I heard this morning that Congress is going ahead with its investigation into whether Prosperity Gospel pastors should pay taxes as corporations or whether they can retain their non-profit status.
No biggie.
What amused me was that the chief figure they were investigating was an Atlanta pastor named Creflo Dollar.? Now if a novelist had created this [...]
Pastor Problems Afflict All Three Presidential Candidates
I’m sure folks have been saying these things since the Jeremiah Wright scandal started to dominate the airwaves, but this little piece seemed a concise and articulate take on the matter. ? I’ve not spent much time around black preachers, but some of the white preachers I know, even [...]
I taught Job 22-31 today, a fun set of chapters in a fun book.? By the end of chapter 21, Job has entirely destroyed his three friends’ arguments, and it shows in the third round of speeches.? Eliphaz, unable to marshal any more intelligent arguments or even speculations, simply starts accusing Job of stuff that, [...]
I led discussion in our Old English seminar and held my own with the big ax-swinging Anglo-Saxonists.? That’s always a nice feeling.? Now the next few weeks are going to be low-maintenance for me in there–each student has one discussion to lead, and mine is over, so now all I have to do between now [...]
On a whim I googled Wes Arblaster, and as of yet, he still does not have any chili peppers on his ratemyprofessors.com review.? I’m not the only one!? And my “hotness” is, for the moment, as high as Wes Heartbreaker!
I’m a small, sad man.? I acknowledge that.
Am I fishing for funky Google searches?? Yes.
We spent the bulk of today’s class talking about the fourth scene of J.B., in which paparazzi-style reporters scheme to capture a picture of Sarah, J.B.’s wife, just at the moment when she hears that her children have died.? We noted that the language in the scene is [...]
I’ve got about seven more papers to grade in this set, and I’ll be done once again (until April 8, that is).? As often happens with the third paper, some folks rose to the challenge and wrote really great research essays, and others gave me summaries of Bible stories without much of a thesis.? The [...]
Because we were up so late putting Micah’s bed together, we won’t be doing early morning service this morning, but nonetheless I’m up, finalizing Sunday school.? (Isn’t that the way for us teachers?)? We’re going to start with a brief talk about theology of resurrection, accompanied by the handout below, and then do a close [...]
What a day… Easter egg hunt in the morning, assembling Micah’s big boy bed in the evening… and pictures to prove it all!
Enjoy!
Easter Eggs and a New Bed
I began to teach the long speeches of Job yesterday, and once again the text rewarded some intensive teaching.? By the end of the class both groups could discern between Eliphaz and Bildad (Zophar comes Tuesday), and we interrogated the scholarly commonplace that the pious herdsman Job 1-2 has nothing to do with the caustic [...]
Once more this week (it happens about once a year), I found myself the object of scrutiny because I neither watch nor enjoy South Park.? And once again my interlocutors’ working assumption seemed to be that I must not like it because I’m some sort of prude who can’t get past dirty jokes to get [...]
I love Job more every time I teach it.? I know that systematic theologians are sometimes fond of praising the “insight” or the “faithfulness” of the Hebrew Bible, damning their intellect by praise of their instincts.? But Job is something else.? Every time I dig into those speeches I see new theological (that’s right–theological) gold [...]
Too bad.? Too bad.? I think break was productive, even if not producing enough.? I got enough papers graded that I should be able to finish the rest this week, and I got enough Anglo-Saxon research done that I’ll be able to lead a class on my project next week.? I read enough for comps [...]
that a child has two parents in grad school?
When we asked him what he was doing, he promptly answered,
“Writing a Paper!”
Spring break is almost over, and it seems as though I just got into it.? I think I struck a good balance this week: I did some work around the house, read a fair bit for my comprehensive exams, got some material together for my Anglo-Saxon research project, and graded a few papers.? And in [...]
Actually the pictures go all the way back into February; my bad for neglecting to upload.
March 2008
Two months and a week from now my written comps begin.? I’m strangely calm about it; I’ve still got about eight or ten plays I want to read and a couple long poems, and I have some serious review after that, but I’ve actually got a finite body of text that I want to cover [...]
$800,000 per annum raise for UGA head football coach
Yeah, that’s his raise. I could teach 57 years at UGA at my current pay rate and not match his raise. (I’d have to teach 200 years to match a year of his salary now.)
And people wonder why we TA’s don’t care about our [...]
Class was a short one today, largely because so many in my classes didn’t have substantial enough drafts to take much time revising.? Such are the dangers of asynchronous revision.
On the other hand, I am glad that I’m done with paper 2 and have a few days before paper 3 comes in.? I’ve already made [...]
I’ve now finished all but the marginal papers for the second round of freshman comp assignments.? (Why the marginal ones are marginal I can’t post here.)? As a group the papers weren’t bad, and a few really showed some acumen connecting the conventions and the content of particular Psalms and lyric poems.? But all the [...]
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