All posts in March 2009

On March 19th, my Flickr Photostream seems to have gotten nigh onto 3,000 hits — while no single photo got more than eight hits (and that was Margaret’s and my wedding invitation; second place was PIppa’s Crime Scene Halloween costume). I assume that this reflects the activity of some bot or spider, but it’s a…

I tweeted and back-channeled up a storm at Freedom to Connect today. Don’t have much energy to write about it all again. It was great to see David Isenberg, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Dean Landsman, Bruce Schmoetzer, and the John Jorgenson Quintet.

Leaving in just a few minutes for Freedom to Connect. Pippa and I have stocked up on CDs (our current car doesn’t have an “Aux” input for our iPods) of music and spoken word. Snacks, seltzer, paper towels, check.   While Pippa participated in church school, I spent some time on the Invocation for the…

I began our Thursday class with prayers of thanks and intercession for John Hope Franklin and his legacy. Since Franklin was a Duke hero, local public radio listeners have been immersed in reports about his admirable life and career. In the midst of all this attention to a scholar’s persistent, ultimately successful efforts to make…

I had a bad day yesterday; discretion prevents my being too specific, but it involved a vivid indication that the twenty years of deliberation, research, imagination, and composition that have gone into my scholarly work simply haven’t made much of an impact. And if the work in which I take (perhaps unjustifiable) pride isn’t a…

I’ve been intrigued and bemused by the different ways my body has responded to my beginning to exercise more intentionally. Some days my legs feel quite leaden, hard to lift — not sore, just inert. Some days my biggest problem is my wind, prickling as though I were trying to inhale steel wool instead of…

I feel for Dave. Just a month or so ago, Peachpit Press published his very helpful introduction to Facebook, and no sooner does it hit the shelves than Facebook alters its interface so as to disrupt the smooth connection between the copious illustrations in Dave’s book (on one hand) and the experience of a novice…

Even though my NCAA brackets are a disaster (thanks very much, Wake Forest and Maryland); even though our job situation is not any more nearly resolved than it was several weeks ago; even though Pippa has spent almost the whole day visiting other people, rather than making her dad laugh (usually at himself) as she…

One aspect of the online conversation several of us were holding involved the question of whether “we” or “students” or some other constituency could read long-form texts adequately any more. If students can’t read The City of God but immerse themselves in Facebook status updates all day, have we arrived at the threshold of civilization’s…

Last year, David Isenberg spontaneously called on me at the Freedom To Connect conference to offer a “prayer for the internet.” Now, I spent enough years teaching for Protestants that I have some practice at extemporaneous prayer; such prayers are always an adventure, but with a decent sense of how to get to a conclusion,…

This morning I spent some time pondering the extent to which Francis Bacon’s diagnoses of intellectual errors persist in contemporary theologizing (as well as in professedly non-theological biblical interpretation). In the course of contemplating a renewal of Baconian asceticism from within theology, I stumbled on O. Bradley Bassler’s “Theology and the Modern Age,” which intrigued…