Author: AKMA

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 they need a hand. Plus, they use a Proclaimers song in the soundtrack!

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 the channel back to NPR when she leaves the kitchen.

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 I’m on his side.

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 good thing I have another ten or twelve hours till sundown.

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 doesn’t begin until 1:00.
 
So I’ll have plenty of time to walk the dog, polish my response, and work on a couple of late-breaking job applications after all.

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 Samuelson, Robert Darnton, James Grimmelmann, and now Miracle Jones (special thanks to David Weinberger for vigilant attention and links).
 
The Google settlement looms especially ominously since, as Steven Johnson observes, we stand at the very beginning of a radical transformation of the ways we read. Since we have evidence to sugget that a great many living authors will resist the rising digital tide (Canute’s courtiers, anyone?), the ultimately irresistible force that will crack open the digital production and distribution of texts will come from works in the public domain — from Shakespeare and the Bible to Twain, Dickens, Austen, and innumerable other comparable works. If someone prepares attractive, usable electronic versions of these acknowledged classics, they can cultivate the (very sound) presumption among readers that all books might be available in easily used, easily read, transferable formats. It looks from here as though the Google settlement attenuates the possibility that such a presumption might take root and blossom. I admire Google, and I trust all the Googlepolitans whom I know, but this settlement has an ugly subtext; I’m on the Internet Archive’s side in this fight.
 
As an author, as a reader, as a technologist, as an editor, in every facet of my capacities and expertise, I urge readers and authors — and above all, Google — to work to ensure maximal freedom relative to the distribution and appreciation of published works. Honest, it’s in our own interest.

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

Margaret and I had a short conversation just now about the summer. We’re trying to figure out what to do beginning in June, when our lease (and our contracts) runs out: what to do with our stuff, whether to look for an apartment in Baltimore (maybe not, since she may not have a full-time position and her current rooming option would be more affordable, but what about Pippa and me then), with whom we (or one of us) could spend a little time to save on rent or hotels. And it’s still mathematically possible that full-time jobs might turn up for both of us, taking us from relative penury to relative luxury. It’s more than slightly surreal, however, to be planning ahead to be broke and homeless.

I had thought that Secretary of Education would be a good way forward for me and the Obama Administration, but I would settle for Ambassador to the Vatican. Those other possible candidates have jobs, or have plenty of money on which to live; by appointing me, Pres. Obama would be fighting unemployment!

As I work through another stack of exegetical papers, I’m struck by the variety of ways that students approach the task of writing an interpretive essay. I’ve said before, elsewhere, that we in the biblical field have a very hard time articulating what we expect of students; we enter the field by having successfully assimilated an array of criteria that rarely (if ever) come to explicit expression, so when we assess student papers, it’s hard to communicate just what we’re finding right or wrong, praiseworthy or unsatisfactory. Our students aren’t dull-witted or willfully obtuse; they just don’t observe a translucent, rule-governed discourse that they might emulate. Even when one articulates an extensive description of criteria, and explains characteristics of excellent work, students often go their own way. They may be unaccustomed to these criteria, or may have been so firmly imprinted by another teacher’s different approach, or be generally confused about argumentation, exposition, or other tasks. In a word, student’s lack a clear, coherent, lucid explanation of what biblical scholars do, of what they as students should do, of how one might frame a sound interpretive argument, of what constitutes a supporting argument or a rebuttal, and so on.
 
If, as seems moderately likely, I have a certain amount of free time during the next year, I look forward to producing a small tract that lays out a rough sketch of what constitutes an interpretive problem, how to distinguish among a report and an expository essay and an exegetical essay, what constitutes evidence in exegesis, what to make of various exegetical methods, how to introduce the testimony of scholarly sources (with due attention to their diversity and disagreements), and so in — somewhat in the style of my handout on conducting NT research in Seabury’s United Library.
 
But first, I have to finish these papers. And if I do perchance find a job, this task — though all the more urgent — may have to wait for other immediate obligations.

Today’s the last day of my last class at Duke. Since I have no idea what (or whether) I’ll be teaching next year, this feels like… kinda… the end, as far as I know. I have been knocking myself out for so long to make myself a good teacher and to make a valuable contribution to the theory of my field, with some demonstrable accomplishments on both counts, it’s quite disorienting to arrive at this situation.
 
Yes, it’s not at all unlikely that I’ll eventually land another teaching job. The difference between “there’s a strong chance” and “too bad that didn’t pan out” seems particularly vivid to me, though, for the time being.