For participation in a previous contest, Tyndale House has sent me a certificate for one free copy of the Life Application Study Bible (NLT), which they say is the #1-selling study Bible.
I’m happy to be able to provide someone with a copy of an NLT. I’m going to do this a bit differently this time. I’m not going to just select a random commenter. Rather, I’m going to ask you to give me a maximum of 140 word application to life drawn from any portion of Genesis 11:10-32. I will randomly select one of every qualified entry.
You can enter as many times as you want to, provided you provide a different life application. I’ll disqualify any entries that are more than 140 words. The word count will use the standard English concept of a word. For example, this paragraph contains 46 words.
I’m going to give everyone tw0 weeks, so I’ll make my selection February 7, and mail you the certificate.
Thanks to Tyndale House for providing this certificate, and for publishing the NLT in many fine editions.
Rationally Speaking has a great article on the uncertainties in scientific research and what they mean about science. I think a good deal of the problem here is that people expect certainty, and science doesn’t provide this. Occasionally one can get near certainty, but absolute certainty is elusive. On the frontiers of medicine, especially, you’ll find lots of uncertainty.
In the article the problem is dealt with as one of replicability, but I think that in the public’s eyes that amounts to the same thing as certainty. What cannot be replicated isn’t certain.
I was raised in a medical family. My father was a doctor (general practitioner and proud of it), and my mother is a registered nurse. We talked medical things around the dinner table, so I got used to the terminology. One of the things I learned from my father, in particular, was uncertainty. He was fanatical, I believe, about knowing the latest research, yet he emphasized to me the uncertainties of science, especially his science.
That balance between awareness of the uncertainties, and yet full use of the best knowledge we have, is something that escapes many of us. We either want to worship science or deride it. We choose historically to view it as a series of dominant theories overthrown, or a series of triumphs of new knowledge. In fact, those two views are not incompatible.
I recall early in my time in the U. S. Air Force I was referred to the dietitian to straighten out certain numbers having to do with my cholesterol and triglycerides. I would note that I was quite a number of pounds lighter then than I am now, and didn’t look like I had a problem with fat. So I followed some good dietary advice and got the numbers under control.
A few years later at my annual flight physical, I noticed the numbers from my blood test and was disturbed by one of them. (I always looked through all the test results myself. I found them interesting.) At the end of my consultation with the doctor, who had said nothing of this particular number (and I now forget which it was), I mentioned the number and that perhaps I should do something about.
He said, “Oh, that’s no problem, we have new guidance, and the range for your age is …” The new number put me just within the permissible range. Oh! New study. My old numbers from back in training would have fallen within the range he gave me. (I’m telling this all from memory, so don’t hold me to which number of just how far it changed!)
My personal choice at the time was to do a little more diet watching because I was close to the line, and it seemed a good thing to do. In fact, even now, more than 20 years and an unfortunate number of pounds later, my lab results still don’t scare the friendly family doctor.
My point is that even though the science changed, the general idea of what was a good way to live and eat didn’t change all that much. I was able to work with it, and under either set of criteria, I was better off after I did some work on my diet.
I would suggest that it’s important to realize two things simultaneously: 1) Science is not perfect, and in some cases is very imperfect; and 2) Science is still better at all of these pesky fact things than any other approach we have.
In other words, while my doctors may have had some differences of opinion over the precise levels of certain substances in my blood, they were all much better at giving me guidance than someone from times past who might have told me that fat was a sign of good health.
I choose to link to Jeremy’s list, for no better reason than that I’m on his list. I’m back up to #23, which is probably the result of actually writing a few posts.
Thanks again to Jeremy for maintaining these rankings.
… at Zwinglius Redivivus. It does not include me, but I can’t think of anything I wrote recently that I would have nominated, so I can’t complain. Also, I won’t be quoting John Calvin favorably, so this may not be remedied in the immediate future.
(If you don’t get the Calvin thing, go and actually read the carnival!)
I’m finally getting back to blogging, and even a little of my own writing on other subjects. I thought I’d comment on what has been going on here that kept me away from my blogs for so long. I note that my post Why I Am Blogging Less was published on May 6, so that’s a bit over a month, but my blogging was fairly sparse for a month before that.
No, there have been no family disasters, nor have I been out climbing mountains. It has all related to business. Two years ago my company, Energion Publications, was a one person operation, and even for that one person (me) it was part time. Since then, we have had quite an explosion of activity. As of June 1, there are two people working full time with the company and two working part time, plus a few tasks, such as cover design, that we contract out. My wife Jody has joined me full time.
For the first five years of this company’s existence we published an average of four books per year. During the past year we added more than ten. We used to work on one book at a time, now we have books already scheduled for completion in 2011. In fact, we only have enough space left in our 2010 schedule for a couple of books, and the only reason that space is left open is that we’ve been holding it open for special projects.
I had to learn some new software. For those interested, we’re now doing page layout with a combination of Scribus, LaTex, and Lyx. For those who may not be aware, Scribus is an open source desktop publishing system. It does many things well on its own, but one important feature is the ability to include elements from LaTex. Lyx is a document processor which, put very briefly, is a sort of cross between WYSIWYG word processing and the text coded layout. It can produce LaTex files, amongst others. I won’t go into detail on why I’m using this combination, but getting used to the setup has been an interesting and worthwhile learning experience.
I almost forgot to mention that I had the truly odd experience of creating the covers for two of these books working via phone and e-mail with the designer. He had no computer available to do the layout, and I am not great at visual things, to put it mildly. He gave me directions, I’d do the layout, and then e-mail him a jpeg of the result. Those two books are The Character of Our Discontent (image lower right in this post), and Along Bible Paths (image top left in this post).
I’ve already written about The Character of Our Discontent, but I will post reflections on the other three books and on several more that are coming up soon. I simply haven’t had the time to reflect a great deal, much less to write my reflections on the blog. There is a bottleneck of books on which work is progressing, but for which I don’t have press releases and catalog entries created. So watch for lots of new material coming from Energion Publications.
While I’m still busy, I think 16 hour days are largely a thing of the past, and I will also have more time for some of the things I enjoy more, such as blogging and keeping in contact with authors and readers, not to mention my own reading.
(I’m linking this post to my most recent post on the Participatory Bible Study blog and on The Jevlir Caravansary so readers of those blogs can catch the explanation for my absence. Doubtless they’ve been waiting impatiently for my next words! More likely, not so much!)
