I promised a few days ago that I’d follow up on my critique of hipness with a post that’s more affirmative, and although I’m still going to be asking questions as I go, I’m nonetheless going to shoot for an overall stance of appreciation.? So here it goes. One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic As I mentioned [...]
I wish I had the video-editing aptitude and the comfort in front of a camera that Callid Keefe-Perry does, but his thoughtful vlog entry (I haven’t used that neologism for years–it feels good to type it) warrants a thoughtful response, so I’ll do so in text, the medium with which I remain more comfortable. On [...]
First an explanation of my long delay between posts: as a first-year teacher in Emmanuel College’s system, and for the first time teaching when my home life has no bedtime and no wake-up time, I planned poorly.? Midterms took more out of me (and out of the last two weeks) than I had anticipated by [...]
In a comment to a recent book review post, Tripp Fuller asked me what my basic take was on religious pluralism, a theological question that drives much of his own theological reflections.? I answered briefly in a comment of my own, but I’ve been thinking about the question some more over the last several days, [...]
I thought I’d become immune to such things, but looking back, I realize now that some parts of me have not outgrown my Milligan petulance. I’ve liked Picasso’s Guernica ever since I became aware of it in college, and the painting became especially powerful in my imagination after somebody for some reason (the right-wing media [...]
I know it’s not great poetry, but I miss you, Grandma. Because I knew when Death would stop My eyes refused to see Now days can pass without a thought But with no warning, misery Will sweep into a crowded place And threaten to consume My well-versed mask of competence: I cannot weep in crowded [...]
Day one of our in-state vacation is in the bag.? In the morning we visited the Fernbank Museum of Natural History, and after a late lunch, we spent the afternoon swimming in the hotel’s pool, ordered pizza to the hotel room, and went back out swimming after a bit of Cartoon Network to kill time [...]
I learned that lesson a few days ago–I downloaded a third-party utility that was supposed to be able to convert .rtf files into .lrf files (the native format for the Sony Reader), and I got visions of turning Early English Books Online documents into books to read on my Sony. Bad idea. The third party [...]
Genius: The Modern View I first ran into David Brooks when I got Bobos In Paradise from QPB.? Those were the days before he became the “Red State, Blue State” guy, before he became one of the Republican pundits who didn’t like Sarah Palin, before he became known mainly as one of Leo Strauss’s neocon [...]
Three reported slain at theater One of the three was Ben Teague, husband to my dissertation director Fran Teague and friend to many of my friends. If you pray, pray now.
I wrote this post back on December 22 originally, but I figured it might bear a quick revision and a repost while most of my readers aren’t on Christmas break.? So here it goes! El Ick’s blog recently had quite an interesting conversation about differences between proselytizing (a word for which I always need spell [...]
I’m aware that I could just be getting overly sensitive as I get closer to completing the Ph.D, but I’ve been thinking lately about all the folksy sayings there are disparaging teachers and comparing us to children.? Ten-year-olds on their MySpace pages know more about how computers work than do programming professors.? A child on [...]
Twenty-Five Sortof Random Things I Do and Don’t Believe I found this little not-meme on Internet Monk’s site, and since I participated in the less-interesting “25 Random Things About Me” meme on Facebook, I figured there wasn’t any reason not to take a shot at this one. I’d like to see all of my blogging [...]
I think that the Heidegger podcast saved me from the grumpiness that I could hear over the lecture around me. Yes, I’m listening to a Berkeley course on Heidegger’s Being and Time?as I read through it with Michial Farmer. ?It’s quite nice. Anyway, as I listened to Hubert Dreyfus expound on the role of norms [...]
Sundays not the Same Today Normally I don’t get halfway through Darrell Huckaby’s weekly column before I roll my eyes and give up.? That’s alright; he probably doesn’t read this blog either.? Darrell is one of many local columnists in Georgia who makes his weekly hay talking not exclusively but often about the way things [...]
El Ick’s blog recently had quite an interesting conversation about differences between proselytizing (a word for which I always need spell check) and conversation, and rather than write long paragraphs? in his comments bar, I figured I’d write this here and then link back.? So now that I’ve linked back, I should write those paragraphs. [...]
Folks write all the time about the bizarre ads that gmail pops up alongside their messages, and this post is going to be another instance of the same.? I was reading my emails this afternoon when, glancing over to the commercials, I saw three consecutive ads asking me to join humanist organizations.? Given that I [...]
Listening to Berkley’s podcasted Introduction to Astronomy course the other day (I’m up to the midpoint of the semester and as far out as Jupiter), I finally started to understand Neil Postman’s more common riffs about education, namely that question-asking should be one of the skills that schools should teach.? I always thought of this [...]
I really did have high hopes for Bill Maher’s podcast. I started downloading podcasts a couple weeks ago, and when I discovered that HBO offered the audio of Maher’s show for free, I downloaded the last bits of last season.? So on some level I suppose I was like the old men in “Rip van [...]
No time to think? I was reading around as the library day wound down, and I stumbled upon this little piece on Arts and Letters Daily. (You didn’t think I found these little Internet nuggets on my own, did you?) I don’t have any major critiques of it, just a moment of gratitude to the [...]
