All posts in March 2006

I think this is the first time that I’ve used the American Airlines terminal at O’Hare, and my first impression is that it beats United (our family’s usual airline). Now, I got a little lucky — I’m sitting near a floor electrical outlet, but I didn’t see many of them available — and my flight…

Margaret and I have often exchanged poignant observations about the assumptions on parenting that inform Dr. Suess’s classic Horton Hatches the Egg. On the other hand, I realized again this morning how powerfully the book’s moral catch-phrase had affected me over the years from when I used to read Horton frequently. I meant what I…

John Seely Brown brings a technologist’s eye to what World of Warcraft and its online siblings portend. There’s a lot that a brief article in Wired can’t take account of (for instance, just for starters, “why not learn to improvise from materials at hand in a physical environment, like camping or hiking?”), but I agree…

So, it’s thesis season for one of our degree programs, and I’m reading and commenting on theses for several; I assigned weekly short papers for one of my classes this term (why did I not remember that that meant I would have to read weekly papers, too); I redesigned my courses this term, so I…

In a gesture toward perpetuating my wearisome fixation with the pernicious anti-intellectual Ponzi fiction, The daVinci Code, I offer a pointer to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’s podcast of its “Not My Job” segment (streaming audio available here, but I couldn’t get it to work — if they’re going to make an mp3 version available…

Today the Fantasy Baseball League in which I participate — which is about ten years old — holds our annual player auction. I have paid absolutely no attention to baseball this winter, so I’m going to play it safe and stick with proven greats. I’ll pay top dollar for Cal Ripken and Jim Palmer, and…

Margaret called my attention to a story that should curdle the blood of everyone — but especially anyone with affection or respect for Duke University. First, I acknowledge the principle of innocence till proof of guilt; nothing has been proved at this point. Second, the allegations compiled in this story demand public, vigorous, unwavering enforcement…

Jill and Esther cover a fantastic re-employment of Warcraft, and articulate some of the noteworthy problems relative to using the Warcraft infrastructure for such outlandish merriment. And cheers to Jennifer’s classmate Isaac Everett for his participation in the Game-Mosh winning entry. Maybe Micah and Isaac and I should form a weird society for game-design/theological reflection.…

Here’s what I was going to say about the first of those links from Saturday: By the way, lest I forget, the Episcopal Church has asked that we Blogarian Episcopalians link to their survey on “online evangelism” through their website. If you feel like giving the Episcopal Church a piece of your mind (relative to…

What do elves, Tom Coates, a mallet quest, dwarves, St. Paul, and ninjas have in common? They all have parts in today’s sermon (posted below in the “extended” section). Tom brought the typology of dwarves/elves and pirates/ninjas to my attention; St.Paul wrote the epistle on which my sermon concentrated (with constant attention to the Torah,…

For the time being, I’m working on tomorrow’s sermon. I can’t keep the links to all these posts sitting in my browser. Eventually there’ll be a real post here, commenting on them, but for now I’ll just put the links up. From Joi: Church Leadership and World of Warcraft From Jennifer: Union Seminary Student Wins…

Margaret got the following phishing letter yesterday, from which I copy and paste directly: Dear CitiBank Member, We are looking forward to your assistance and understanding and inform you about new CitiBusiness® department system updrade performed by security management team in order to protect our clients from increased online fraud activity, unauthorized account access, illegal…