So Much To Say

I feel like I should have a lot to say, but I don't. I have actually been so busy that I cannot think about anything other than my next run, my next trip or what is going on at work tomorrow/next week/this weekend...

First of all, I have been taking advantage of the fact that we are allowed to travel on the weekends by...traveling on the weekends. Every weekend. As fun at it has been, I am getting tired... I have been to Pensacola, San Francisco and Baltimore in the last 3 weekends, and this weekend I am going to Grayton Beach, FL for some Easter weekend fun in the sun with some friends.

Secondly, I am training to run another half marathon. This one takes place in Louisville, KY. I am very excited about it, because we get to run through Churchill Downs as part of the course. Afterwards, there is beer and free tickets to a horse race, which I have never been to before. And at...Churchill Downs! That is pretty cool.

After that, I am planning on doing a triathlon, so am also trying to train for that at the same time. I just started swimming today and it is kicking my ass! I only swam about a third of a mile - it took me 10 mins - it zapped all my arm strength (haha - WHAT arm strength you say?) and it took my breath away...Literally! For the race, I will have to swim at least a half mile, if not more. Whew.

So, the rest of my time is spent working (which is good but I recently switched positions and so have been trying to learn the ropes etc.), eating (I tend to do a lot of that!) and sleeping. Pretty much in that order.

So...that is the reason I have nothing to say.

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St. Pat's: What we Have to Look Forward To..

I had a really good video from St. Pat's, but I can't get it to load on here for some reason. Youtube hates me. So... Here are a few pictures of our wild and crazy day. We started off with breakfast at Atchafalaya, then went to the Bulldog on Magazine for some cider, green beer and nasty green jello shots. I think I was ready for bed by 8 p.m. I almost forgot - we also went to the French Quarter and we were starving but everywhere was

PACKED, so we went to Wendy's (yeah the first time in a LONG TIME I have had fast food!) thinking it would be fast. It wasn't. We waited for a long time with a lot of drunk people and finally got up to the front just to be served by a girl who was wearing her visor so low there was no way she could have been able to see us (or anyone) at all. Then we watched a guy get kicked out by the rent-a-cop for calling Wendy's a Dick or some sort of nasty word. What an adventure!

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Road Map Tasmania Photos

3/14 - 3/22 Tasmania




Hobart, Cradle Mountain, Bay of Fires, Freycinet Peninsula, Mt. Wellington, Bruny Island, Huon Trail, Richmond



Tasmania back to Mooloolaba & Billabong:

3/22/07 - 4/21/07

On March 22, 2007 we flew from Hobart, Tasmania to Sydney, where we stayed with our friends until the 28th (in their lovely house in Pittwater).  On the 28th and 29th we drove like crazy, covering over 1,000 km in the two days.  We only intended to stay with Steve for a week, but before we knew it three weeks had flown by!!!  Finally, on the 22nd we returned to Billabong for good, spending the next week getting her back in shape and ready to go.

By the way Steve is a great boat builder -- check out his website at: www.marshalldesign.blogspot.com .

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March Madness

I don't follow college basketball like I used to.

I was an undergrad at Duke University from 1975 to 1979. Nowadays, Duke is bigtime basketball, but it wasn't always so. The Duke Blue Devils' record in conference play my first three years there was 7-29, and they pretty consistently finished at the bottom of the Atlantic Coast Conference.

But I was a fan. I bet I didn't miss more than a handful of home games.

And then in my senior year, the team turned things around. After six seasons of not winning a single ACC tournament game, the Blue Devils swept the tournament. As conference champs, they went to the NCAA tournament and kept winning until the final game, which they lost to the University of Kentucky.

We loved our team. Duke is a small school. My freshman class had about 1200 students (Kennesaw's total enrollment is close to 20,000), so we knew these guys. And they had taken us from the bottom to the top in one season.

Things are different at Duke now. A whole generation of students has come to think of winning as almost a birthright. For us, winning wasn’t a birthright, but that doesn’t mean we were any less enthusiastic than the current “Cameron Crazies.” At many schools, students get game tickets ahead of time. At Duke, there were no advance tickets; we lined up outside Cameron Indoor Stadium, and when the doors opened, we flashed our student IDs and went in. After waiting outside in the cold for a few hours, doing whatever we could to stay warm, we weren’t inclined to be especially friendly to the opposing team.

And since students got every seat in the lower level--the wealthiest and most generous alumni had to settle for good seats above--the noise on the floor could be deafening.

Not long after I graduated, the students began to get out of hand. Their chants, which had begun to cross the line from fanatic to obscene, prompted Duke president Terry Sanford to send a letter to the student body about the growing problem. “Crudeness, profanity, and cheapness should not be our reputation,” he said, “but it is.”

I was so proud to hear that at the very next game--against arch rival University of North Carolina!--Duke students, instead of chanting “Go to hell, Carolina, go to hell [clap clap],” as we did, held up signs that said “Welcome Fellow Scholars.” And the first time the ref blew his whistle against the Blue Devils, instead of the usual obscene chant that was all too audible over the radio and television, the students chanted, “We beg to differ! We beg to differ!”

After my time at Duke, I moved down the road to Chapel Hill for two more degrees. I loved Chapel Hill--everything except Tar Heel basketball. I tried, Lord knows I tried, but I just couldn’t make myself do it, and after a season or two I gave up the effort.

