This approach is one we valued in developing דָּבָר Biblical Hebrew Vocabularies project. Along with the other contextual material: sound, picture, other forms, semantic field... we included a phrase from the Bible that uses the word to be learned. In our version the student can also hear n0t only the lemma, but also the example phrase.Allan has prepared lists for about 1200 words. We only have about half that "done" so far. But if you notice that "vocabularies" is plural in the name we chose you may also spot that with our system you can produce the vocabulary you need for whichever grammar book or course you are using. If you need a word we have not yet done you can become a "contributor" and get a login to add data to the collection to fill in the gap.
Here is what one word would look like to the student.
BTW if you want Greek flashcards Danny has a system to offer. Which allows me to mention that דָּבָר Biblical Hebrew Vocabularies project also allows you to output your vocabularies for printing to use as flashcards. (Actually flash two sheets of paper that slide but that will save trees too!)
Labels: hebrew, open.biblical.studies, teaching
¶ 7:29 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
Your davar project web page is very nice. I wish I could create something similar.
As for what I'm doing: If you click on the scripture reference you can hear me pronounce the whole scriptural phrase. Also, you didn't mention that I give a translation of the phrase without translating the Hebrew vocab word. The real motor is to see the word in a familiar context and intuitively know its meaning. For example, "In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth." It's very easy for someone with basic Bible knowledge to see that "elohim" means "god". Finding this kind of context isn't always possible. But the idea is to strive for a context that will help one gather the word's semantic value, whether due to familiarity or the phrase itself.
The project was going to be turned into an electronic database that would be compatible with all available grammars via a sorting mechanism. But things didn't pan out.
Apparently the project wasn't commercially viable enough to justify the programming investment.
By 
Alan Lenzi, at
August 31, 2008 11:50 AM
Alan, the PDF I downloaded from your link does not seem to be clickable, but if you don't mind making your work available freely, we could look at either you using the engine that runs Davar to create your own resource, or using your data to make the existing resource better.
To use the engine would require asking the developers at the U of A but I would expect they would be willing.
To change our data would require discussion with the others who have developed it to this point...
By Tim, at
September 1, 2008 6:13 AM
KK then describes the development of the new Rosetta project:
Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive suggested a new technology developed by Los Alamos labs, and commercialized by the Norsam company, as a solution for long term digital storage. Norsam promised to micro-etch 350,000 pages of information onto a 3-inch nickel disk with an estimated lifespan of 2,000 -10,000 years.Fascinating, not least because of the cultural assumptions built into its creation!
...
Long Now board member Doug Carlston suggested that for the parallel common text of this modern Rosetta Stone we should use the book of Genesis, since it was most likely already translated into all languages already. We hatched a plan to produce a 3-inch non-corroding disk which contained at least 1,000 translations of Genesis and other linguistic information about each language....
One side of the disk contains a graphic teaser. The design shows headlines in the eight major languages of the world today spiraling inward in ever-decreasing size till it becomes so small you have trouble reading it, yet the text goes on getting smaller. The sentences announce:“Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.”
...
Among the 13,500 scanned pages are 1,500 different language versions of Genesis 1-3, a universal list of the words common for each language,
pronunciation guides and so on.
Labels: archaeology, culture, digital
¶ 10:02 PM
[to Del.icio.us]
Can kids teach themselves?" has got me thinking (again) about how we do theological education the wrong way round.[By the way if you have only heard about Sugata Mitra's work it is well worth spending 20 minutes to watch the man himself, whether you agree with him or not, he is a fine presenter!]
He calls his suggestions "outdoctrination" because they are the opposite of indoctrination. In indoctrination a teacher who "knows better" tells a student the answers. Most theological education is built from the ground up on an indoctrination model. Teachers (or possibly the school boards who govern the teachers - quis custodiet custodes) decide the curriculum. They then decide how it is to be taught and how success is to be measured. Students then are fitted into this mold. Evidently, despite our efforts to steer clear of "imposing" our conclusions on students, this is indoctrination. After all, though we may seek to avoid imposing answers, we did impose the questions!
