“The Vinland Map,” subject of much controversy over most of my lifetime, is genuine after all, according to a Danish scientist.
COPENHAGEN, July 17, 2009 (Reuters) — The 15th century Vinland Map, the first known map to show part of America before explorer Christopher Columbus landed on the continent, is almost certainly genuine, a Danish expert said Friday.
Tip: Ori Pomerantz.
It was known that C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien had planned to write a book about language together, but no one ever knew how far the project got, or what happened to any work done. Now a Texas scholar has announced the discovery of a draft of the first pages of the book.
Steven Beebe, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Texas State Department of Communication Studies, discovered the opening pages of the unpublished manuscript in the Oxford University Bodleian Library and has recently documented that the manuscript was the beginning of the previously believed to be unwritten Lewis and Tolkien book.
Although C. S. Lewis started the book, there is no evidence that Tolkien began work on the project.
Thanks to Dale Nelson for the tip. Dale is always on the ball.
Starbucks, which some people call “Fourbucks” because of the prices, will remove it’s name from one of its Seattle stores in an effort to appeal to the budget-minded coffee drinker. The well-established store will be labeled 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea and will soon offer beer and wine along with coffee and tea. I assume the prices will be the same, but maybe, just maybe, they will drop a bit.
In other vital news, July is National Ice Cream Month and this Sunday is National Ice Cream Day. So tell me, do you like floats, shakes, or malts? What are your preferences? I love shakes more than the others, though an icy Coke float with vanilla can be a nice, different treat. I don’t like malt enough to enjoy malts or malt balls, but I can make them. I have special training.
Do I remember what I was doing when man first walked on the moon?
Indeed I do.
I was traveling that summer with a team from Lutheran Youth Encounter, a “parachurch” ministry that sent teams of college-aged Lutherans to work with the youth in various congregations. We usually spent a week in each church, but we’d had a cancellation for this week, and our team’s leader (a Type-A overachiever of whom I was in awe at the time) had put us to work cold-calling churches all over the Ohio District (because that was where we were). Finally we’d found an urban Cleveland church that was a little desperate because it was between pastors, and somebody apparently thought bringing us in would provide “something for the kids.”
As I recall it, it was a pretty bad fit, and I’m not at all sure they felt they got their money’s worth. Continue reading 40 years ago Monday
From Crossway Books blog: “Justin Taylor, Crossway’s Editorial Director, will be on the Albert Mohler Radio Program this afternoon [5:00 p.m. eastern]. Russell Moore will be guest hosting a discussion on Christian-fiction publishing trends and what they reveal about Christian culture.”
Speaking of government-run health care: “The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care.”
Albert Mohler reports on how Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, has finally found a teaching in the church so awful, so scandalous and offensive, that she’s willing to apply the term “heresy” to it.
Denial of the Trinity? Denial of the Virgin Birth? Denial of the Resurrection?
No, no. It’s much worse than that.
She’s found that some people actually believe that Jesus is Lord.
The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.
She goes on to describe a further, related heresy–believing that Jesus is the one way to God.
Tip: Dr. Paul McCain at Cyberbrethren.
Slate’s Juliet Lapidos reports she has read the unauthorized sequel to Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye and that we needn’t bother with it. “California’s allusions contain little charm, but his original material is far worse,” she says.
That isn’t really a book from a dead author. In fact, Salinger isn’t dead and doesn’t like the book. But a real dead author has a new book coming. An unfinished work by Graham Greene, newly discovered at the author’s archive in the University of Texas, will be released in The Strand as a serial, and someone is to be commissioned to write the ending. The Strand has published other lost works previously. (via ArtsJournal)
The Obamas are asking for artwork to display in the White House, emphasizing “works by black, Hispanic, Asian and female artists.” (via ArtsJournal)