Category Archives: Books

Gadget Lust Again

Posted on 2009/05/12 by ngilmour

Kindle DX An e-ink reader with 3.3GB usable onboard storage, Whispernet access, and a screen big enough to take on .pdf files and native .pdf support… Mmm… bacon… Let the scoffers scoff; when this unit comes down in price, I … Continue reading →

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An Interesting Dissent in the Educational Psychology World

Posted on 2009/04/30 by ngilmour

How to Wake Up Slumbering Minds – WSJ.com. I might have to check this book out this summer.? Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?, according to this review, seems to take some of the psychological studies that educational theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Read it on ALDaily, teaching | 1 Comment

Bad, Bad Teacher Revisited

Posted on 2009/04/09 by ngilmour

The story of the lost Postman book did not end Tuesday.? When I got home that night (after a rip-roarin’ night at Medieval Times, which will yield pictures and possibly video clips soon), I could not put my hand on … Continue reading →

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The Best Holocaust Book I’ve Read

Posted on 2009/03/30 by ngilmour

I have a feeling that at least one or two of my readers will take this occasion to shoot me a bit of mockery for writing about a comic book.? (I don’t figure all three of you will do so.)? … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, pop culture | 1 Comment

The Good Kind of Elitism

Posted on 2009/03/28 by ngilmour

I read about T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messengers over on Jared Nelson’s blog a couple weeks ago, and the book sounded interesting enough that I laid down a few bucks and got … Continue reading →

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On Dictionaries

Posted on 2009/03/22 by ngilmour

“English dictionaries are?collections of precedents, rather than official codebooks of meaning.” –Robert Graves and Alan Hodge, The Reader Over your Shoulder: A Handbook for Writers of English Prose

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Must Perfect Be the Enemy of Good?

Posted on 2009/03/20 by ngilmour

I asked myself the same after I finished my lesson in our Enlightenment class yesterday. The paper my students are writing this time around, as I mentioned a couple days ago, has my students attempting some Enlightenment-era questions in whatever … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 5: Why Not Heidegger?

Posted on 2009/03/13 by ngilmour

So here I’m going to end my little series on division one of Being and Time.? If you’ve not had a chance to read them yet, here are the first four posts: Why Heidegger? There’s the World, and then There’s … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 4: Truth

Posted on 2009/03/12 by ngilmour

I first read Norman Geisler in 1995 and heard well the trumpets’ call for Christians to rally behind “absolute truth.”? I hadn’t thought enough, back then, about the connections between scientific and philosophical language to ask what solvent might dissolve … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 3: Formal Morality

Posted on 2009/03/11 by ngilmour

Heidegger is at his most amusing, I think, when he denies what he’s patently doing. ?In Being and Time, influenced (if Hubert Dreyfus and Michial Farmer don’t lead me astray) by Kierkegaard and Buber, Heidegger does spend a fair bit … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 2: There’s the World, and then there’s the World

Posted on 2009/03/10 by ngilmour

Certain words have such broad ranges of connotations that they can inspire entirely different stories depending on who uses them.? Ask an environmentalist and an evangelical about “the world,” and you’ll get two very different answers, both of which will … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Being and Time 1: Why Heidegger?

Posted on 2009/03/09 by ngilmour

Since I’ve got no classes to teach this week, and since paper-grading and dissertation research don’t strike me as blog material, I’m going to do three posts on division one of Being and Time. For those who don’t know much … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The New Media Frontier

Posted on 2009/02/18 by ngilmour

The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ I realize, now that I’ve read this book, that it’s possible to expect to be surprised, and when I read this book, I was surprised precisely where I expected.? The … Continue reading →

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Postman on Technology, the Short Version

Posted on 2009/02/16 by ngilmour

As some of you no doubt know, I’m teaching a special section of freshman composition for the first time this semester, one on the writings of the Enlightenment.? Along with the Viking/Penguin Portable Enlightenment Reader (our main textbook), I’ve also … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, teaching | 4 Comments

Abolishing Something, but I’m not Sure What

Posted on 2009/02/15 by ngilmour

Thirteen years do make a difference.? When I was a nineteen-year-old church camp counselor and took C.S. Lewis’s short book The Abolition of Man with me to read during down times, I marked myself immediately as the most intellectual church … Continue reading →

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Books and More Books

Posted on 2009/02/11 by ngilmour

I found this meme on Michial Farmer’s blog, and lemming that I am… One book you?re currently reading: On the Bondage of the Will by Luther. One book that changed your life: The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas. One book … Continue reading →

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God’s Intervention and Buried Coins

Posted on 2009/02/03 by ngilmour

Revision meetings are this week, so there won’t be any news from the Enlightenment until next week. In lit survey we finished up Doctor Faustus (though the discussion spilled into the hallway after class) and started our discussion of Everyman, … Continue reading →

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If Anyone Wants to Lavish Gifts on an Obscure Scholar

Posted on 2009/01/19 by ngilmour

If there are any rich blog-patrons out there, I have good news for you.? The C BD academic calendar showed up in the mail this weekend, and I’m positively salivating over some of the offerings.? If you want to start … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?

Posted on 2009/01/08 by ngilmour

I actually read this one while watching a sick Micah before we left for Indiana, so I’m working mainly from memory?here. ?This is my second Smith book, and once again I enjoyed it immensely. ?I get the sense reading Smith … Continue reading →

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Taking Heidegger up to Indiana

Posted on 2008/12/21 by ngilmour

So here I am in Plainfield, I hope.? As you might have surmised, I’m writing this in Georgia but scheduling it for the day after we’re supposed to drive. On the last few trips I’ve brought some sort of epic … Continue reading →

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