Why not a system designed the other way up. Start from real issues and situations and get teachers to asist students to learn what they need/want to approach these issues. There would be severe difficulties creating "suitable" learning outcomes, and perhaps worse ones working out how to measure them - but I suspect the real measure of success would be seen when students "leave college" and really start to learn!
[I suspect Dr Mitra, a professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle, thinks his work only applies to kids, and that adults are too far calcified in the cortext, but I wonder, humans have more capacity to make do and adapt, I believe that even "mature students" can still learn if we offered them "minimally invasive theological education"!]
Labels: education, open.biblical.studies
¶ 8:57 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
A while back Geoff Pound (of Theologians Without Borders) put some effort into collecting ideas and stories about Creativity in Theological Education quite a bit of this material appeared in "one off" posts on the TWB blog, but he also collected together a summary post. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the "finished" feel of the posts they have not generated the discussion they might have if these things had been said in instutional staff rooms ;)Readers of Sansblogue are likely to be stroppy, strong minded individuals, and many are likely to have strong opinions about theological education. So, if you have not done so already please go and explore these posts on TWB and disagree, express your strong opinions, generate discussion - the honour of the blogsphere is at stake, surely this electronic medium is no worse than a college staff room at discussing ideas?!
Labels: biblical.studies.online, internet, theology
¶ 8:17 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
I wonder if your impressions of the two services match mine?
BTW in both cases the default settings were used. Otherwise I'd have "shrunk" the Blip version ;)
[to Del.icio.us]
Check out Veoh as well. Blip and Veoh are a tie for online video quality. What puts blip over the edge is its ability to also make the videos available as high quality mp4 videos for podcasting.
For multiple video presentation, blip needs some work. The best free video host for hosting multiple videos, in my opinion, is Brightcove. You can see an example of many videos presented in one player on ADC's website: http://adc.acadiau.ca/continuing_education/simpson_lectures/
This player is holding a lecture series from 1990 to 2008, 2-3 lectures each.
By Danny Zacharias, at
August 25, 2008 2:19 PM
Hi,
Video sharing is all the rage these days. We all want to share our videos, to share our passions and the things we like. There are so many sites around to publish our videos on the web that it is sometimes hard to make a choice. We know some of them like YouTube, Revver or Dailymotion, but there are so many others competing to be the number one, or targeting a specific audience, whether geographically (China, Japan, Turkey...), by language (German, Arabic, French...) or for the kind of content they enable to publish (cooking, planes, extreme sports...).
I have compiled a growing list of more than 780 video sharing sites, video search engines, and video download sites that you can check at http://www.ilikesharingvideos.com
For each of them, you will get useful information such as their history, the country from which most of their visitors come, their niche, their rank, their latest news...
This site offers some other interesting features, like a forum about online videos, how to make money with your videos, how to create your own YouTube site, etc.
So if you are interested in video sharing or online video marketing, give an eye to this site, it worths it.
Cheers
By 
I like sharing videos, at
August 26, 2008 9:50 AM
So you also try uploading it to FeAutor -- where not only is there video sharing and live streaming, but you get a Creative Commons license in addition.
By Mary E, at
August 28, 2008 1:55 PM
Labels: encyclopedia, humour, internet
¶ 10:02 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
just to clarify two things- i didn't post it- i pointed to it. and second, you've got the wrong jim there. i don't play now, nor have i ever played, soccer.
but i do love the 'kindly yet simple soul' line. i might use it for the blog title!
By Jim, at
August 21, 2008 12:36 PM
You posted a suppoosed screen dump, that's bad enough for me any day!
In the light of your touching trust in expensive and out of date print encyclopedias I thought "kindly yet simple" expressed it rather well ;)
By Tim, at
August 21, 2008 12:48 PM
PS, maybe you had the wrong Socrates... perhaps the one you looked up was somebody's cat?
