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"I Can't Relate to This Professor"

I hear this often from students.

Does having five kids help me relate to my students?  Does it make me a better teacher?  Sometimes it helps me relate.  But should it?  Must it?

On John 1:3 and Many Questionable Translations

*UPDATE*  

John 1:3-4New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people.

The NIV translates John 1:3 as follows: "Through Him [the Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."

Almost all translations translate John 1:3 like the NIV.  One of C.S. Lewis's predecessors, George MacDonald, challenges that translation and bases an entire sermon on a divergent translation here.

Look again at the second independent clause, particularly "nothing was made that has been made."  What does the "that has been made" add to the sentence?  Nothing of substance!  It's oxymoronic (and perhaps plain moronic) to say that nothing has been made that has been made, since all things that have been made are all and only the things that have been made!

As MacDonald would have it, we should translate verses 3 and 4 as follows:

"All things were made through Him and without Him was not one thing made. [Stop]  That which was made in Him was life, and the life was the light of men."

According to MacDonald, such a translation has much theological significance. Is MacDonald's principle of charity at work justifiable?  Should we prefer a translation which--all other things being equal--has a better theological upshot and is more linguistically felicitous?  I say, yes.

"This" is not a Post

Is My Six-Year-Old Son Getting Smarter or Dumber?

Me: Son, let me ask you this: Are you getting smarter or dumber watching cartoons for SO LONG today?!

Sam:  Dumber.

Bootleggers and Baptists in Arkansas

The economic theory of "Bootleggers and Baptists" is alive and well in Arkansas with the proposed amendment allowing dry counties to go wet on the ballot.  Obviously in a state like Arkansas there are mixed opinions since this is a big amendment for a small state.  In fact, the Washington Post just reported on it.

“This fight has made for some unusual alliances,” said Brian Richardson, chairman of the Citizens for Locals Rights, which opposes the amendment. “The package stores and religious moral objectors — they’re certainly strange bedfellows.”

For the economic theory of Bootleggers and Baptists see this short video:

Girls Who Are Boys Who Like Boys to Be Girls

The previous post brought to mind the following song from my generation.  One of the main ideas in the song is that what truly matters is being (and doing) what (or who) you love--period.

I love good satire, so I choose to think of this song as satirical.  [Warning: Don't watch in front of kids or your grandma]

Boys and Girls, by Blur
Street's like a jungle
So call the police
Following the herd
Down to Greece
On holiday 
Love in the 90's
Is paranoid
On sunny beaches
Take your chances looking for

[Chorus]
Girls who are boys
Who like boys to be girls
Who do boys like they're girls
Who do girls like they're boys
Always should be someone you really love

On the PGA President's Firing for Calling a Man a Little Girl

Karen Crouse writing for the New York Times:

When [ex-PGA President Ted] Bishop chose to disparage one man, the English golfer Ian Poulter, on Twitter by calling him a “little girl,” he effectively demeaned all women, including his own two daughters and granddaughter.

Golf Channel: Ted Bishops Legacy Forever Altered With Tweet

Read that article title again.  Someone's entire legacy changed by a Tweet.  That must've been some Tweet!

Ted Bishop on his infamous Tweet:

It took Bishop 90 minutes, after checking his phone and seeing reaction from what he had said, to realize he was in trouble.

"Someone had labeled me a sexist and I knew immediately I had a huge problem," said Bishop.

Bishop obviously knows the PC Thought Police drill.  Say something offensive to the "tolerant" PC crowd, get labeled a sexist, racist, homophobe, and so forth and prepare to be destroyed.

So what did Ted Bishop say, exactly?

Are Do-It-Yourself Projects In Decline Because Today's Men Aren't MEN?

According to the article here, more men can't (or won't) do the basic repairs around the house that men of the past once did.  The author avers that perhaps this is due to there being fewer masculine men.  (See Jo Metrosexual to the right looking at his abs in the mirror as he...vacuums).

None of this is true, however, of this man writing this blog post.

Excerpt:

Yet, undeniably, today’s 20- and 30-somethings don’t seem to possess your traditional “dad skills”. The dismal fact that a mere five per cent of 18-24s would attempt to unblock a sink doesn’t bode well for humanity – unless you’re a plumber.[For SHAME!]

Men [have been] clamouring over themselves to be seen as anything but sexist.

