All posts in April 2009

The Wall Street Journal (cue the ominous organ chords) ran an article the other day that made me feel even more insignificant than I started out feeling; they claimed that nearly a half million Americans make their living from their blogs, and a pretty good living too! I was suspicious (though that might have been…

A number of concerned citizens called my attention to Mark C Taylor’s op-ed in the New York Times about “The end of the university as we know it.” (When did he move to Columbia? I wasn’t looking.) Speaking as a minor-league educational radical, I’m pleased that Taylor called the world’s attention to the possibility that…

“Since January, more than 13,000 people have died of complications from seasonal flu, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s weekly report on the causes of death in the nation,” according to CNN.

Remember the movie scenes wherein prospective parents generate fantasies about their hypothetical children? “When she grows up, she’ll be an all-star softball player!” “When he grows up, he’ll be a ballet dancer!” I don’t think Margaret and I ever stated this explicitly in our newlywed conversations, but we both have upheld an unstated vow to…

On Saturday, Josiah performed and defended his Senior Plan at Marlboro. Margaret took the train up from Baltimore and reports that the performance was “fab”; evidently his examiners agreed, because his Plan has been approved. He’s now set for graduation in May, and his commencement ceremony will conclude with a valediction from a homeless theologian…

We’re not precisely in a position to make a financial contribution at the moment, but the very least I can do for David and the folks at St Pat’s is to pass along the video:     David’s a dear friend and a former student, and he and the congregation are making progress — but…

Are you living with a teenager? Here’s one clue: when she comes downstairs and, without asking, changes the radio station from the NPR morning news to the music station she wants to listen to — that’s a teenager. I’m not complaining; she fried an egg and made (fake) bacon for me. If only she’d change…

I wrote some critical remarks about Thomas Friedman back at the F2C conference, but I support vigorously his argument that the nation’s prosperity correlates with the standing of our educational system. He indulges in some post hoc ergo propter hoc rhetoric, but until someone introduces causal data that clarifies the correct relation of these circumstances…

The Letter to the Ephesians says, “Be angry, but do not let the sun go down on your wrath.” Yesterday, one of the jobs for which there was a faint trace of a chance that I might be hired was foreclosed to my disadvantage, for reasons that provoke in me a seething fury. It’s a…

I woke up early and put on my jacket and tie, so as to arrive on campus in plenty of time for the beginning of the Duke Symposium on Archaeology, Politics, and the Media — at which I’m giving a response to Mark Goodacre’s presentation (1, 2, 3) — when I noticed that the symposium…

I hope that more than just a few people are paying attention to the Google settlement, a legal decision that portends serious consequences for those who relish an open environment for the cultural commons. Certainly, a number of noteworthy observers have published caveats about the implications of this possible enclosure of the public domain: Pamela…

I wonder whether Hugo Chavez is interested in postmodern theological intepretation of the Bible. Or Oprah.