All posts in January 2010

NC State whipped Duke’s butt last night, and although I’d rather my team had won, I’m awfully proud that the flagship Duke hoops website takes the high road in reporting on the loss (as it consistently has done over the years). NC State does deserve congratulations, and it’s very good for the ACC when State…

From the SF Chronicle: members of Congress are pushing to revive a bill banning U.S. tech companies from working with governments that digitally spy on their citizens. — thus, apparently, foreclosing the possibility that U.S. tech companies could collaborate with. . . the U. S. government! Good plan, guys. (Hat tip, Bruce Schneier and Rebecca…

Others blogged and Facebooked this last week, but I stalled — partly because I had other things to blog, and partly because it seemed a waste of a blogpost to mention this at the same time everyone else did. So, as others said earlier, the SBL will eventually develop a web resource to be called…

Margaret has been following with the avid interest of a crime-novel aficionado the latest developments in Glasgow’s underworld gang war. Last week, assassins gunned down Kevin “The Gerbil” Carroll while he sat and waited outside a local ASDA supermarket. That scene itself was enough to pique interest, since the rate of gun violence is so…

Quoted for Truth: An IHE Quick Take entitled “Accents Matter in Ancient Greek.” I haven’t seen the t-shirts in question, but I can easily understand how such a problem might arise. It goes along with the frequent problem of non-Greek-literate sign painters trying to reproduce letterforms on painted institutional crests and mottoes (Glasgow cleverly avoids…

Yesterday, my friend (and former student at PTS) Katie Pate called my attention to Laura Veirs’s appearance last night at my neighbourhood night spot, the Òran Mór. I’d have gone to check it out, but I was still babying my convalescing cold. I did download a bunch of her songs, though (it’s still early in…

Well, let’s see. Friday morning I gave my Bibs 1B lecture, but as I wandered back to the office I realized that I felt pretty run-down, and my nose was sending me ominous signals. I accomplished as much as could only be done from campus, and then headed home to finish up my afternoon’s work…

You will never dismantle the master’s house if you want to occupy it, too.

Euan and I have known each other for nearly nine years online having “met” during the early days of blogging. Swapping emails, iChat conversations and comment threads I feel like I know Euan better than people I know locally but yet we have never met face to face. Until tomorrow that is! I am taking…

Helping Haiti, for instance. It’s not a hard enough life for a nation trying to survive the devastating legacy of generations of exploitative coups and dictatorships with one of the two weakest economies in the Western Hemisphere — they now have to cope with their capital city being leveled by an earthquake, leveling the shanties…

See, I’ve almost got that down. A good half of my interactions with strangers now begin with one of us saying ‘Sorry’ to the other, and I’m not unlikely to be the initial Sorry-er.   I’m fighting back backed-up responsibilities: some course prep, admin meetings, an article for church news, scheduling various other appointments. I…

Roland Boer and Loren Rosson (here and here) have fallen into a spiral of arguments that don’t quite engage one another; both claim to have insight into the true character of the Lord of the Rings, its qualities and its meaning. They occasionally invoke the question of authorial intent, but the broader discussion departs often…