![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.conversiondiary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/7_quick_takes_sm1.jpg\" "\\"7_quick_takes_sm\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n No theme this week, just a number of excellent links I\u2019ve not gotten around to posting when I was striving for coherency. \u00a0If you\u2019ve ever gotten lost in early Church history or if you just love awesome things, you should read this story from Swarthmore about students who invented a sect to trick their history professor<\/a> (and then he turned the tables!). \u00a0 Here\u2019s a teaser:<\/p>\n Our plot thickened: We introduced a Sherkite scholar\u2014E.R. Englehardt, actually a classmate\u2019s uncle in California. We found another student\u2019s relative, who lived nearby and had a flair for dramatics, to be Englehardt. We enlisted him to give a lecture on campus after the winter break.<\/p>\n We sent an announcement to The Phoenix and posted flyers on bulletin boards advertising the lecture on Jan. 5 by a distinguished historian from McGill University in Canada (not easily verified, in those days before the Internet). Dr. Englehardt was the author of a forthcoming book, The Sherkites and Other Little Known Sects of the Reformation. We began to draft his speech\u2014and plan his speedy exit at the end. When the next issue of The Phoenix appeared, we searched eagerly for our announcement. It wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n Instead, we were shocked and horrified to read a long, angry letter to the editor from E.R. Englehardt. He insisted that he had no intention of coming to Swarthmore to give a lecture on Jan. 5 and was going to Afghanistan for several months! The letter went on to expose our movement as an \u201cold and famous 18th-century hoax\u2014long since exposed\u2014that the Sherkites were \u2026 followers of a supposed 16th-century theologian named Friederich [sic] Sherk. There was \u2026 such an individual, as readers of my Einleitung zu der Geschichte den Vorreformations Theologie und Sektengrundlage (4 vols., Weimar, 1938) well know. . . . \u201cSherk\u201d is a corruption of the old German \u201cschurke,\u201d a crafty or subtle person, and the name is particularly appropriate because it enshrines the personal traits which the Sherkites hold in the highest regard.\u201d<\/p>\n Clearly, someone was trying to outhoax us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n Right now, I\u2019m only keeping up with one tv show (until the new season of The Thick of It<\/a> starts): SyFy\u2019s Faceoff<\/a>. \u00a0This is a Project Runway-style reality show for special effects make-up artists. \u00a0So, when they had an unconventional materials immunity challenge in the pilot episode, I got to hear the following, \u201cI\u2019m going for a reptilian look and I\u2019m using lentils to bring out the texture.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n