By Tim, at
August 21, 2008 12:49 PM
TWELVE persons listed on the "disambiguation"page and NOT ONE of them identified as "Dr. Jim West"? In that case, I wouldn't have gone to either the Canadian or the Australian "former football player" -- I would have opted immediately for "a fictional character on the television series The Wild Wild West and the motion picture Wild Wild West." After all, "our" Jim West could not possibly be a flesh-and-blood Hooman Bean, could he?
By , at
August 21, 2008 10:41 PM
;-)
By Jim, at
August 22, 2008 12:06 AM
Sounds plausible to me, Dr Jim West as a fictional character. I'm sure the average sceptically minded scholar would find little real solid evidence for his existence, much more likely he was just made up after the events... after all no real human could write as many blog posts in one day as he does,seven days a week (even God took Saturday off) clear evidence that the West corpus is the work of a community.
By Tim, at
August 22, 2008 7:21 AM
For anyone who still possesses the desire to comment (on a book of the Bible that is) and who would like a wider than usual audience, reaching the parts books from Brill or More Inerrant Than Thou Press cannot reach, please consider undertaking a "volume" for the Hypertext Bible Commentary series this is peer reviewed, but available freely in electronic form. The first "volume" has been reviewed in a number of well respected journals.
To see the instructions for contributors, or to "dip your toe in the water" by offering an article for the companion Hypertext Bible Dictionary, just go to the website.
Labels: biblical.studies.online
¶ 9:47 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
I have a puzzling problem with my favourite browser. For the last couple of days Firefox has begun to behave strangely when scrolling (especially when scrolling through the new posts on Bloglines. Instead of the down arrow key moving the screen a line or two, and the Page Down moving it down roughly a screenful, what happens is that it jumps to the end of a blog. This is infuriating, I am reading the blog before yours, looking forward to your latest wisdom or humour, I press either Page Down of Arrow Down and behold I am at the end of the last post of yours that is still live, all ready for the next blog :(
It is driving me nuts, if it continues I may have to move to that browser that Microsoft make :( So, if you know a fix please let me know :)
[to Del.icio.us]
maybe your computer has a stuck ctrl key - the behaviour you describe seems to be that for thr ctrl-pagedown key. hit the ctrl key a few times to see if it unsticks
By Bob MacDonald, at
August 20, 2008 4:25 PM
Thanks, it's not the CTRL key, as (in other programs that use it) that is behaving normally, however, it does seem to be a problem unique to Firefox, and it is the page down/up and arrow down/up keys that are affected, left/right and ctrl left/right (as in the box to type this work normally. It is not just bloglines as CNN and the BBC are also weird.
By Tim, at
August 20, 2008 5:29 PM
Could you give some more details:
Which version?
Did you lately install plugins? (With Greasmonkey enabled I had in the past the same problem)
Is it on every page?
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
August 20, 2008 8:12 PM
Fifrfox is version 3, it keeps itself up to date(I am not sure which version as I have it set up with as little chrome as possible at the top and the Help menu is not available the File Version (undder properties) says it is 1.9.0.3105 the problem only affects some sites: Bloglines, CNN, BBC, Facebook but not others my blog, Google... it seems therefore to be linked to rendering complex layouts, but beyond that I can see nothing much in common between them.
I have not installed new addins recently, but have a number that update from time to time (I can't remember which updated recently): Ad Block plus 0.7.5.5; is.gd Creator 0.2.1; ScribeFire 2.3.1; Stylish 0.5.7; WebDeveloper 1.1.6; Zotero 1.0.7
By Tim, at
August 21, 2008 5:52 AM
I made some tests, but couldn't recreate the problem. I use 1.9.0.1.
A known problem is that some AJAX libraries has some "fuzzy" coding and I know Bloglines is using AJAX. so maybe this could be a problem. You can post a ticket on the Mozilla site about this problem.
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
August 21, 2008 6:09 AM
I'm having the same problem. And I hate it! I have winXP+SP2. FF 3.01. Extensions: AddBlock Plus, ColorfulTabs, FireGestures, IE Tab, Mr Tech Toolkit, Slogger and Tab Mix Plus.
By stanberka, at
September 16, 2008 3:49 AM
To make matters worse it went away and then came back again!
