Here’s a bit of awe given to thirty-one Huguenot women who would not reject their faith for 38 years. Karl Olsson writes:

To sit in a prison room with thirty others and to see the day change into night and summer into autumn, to feel the slow systemic changes within one’s flesh: the drying and wrinkling of the skin, the loss of muscle tone, the stiffening of the joints, the slow stupefaction of the senses—to feel all this and still to persevere seems almost idiotic to a generation which has no capacity to wait and to endure.

It was a good weekend. I’m sunburned, stiff, dehydrated and exhausted (I can tell my hemoglobin level still isn’t up to specs), but I had fun.

The drive down was an adventure. I had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to be in Story City, Iowa in time to set up, and it was a three-hour drive directly into a vicious south wind. But I made it on schedule. There were only three of us there, two guys and a woman, but our friend Sam from Missouri also came up with his Viking boat, which raised the tone of the encampment considerably: Continue reading Story City Story →

I didn’t see this article when we were talking several weeks ago about Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, but I think it’s important to link to it. The scientists at Reasons to Believe (RTB) say they haven’t seen the type of blacklisting described in the movie. Of course, they aren’t employed by these universities either. “RTB believes that God has miraculously intervened throughout the history of the universe in various ways millions, possibly even billions, of times to create each and every new species of life on Earth.”

In Reasons To Believe’s interaction with professional scientists, scientific institutions, universities, and publishers of scientific journals we have encountered no significant evidence of censorship, blackballing, or disrespect. As we have persisted in publicly presenting our testable creation model in the context of the scientific method, we have witnessed an increasing openness on the part of unbelieving scientists to offer their honest and respectful critique.

How about a little comment meme? Tell me the first thing that leaps to your mind when you read each of these things?

1. Excellent source of calcium
2. New and improved
3. 75% off
4. New York Times Bestseller
5. Get ‘Em While They’re Hot
6. Y2K Compatible

With the corrected spelling on this post, you may comment at will. No, please comment. I will add this post to my list of good reasons for flushing myself. I can hear the drain coming now.

I saw the picture of compromise or making do this week. In a hot parking lot (our highs were in the low 90s) a little water had collected. Three ducks sat by this quart-sized pond, perhaps imagining the 1,000 lakes of Minnesota.

Speaking of making do, I see that copy editors are ecspected to0 now everthing. Where do you go to make sure you are spelling or correctly using a phrase or word you don’t readily use? Language Log posts some facts on making do, which is not making due, akin to paying your dues or anteing up. It’s making a situation do, which is what we say with almost every post here. Eh, we’ll make this post do . . .

Henderson State University is holding an academic conference on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and other works by scholar and all-around nice guy Josh Whedon. No joke.

Among the papers: “Buffy and Feminism,” “Buffy and Identity,” “Gender Stereotypes and the Image of Domesticity in ‘Firefly,'” “‘Firefly:’ The Illusive Safety of Big Damn Heroes” and a Durand favorite by a British scholar, “Hero’s Journey, Heroine’s Return: Buffy, Eurydice and the Orpheus Myth.”

Have the conferenced on Harry Potter, I’d like to know? How about “The Simpsons?”