But as we lost our rough edges and took on more of what had traditionally been regarded as female roles, no one really stopped to question whether equality for women came with a cost for masculinity. If everything overtly “masculine” is dismissed as sexist, what’s left of men is, arguably, sexless.

You see this behavioural androgyny everywhere, from the increasingly corporate and sterile football terraces to the Croc-wearing househusband on the school run.

In an age where we’re expected to Hoover, iron, change nappies, make a woman climax for four hours like Sting and cook like Jamie Oliver, old-fashioned pursuits like DIY have become quaint, self-indulgent and almost shameful.

The result is that many modern men are more like our mothers than our fathers, while the opposite is true for women, who are increasingly wearing the trousers.

Obama Is a Republican

This has got to be one of the stupider things I've read in a while from The American Conservative (sic).  Thankfully Scott Lemieux sets the record straight so I won't feel the need to do likewise. Obama is a moderate-liberal Democrat.  Below is an excerpt which highlights the track record:

Social issues As if he knows how weak the argument is, Bartlett’s discussion of Obama and same-sex marriage is perfunctory: “Simply stating public support for gay marriage would seem to have been a no-brainer for Obama, but it took him two long years to speak out on the subject and only after being pressured to do so.” Well, first of all, this still puts him to the left of most Republicans. But even so prior to explicitly supporting same-sex marriage, he opposed Prop 8, he signed legislation repealing DADT, and he refused to defend DOMA. These are not “Republican” positions. 

Does Science Disprove Free Will?

According to this author the answer is a resounding "NO."  I just finished Alfred Mele's most recent book on the issue.  It's written for a popular audience and is very clear & well written.  For $10-15 the book is probably overpriced given that it consists in a mere 95 pages.  But it's a fun a little read if you want to quickly get up to speed on some of the recent scientific work which has been alleged to debunk freedom of the will.  Daniel Dennett gives it his endorsement--for what it's worth, which probably ain't much.

Proverb

Do not visit your neighbor's house too often, or he will become weary of you and hate you (Proverbs 25:17)

A Puzzle About (Biblical) Interpretation

Context, context, context.  It is said that to know the meaning of a verse in the Bible, one has to know the surrounding context.  One has to know the meaning of the immediate context (the several verses before and after the one in question) and the broader context (e.g. the book it is written in, etc.)

How, then, does interpretation ever get started?  For simplicity sake let's reduce the Bible to three books and each book to four verses (the numbers don't matter to see the puzzle--and let's suppose that each verse is a single sentence).  Suppose we focus on the first book and verses 1, 2, 3, and 4 (which, we're supposing, are all of the verses).  In order to understand the meaning of 1, we must understand the meaning of at least verse 2 (and perhaps verses 3 and 4).  But to understand the meaning of 2, one must understand the meaning of at least 3 (and presumably 1 as well).  But to understand the meaning of 3 we must understand 2 and 4.  But to understand 4....  And thus we have a potentially vicious hermeneutical circle. It won't help to appeal to our understanding of books two and three since the same problem applies to each of the books as well.  To understand the meaning of anything it seems that one must already understand the meaning of everything.

Now Playing

I was at this particular concert. If you listen to the first few minutes closely you can hear me.

Floyd's final album is coming out on November 7th.  I will own a copy.  After all, I have all their albums.  Too bad that Rick Wright died and they probably won't go on tour again.  Best concert I've ever been to, and I've seen Dylan three times and Pearl Jam twice.

Beard (the verb)

Beards are wonderful.  "Beard," too is wonderful, and it comes in not only noun form but also as a verb. What follows are a few definitions given in the OED followed by brief commentary.

1. To become bearded, get a beard. 

As in "Lewis, King of Hungary, was said to have bearded at age fifteen."

 2. To chip or plane away the edge of (timber) to a required shape.

As in "That bearded brute of a beastly-man climbed the tree with his bare hands and bearded the top of it into the bust of Brutus!"

 3. To brush or rub with the beard.

As in "Some of the young men were romping with the young girls and bearding their rosy faces" or "Daddy bearded me when we were wrestling."

And my all-time favorite:

Much Ado About Beards

Below is another good beard quotation I came across today thanks to MT.  Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing gets to a classic, female dilemma regarding the beard.

73% of Females at Occidental College Sexually Assaulted

If true, send your kids to the Orient, not the Occident.

Another close look at the 1 in 4/5 statistics that I talked about previously.