Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Search Warrants Required for GPS Devices

    … that police put on your vehicle, according to the Washington Post. I welcome this ruling, and am very pleased to see it was unanimous.

    In fact, I think the government agencies who thought they could get by with this should be ashamed of themselves, and the a unanimous court ruling shows how far outside “reasonable” they were.

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  • When NOT to Read the Bible

    When driving?

    (HT: Kouya Chronicle)

  • Bruce Epperly Comments on Epiphany 3B

    Bruce Epperly comments on the lectionary passages for next Sunday (Epiphany 3B), which are extraordinarily well suited for a process theologian. Well worth checking out!

  • Blackout on Wikipedia Tomorrow

    I’m not going to be blacked out here, but I thought I’d just mention that I also oppose the bills (PIPA, SOPA) that are going through congress. Our representatives simply have no idea whatever what a reasonable burden is. Their view is that if a multi-billion dollar corporation or a large government agency could handle it, it must be reasonable.

    As usual, a good idea (piracy prevention) gets implemented in a way that will place an undue burden on many and will chill the conversation online.

    You can find more information from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

  • Rachel Held Evans on Evangelical Celebrity

    I think she has two excellent points, the first about the danger of thinking of oneself as a celebrity (evangelical or not!), and the second about the value of structured prayer. I’d add a note on the value of structured Bible study, which also forces one to leave one’s comfort zone and one’s own desires and to let God speak.

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  • Badly Written Laws Badly Applied

    I sometimes watch Law and Order on TV (not faithfully), and I’ve often thought “how creative!” as one prosecutor or another invents a way to apply the law to something they’d like to “get” someone for. (Quite a sentence, but I’m going to leave it.) At the same time I’ve hoped real prosecutors in the real world don’t behave in that fashion, even though I know they do.

    Here’s an example. According to The Economist, a marine biologist took advantage of the fact that some killer whales killed a gray whale calf. She moved quickly to photograph the feeding, including putting a rope through some of the blubber. She’s now charged with a federal felony for feeding the whales, as well as for lying to the police. Why lying? She provided them with her edited video when they asked for her video of the event.

    We need better laws, better written, and we need better accountability for some of these prosecutors.

    (HT: The Agitator)

  • An Exemplary Post on Translating the Word Nefesh

    I’m linking to this post by Joel Hoffman not just for its content, which is indeed excellent, but also because I think it shows how to discuss translating a word from one language to another.

    A couple of notes: 1) He’s discussing how to translate the word in a specific instance, not some general “what did this word really mean?” kind of topic, 2) he gives solid usage references in all the languages concerned, and 3) he manages to keep the discussion straightforward and easy for the non-expert to follow.

    In a paper for publication, of course, one would need to cover all the extras, i.e. survey everything. In this case, we get what we need for the immediate issue without distractors. In other words, an exemplary blog post! May there be many more! May I even learn to write such!

    (HT: Wayne Leman, Better Bibles)

  • Free New Testament Commentary Ebooks

    The regular Kindle prices are great, but Baker is offering selected commentaries free for one day on Jan. 9 (past, alas!), Jan. 16, and Jan 23. Today’s is on James. More at Evangelical Textual Criticism.

  • Book Note: The Well Tempered Clavicle

    I am only a moderately intense follower of the Xanth novels, but this one looked like fun (I usually get around to them eventually), so I checked it out.

    The humor is still there. There are too many puns for me, though I do enjoy many of them, and this one was on the topic of destroying puns even! My impression is that over time the humor has been toned down a bit and the social commentary has gotten just a bit stronger, a feeling I also got about another book I read recently.

    If you’re a Xanth fan, you’ll want to read this one, of course. If you’re not, I’d generally recommend starting earlier in the series, though no matter where you start, Xanth takes a little bit of getting used to!

    I rate it 4 stars.

  • Book Note: Turning to God

    I asked my pastor for a good book on the basics of Christian conversion and he handed me William Barclay’s little book Turning to God.

    It’s a small book, with just 103 pages of reasonable size text. It’s not complex. The vocabulary is straightforward. I wouldn’t recommend it for speed reading, but you don’t need any strong theological background to follow the discussion.

    Barclay works from the conversion stories and evangelistic methods presented in the book of Acts to develop both an understanding of what conversion means and the approaches to evangelization that will produce conversion.

    This is an exceptionally good book. It appears to be out of print, but there are quite a number of used copies available online.

    I give this a definite five bright stars!