Romney on Religion: Untimely Notes
Probably because his advisers scared him into thinking that a great many American voters would reject a Mormon candidate for president, Republican hopeful Mitt Romney addressed the nation this past Dec. 6th, 2007, speaking from the George H. W. Bush memorial library in College Station, TX, on the “topic… [of] our religious liberty” and on [...]
Public School Bible Blues
Mark A. Chancey versus David Van Biema A Journalistic Promotion of the Bible in Schools Back in March, Time Magazine reporter David Van Biema wrote a shallow and largely positive report on the widespread adoption of Biblical studies curricula in American public schools. Biblical scholars such as myself find reason to be concerned about such [...]
The So-Called War On Terrorism
I have written elsewhere that “we are not in a war on terrorism.” In today’s political climate, I do not regard this as a straightforward statement, and so I think it ought to be explained. I have from the beginning objected to the policy description “war on terrorism” on linguistic grounds. “Terrorism” is an abstract [...]
The Black Hole of Criticism
Short Notes on My Summer Reading I: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski House of Leaves is one of the strangest novels I’ve read — ever. Although the book has received effusive praise from the likes of Brett Easton Ellis and the New York Times Book Review, I remain uncertain as to whether my [...]
Light Summer Listening
My father and I and my two dogs drove from Western North Carolina to Oregon on June 3rd-6th (2900 miles in 3.5 driving days) and we listened to several good books on iPod along the way (I purchased these books from Audible.com, and I was very happy with the product by the way). Al Gore, [...]
"Daylight" Savings Time—An Outmoded Fiasco
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. —Benjamin Franklin As of the early morning of March 11th, we entered “Daylight Savings Time” a month sooner than usual, thanks to the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005. It’s seven am here in Western North Carolina today, where we sit [...]
Spinoza and Leibniz
If you are interested in Spinoza and Leibniz you should read The Courtier and the Heretic. I really enjoyed this book. For one thing, it made me doubt that my graduate education was adequate, insofar as I had never been instructed that, as a biblical scholar, I should try to read Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politius some [...]
Every day I hang the drywall…
or whatever else needs to be done. The basement project is all consuming these days. I haven’t even taken the time to make snapshots and update the basement project website. I will do that this week, maybe late tonight. Basically, my days lately have me waking up at 5:30, without an alarm, driven purely by [...]
Busy busy busy
In the religion called Bokononism — a fictional faith invented and first described by Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Cat’s Cradle which has since taken on something of a life of its own — the catch-phrase “busy busy busy” functions something like a cross between a mantra, prayer, slogan and exclamation used to express the [...]
I’ve finished pulling together my documents for tenure applications.
Whew. What a lot of work. Over Christmas, I did some additional work on my home website (see here). Over Christmas, I also did some work on my homework website; see here.