Stanberka, we have the same OS and FF versions, but apart from Adblock different addons, so unless it is Adblock it is suriouser and curiouser... I'll try disabling Adblock.
By Tim, at
September 16, 2008 5:17 AM
press F7. Apparently that toggles carrot browsing, whatever that is.
By testpattern, at
September 18, 2008 6:42 AM
Thank you! O, great and wise Testpattern performing the magic gesture indeed turns away the rabid carrots and protects my browsing experience from frustration :)
By Tim, at
September 18, 2008 7:10 AM
Yes! F7's "caret browsing" was the problem. My Firefox symptom was runaway scrolling: when I stopped, the scroll bar would keep going.
I'm sure this got turned on when my grandchildren were banging on my keyboard.
Thanks!
By , at
November 15, 2008 6:50 PM
Voila... my 6 month old also banged some keys on my laptop and had the same issue... F7 saved my life and sanily :)
By , at
May 25, 2009 4:34 PM
This solved my problem! Thanks!
By duran, at
July 4, 2009 12:44 PM
I'm another one espousing the greatness of the F7 key. Thank you so much!
By Tessa Hart, at
July 28, 2009 5:19 AM
Thank you! I was going crazy too for a day or so and am so happy to have it fixed!
By Jason, at
October 3, 2009 5:10 AM
Very Very Odd. I am so happy to have found this post. The scrolling issue was driving me absolutely crazy for the past few days. Kids must have been pressing buttons.
By FredFlintstone, at
October 14, 2009 4:43 PM
Yes, drives one bananas till learning about F7...
By Tim, at
October 14, 2009 4:53 PM
Thank you for the f7 key; i had the same problem for several weeks.
This f7 feature is a nightmare.
By Anis, at
November 18, 2009 11:01 AM
Thanks from me, too.
By Tim, at
November 30, 2009 4:09 AM
Info about F7 fixed it for me too. Cheers
By , at
February 7, 2010 12:25 AM
it did to me too! thx!!
By , at
February 10, 2010 12:59 AM
F7 Worked for me too! Can't trust a 15month old...
By , at
February 10, 2010 1:17 PM
thanks :)
By , at
February 14, 2010 6:55 AM
Thank you :) Gads this was so annoying!
By taryn1245, at
March 3, 2010 5:51 AM
Thanks for the solution. Hit F7.
Tags: Firefox, scroll bar, arrow keys, jumps, F7, caret, bad web design, OMFG
By , at
March 5, 2010 5:20 PM
This is great fun, and is driving a burst of creativity and colaboration. This easy availability of great free services is in large part responsible for the hype over Web 2.0 (which somehow refuses to fade quietly into the background like other twee slogans - but is rather perhaps being mainstreamed ;)
Yet there are feet of clay to all this. In the 1990s many of us started our first websites on "free" hosts like Geocities, but soon moved on to paying hosts. In that case it was advertising that caused many of us to move. Other were driven by restrictive policies or lack of space. Something similar could happen to the current crop of great "free" services.
As GOS the "Unofficial news and tips about Google" blog recently noted in a post about Google Page Creator closing:
This year, Google discontinued a lot of services: Browser Sync, Hello, Send to SMS and Send to Phone extension.So, how safe are free services? The provider can drop or change them at any time. Don't rely on them! Use a free online file conversion tool, if you need to convert a few files in a hurry, but not if you convert files regularly. Use a free video sharing tool, to share video freely (Blip.tv seems the best at hosting, but YouTube draws more of an audience) but if reliability matters to you, do make sure you have a backup plan!
Free is fun, but it is also vulnerable. Google is great - as a search engine (though even there one shudders to recognise the power they wield) but not to be trusted with your website!
Labels: internet, video, web 2.0
¶ 6:09 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
I'm sorry, I can't agree with you. First, paid services fail with alarming frequency. Second, Google Pages is being phased out in favor of a more powerful system, Google Sites. Better than browser sync are a number of private services including Foxmarks. Hello is of course superseded by Gtalk. Send to SMS (and its related service, Send to Phone extension) was discontinued at the request of phone providers, but Google provides more powerful services, including better support for mobile phone access and GrandCentral.
