This morning we played Ballyowen. A guy we were paired up with had a caddie. On one of the back nine par 3’s, the caddie advised us to aim for a little rise just to the back of the green. I hit a perfect 9-iron just to that spot, the ball curved in from behind the pin, and stopped just a bit more than a foot short of a hole-in-one. Best golf shot I ever hit!
Jeff is blogging about Francis Collins, a Christian who is head of the National Genome Research Institute. My thinking about the faith-science interface continues to evolve (pun intended), and I really want to do a longer essay on where I am in that journey. For now, I’d like to note a few potential misunderstandings about Collins’ position.
About to execute a perfect landing on a remote airstrip in Alaska.
Through the Looking Glass today:
Received: current issue of Foreign Affairs. The survey on the Rise of India looks interesting.
Noted: Milblogging.com, the leading aggregator of from-the-ground blogs by military personnel. HT: Wall Street Journal.
Noted: Improve your Halo skills! The WSJ today reports on a booming new business: private video game tutoring. Companies like Gaming-lessons.com offer private online instruction in fragging. Maybe this will help me avoid getting demolished by my eight year old son?
A few days ago, I blogged about the recent Prison Fellowship ruling from Iowa. Chuck Colson weighed in on the ruling in his Back Page commentary in this month’s Christianity Today (once again, nuts to Christianity Today for its web-publication delay that doesn’t facilitate timely blog linking to current articles!).
Overall, I think Colson’s commentary is reasonably good. He focuses on the court’s ham-handed, shallow treatment of evangelicalism, which is a major flaw in the opinion. He also appropriately counsels us to look inward concerning the stereotypes about evangelicalism that the court’s opinion could perpetuate. As he puts it:
The critical question is, do we play into the stereotypes, or de we reflect our rich heritage of abolishing the slave trade, defending human rights, and founding hospitals? This case is a challenge to define evangelicalism, no less before the bar of public opinion than before the bar of justice.
Many amens to that! I wish, though, that Colson would rotate that inward eye just a few more degrees to examine the problem of government funding for outreach programs like Prison Fellowship’s Innerchange Initiative. The Iowa case is problematic for many of the reasons Colson mentions, but the wisdom of tying evangelism to government money needs to be explored in more depth.
Through the Looking Glass today:
Meeting of the New York City Emergent Village Cohort, July 25, 6:30 p.m. at Origins Church (corner of 42nd and 9th Ave). Hoping I can attend, but I may be away. Missed the first meeting because of work in Europe, but plan to schedule meetings in starting in the fall.
Best current album, IMHO: Johnny Cash’s American V: A Hundred Highways. Based on sessions recorded just prior to Johnny’s death in 2003, the songs and performances on the album are deep, faith-laced and poignant, and bear repeated listening, especially while slaving away at home on academic publications!
This is my great-great-great grandfather. Most of the family thinks he was a blacksmith in Germany. I’m not so sure about the blacksmith idea — his arms don’t look big enough. He looks very much like my uncle and alot like my dad.
Last month, a federal judge in Iowa decided that an anti-recidivism program run by Prison Fellowship International is unconstitutional. The reaction from many Christian quarters has been harsh. Writing in First Things this month, Richard John Neuhaus stated that “I’m afraid the judge is somewhat deranged or culpably ignorant, or maybe both, which may be a mitigating factor in his staggering arrogance.” Robert George called the judge’s opinion “sprawling and undisciplined” in the Weekly Standard. In a Washington Post Op-Ed, Prison Fellowship’s President, Mark Earley called the ruling “extreme and punitive.” Referring to the ruling, Prison Fellowship’s home page includes a splash graphic warning “Religious Freedom at Risk.”
What is this really all about?
Through the Looking Glass today: research on open access publishing (yes, I’ve been working on a paper today). I think open access publishing is a good thing, though I’m not sure yet what role, if any, government should play in encouraging it.
This European Commission Report provides excellent background on the issues.
The Budapest Open Access Initiative is a key declaration of principles for the open access movement.
This NIH Policy encourages open access publication of NIH-funded research.
Peter Suber at Earlham College keeps an Open Access News Blog. Suber is one of the key academic activists in the open access movement.
Me flying over Peru in a Cessna Grand Caravan. Well, virtually flying — in MS Flight Sim 2004.