I think that's what being spiritual is. It's paying attention - both to epiphanies that other people may overlook, and also to injustices that people may intentionally overlook.I just love that idea, it seems to me to describe a lot of what I want in a spirituality for today.
Barbara does the shopping, but I do the cookingThe effort of explaining and motivating was too much, at least when multiplied by the sorts of issue that Maggi raises
Four (or often less, who can predict the movements of teens and twenty-somethings) others share our table
I am the only reader of Emergent Kiwi in our household
read Finker's poem and weep with himThat's when you notice the community beneath (or above) the isolation that life online allows.
watch as female bloggers support each other when some poor male lets slip a hurtfully sexist remark
or do as I did some months ago - write to some blogfriends and ask for help with a blog related project
Greek and Hebrew (never mind Latin) have also been "ditched" in many places, or at best relegated to a marginal place. And most certainly Bible software cannot make up for this lack of systematic study of the biblical languages.And I agree, I remember my shock coming to a Western Institution after a decade in Africa (where ALL degree students in Theology learned BOTH Hebrew and Greek) to discover that students could obtain a degree with a "major" in biblical studies without even being able to make out the alphabet of either of the main biblical languages! ...and in NZ things have moved downhill since 1993, small classes that we supported then because someone should keep the candle of scholarship burning, are now cut as "uneconomic".
This is just the sort of thing one would expect to see when "business interests" and politics become the main criteria. But surely education is something else. I'm afraid these are bad days for the Humanities... (big sigh)
I can understand people who don't believe - after all it's often a struggle to maintain belief when life has been smooth and all too easy. (See my post on "Good space, bad space, God space".)Maybe I misjudge "hubrisbiscuits" with her/his 5,351 words of earnest advocacy, perhaps buried in the mass of words is something that would make atheism an attractive alternative to dependence on the love and grace of a forgiving creator - somehow, in all the strained attempt to be reasonable about unreasonable issues, I missed that gospel!
I can understand people who believe wanting to convert others - after all we have (or so we claim) good news! But where is the attraction in persuading others to unbelief - just sharing one's misery?
"We believe that this makes good business sense. We believe that making free electronic copies of the books available will allow people to literally test-drive the book. If they determine that this book is likely to meet their needs, we believe a good number of these people are going to opt to go and buy the printed book, because it's a whole lot easier to consume a book on paper than it is electronically."I don't think this model could work in Biblical Studies, but Edward Zalta, a philosopher from the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Sanford has been running the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for some years now. It uses a different model. The encyclopeadia has been funded for its set up costs. When I met him at a humanities computing conference in 2000 I was most envious of his US$200,000 grant for software! The authors are rewarded with academic credit.
I believe that the business model of commercial publishing, which once served the academy's information needs, now threatens fundamentally to undermine and pervert the course of research and teaching. Put bluntly, the model is economically unsustainable for us. If business as usual continues, it will deny scholars both access to the information they need and the ability to distribute their work to the worldwide audience it deserves.Without greater openness of access, scholarship is withering on the vine!
Scholars, librarians and others more interested in the future of the academy than in publisher's share prices, should take a hard look at the fairly flat line showing that despite the explosion in the number of new journals, libraries did not buy many more titles in 2002 than they did in 1986. The academy is paying more each year to access a steadily declining portion of the scholarship and knowledge that it creates.
Will author charges sustain high-quality peer reviewed publications?
Will Open Access publishers guarantee the integrity and persistence of the scholarly record they help to create and disseminate?
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