em>, baby<\/a>. Always good to see more theologians and biblical scholars talking about trajectory. \u201cA new covenant, not of letter, but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.\u201d You can\u2019t exegete the pointing finger unless you look where it\u2019s pointing.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> \u201cCredit Report Wrongly Says Man Is Convicted Felon, Forces Him to Prove Innocence<\/a>.\u201d Credit-scoring agencies are terrible at their jobs. They claim to provide quantifiable measures of credit-worthiness, but they\u2019re unable to do that both because their quantitative models are not meaningful and because the data they plug into these sucky models is often inaccurate. The laws regulating these agencies are inadequate and poorly enforced.<\/p>\n

So as an initial first step, I would like to see the credit-reporting agencies better regulated so that they are more accountable to the law and less able to run roughshod over individuals, ruining lives as a business model.<\/p>\n

As a second step, I would like to see all of the executives and directors of Transunion, Experian, Equifax deported.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Well done, Sen. Rob Portman<\/a>. Sure, maybe Portman just wasn\u2019t deluded by screwy \u201cunskewers,\u201d and didn\u2019t want to lash himself to the mast of a sinking ship for a long-shot chance at the office John Nance Garner called \u201ca bucket of warm [spit].\u201d Or maybe, like most<\/em> people, he just didn\u2019t like Mitt Romney very much. But in any case, Portman had a choice: Political ambition or his son\u2019s best interest. And he made the right choice.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> Twelve years after 12 Years a Slave<\/em>:<\/p>\n

In spite of the memoir\u2019s commercial success, Northup earned only $3,000, and his ultimate fate is still a mystery. The last mention of him in the press occurred in 1857 when a Canadian newspaper reported that he was forced to flee a scheduled lecture appearance in Streetsville, Ontario, when audience members jeered him with racial epithets. There is speculation that money woes forced Northup to become a vagabond, and there are even far-flung theories that he was murdered by Merrill and Russell or abducted into slavery for a second time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

6.<\/strong> James McGrath<\/a> laments the History Channel\u2019s \u201cridiculous hype\u201d promoting it\u2019s upcoming Bible Secrets Revealed<\/em> series, but the show really does have a terrific line-up of scholars and interview subjects:<\/p>\n