I shared this story with Ralph Luker, who is also of both Duke and UNC, and readers of my old newspaper column a few years ago, but I think again about those years every time March rolls around.

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Road Trip Sydney to Melbourne Photos

3/5/07 - 3/13/07



3/5 - 3/9 Sydney to Wilson Promontory

Kiama, Jamberoo & Kangaroo Valley, Jervis Bay, Depot Beach, Narooma, Tilba Tilba, Bermagui & Moon Bay, Eden / Boyd's Tower, Buchan Caves, Lakes Entrance, Wilson Promontory


3/10 - 3/13 Phillip Island to Melbourne

Phillip Island, Great Ocean Road & Otway National Park, Melbourne

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Mammon

Click on image for readable version.

from Uncommon Descent, via Tom McMahon.

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religious literacy and bible courses

Today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution has an interview with historian Stephen Prothero concerning his forthcoming book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know--And Doesn't.

"Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant of religion," Stephen Prothero writes in his new book, "Religious Literacy."

Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, notes that about 85 percent of Americans say they are Christian, and about one-third claim to be biblical literalists. Yet, in survey after survey, many people can't name the four Gospels, or don't know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. He quotes an evangelical Christian who calls the Bible "The Greatest Story Never Read."

Prothero wrote "Religious Literacy" (HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95), which comes out Tuesday. It's partly a history of religious instruction in the United States and partly an argument toward teaching religion and the Bible in public schools as a standard academic course. At the end, he includes a Dictionary of Religious Literacy (with a nod to E.D. Hirsch's The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy —- about 150 key names and concepts from major world religions, from Abraham to Zionism, that he believes everyone ought to know.

This, coupled with a recent posting on Southern Pasts, got me thinking today about a couple of new high school courses that were approved last year by the Georgia General Assembly: History and Literature of the Old/New Testament. Such a course might address the problem Prothero addresses in his book, but this new law in Georgia concerns me.

Last year, in the 2006 legislative session, several Democrats introduced a bill to allow the state to fund high school elective courses on the Bible. (School districts could already teach these classes; the bill would provide state funding.) The bill called for the use of a textbook, The Bible and Its Influence, a book published by the Bible Literacy Project under the oversight of several dozen scholars and well received by many religious leaders, both Jewish and Christian.

Charles Haynes described what happened in the neighboring states of Alabama and Georgia when similar bible electives were introduced in the state legislatures:

Beyond the fact that they were put forward by Democrats, why did Republicans in Alabama and Georgia reject the original Bible bills? It turns out that the dispute is about much more than partisan jockeying over which party is on God's side. It's really about how public schools should teach about the Bible.

The Democrats in both states had no sooner proposed their bills when supporters of an alternative approach from a group called the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools mobilized to defeat it with a political two-step: First, discredit the textbook in the Democratic bill. Then get Republicans to endorse an alternative approach that just happens to reflect the National Council's own curriculum.

National Council advisory board member (and prominent evangelical minister) D. James Kennedy labeled the textbook "anti-biblical" and claimed it was supported by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on Islamic Education. In reality, The Bible and Its Influence has been praised by many Jewish, Catholic and Protestant leaders — including evangelicals such as Chuck Colson. Neither the ACLU nor CIE has endorsed it. But the smear campaign worked.

What many religious leaders and scholars like about The Bible and Its Influence is that it puts the Bible in historical context, exposes students to how Jews and Christians understand the Bible in various ways, and illustrates how the Bible has shaped history, literature and the arts. Contrary to the National Council's claim, students using the textbook are required to read the Bible itself. But both teachers and students are given sound scholarship and historical context for studying it.

By contrast, the National Council's curriculum doesn't have a student textbook (the Bible, they say, is the textbook), but provides a lengthy workbook for teachers that, in places, treats the Bible like a history book. Most of the secondary sources recommended for classroom use are from an evangelical Christian perspective.

The "Performance Standards" issued by the Georgia Dept. of Education for these courses can be seen here (.pdf) or here (html). This website discusses problems in similar classes.

I'm all for increasing cultural literacy, including religious/biblical literacy. But given the above, I'll admit I'm a little worried about how these new courses will play out. I'll be happy to hear what others think.

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Oh What A Day!

I stepped in dog poop twice today. Twice in one day, what are the odds of that? Both times I was wearing my sneakers and of course the poop was inbedded deeply in the tread. Where I was there was no grass, only cobblestoned streets, which do nothing to aleviate my problem. I scraped and I scraped but nothing. On the other hand, the city that I am in is beautiful. It more than makes up for the fact that I smell like crap (literally!)

I wonder what is next?

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Wow, P.Z. sure is popular!

Yesterday, P.Z. Myers announced: Yes, I will be HALF A CENTURY OLD tomorrow. He invited everyone to write a poem for his birthday. As of right now, that posting has received 166 comments, most containing poetic birthday wishes.

Gee, he's popular.

The picture on the right is from Richard Dawkins's website. Dawkins started the greetings-in-rhyme with the following:

All around the World Wide Web, the wingnuts get the crepys,
As the faith-heads take a drubbing from our era's Samuel Pepys,
That sceptical observer of the scene about the wyers,
At Pharyngula, the singular redoubt of P Z Myers.

Happy birthday, P.Z.!

UPDATE: He has A LOT of friends. If your internets seem slow today, it's because everybody is wishing P.Z. happy birthday. See here, and here, and here.

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