So, if you said "you can't count on free services because they are often improved and replaced by better services" I would agree with you.
However, I would keep backups even with paid services.
By Iyov, at
August 20, 2008 4:14 PM
I was editing an article yesterday on the Acts of Philip, a 4th-5th century apocryphal work about the Apostle Philip. As I read it, I came across a line where the author says that Philip "converses with a penitent leopard." It made me giggle, because obviously the author meant to say that Philip was talking with a penitent leper. Of course, the spell checker wouldn’t catch this, because both "leopard" and "leper" are valid words.The punch-line, however, is that the penitent leopard is indeed in the Acts. The said leopard was sorry she had attacked a goat (Acts Phil. 96–101). Thank goodness Kevin is a really professional editor and checked, otherwise the article would have puzzled Acts of Philip specialists ;-)
But, what a cool name for a blog - "Penitent Leopard"! Way cooler than Lingamish's hippo ;-)
Labels: humour
¶ 6:52 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
The lingapotamus has nothing to be penitent about. And unlike bigfoot, she really exists.
By David Ker, at
August 16, 2008 1:43 AM
Strange, with that hung head and downturned mouth she looks properly penitent, but you know her better than I do, I'll have to assume you are correct if you say she is just pretending penitence :(
As for having nothing to be penitent about the way the river people of the Upper Congo tell it that sounds frankly unlikely dangerous beasts.
I'd much rather meet a penitent leopard than an unrepentant hippo any day ;)
By Tim, at
August 16, 2008 5:53 AM
Labels: bible.software
¶ 1:53 PM
[to Del.icio.us]
A couple of years later, in 1990, despite brutal repression Aung San Suu Kyi and her party won the general election - would you vote for peace when a soldier with a gun was urging you to vote for the generals?
Burma is still ruled by a junta who do not care at all for the people, but only for their own pleasure and power. Remember how they responded to the cyclone in May?
So, join the 08/08/08 group, make today the day you pray, and speak for Burma. At least watch some YouTube...
PS, if you want to do a little more you could pray for Burma during the time of the anniversary of the uprising, I'll be posting suggested topics and other resources on another blog the first suggestion, for today 08/08/08/ is there now.
Labels: burma
¶ 6:15 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
However, like Deirdre I be pushing pause a lot, the translation they chose for Ear Bible (the NASB) is far from ideal for hearing. It is a deliberately "formal equivalence" translation, which means that it is only just English. For regular speakers of Biblish it is fine, but for our primary target group when we started PodBible, it is far from ideal. We imagined people who did not grow up with the KJV, don't speak Biblish, are not used to sitting down to "study a book" for such people (most of us today ;) the NASB is not the audio Bible of choice.
We chose the Contemporary English Version, a Bible intended and translated to be read aloud, an audio Bible translation. So compare a sample passage in each version and imagine which would be easier to hear:
Since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, each of us is to exercise them accordingly: if prophecy, according to the proportion of his faith; if service, in his serving; or he who teaches, in his teaching; or he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. [NASB]Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking the NASB, just suggesting it is not the best translation choice for an audio Bible. So if you want a Bible for your ears, an easy to listen to audio Bible give PodBible a try... and while you are at it how about becoming a fan of PodBible: every one's audio Bible on Facebook!
God has also given each of us different gifts to use. If we can prophesy, we should do it according to the amount of faith we have. If we can serve others, we should serve. If we can teach, we should teach. If we can encourage others, we should encourage them. If we can give, we should be generous. If we are leaders, we should do our best. If we are good to others, we should do it cheerfully. [CEV]
[to Del.icio.us]
When will PodBible be finished? I notice you only have 134 Psalms, for example.
By Iyov, at
August 7, 2008 6:49 PM
We are doing a chapter a day. Most books we finish in one go, but 150 days of psalms in a row seemed too much, so we are doing them in chunks of a couple of weeks evety couple of months. We are working to make the books we have already finished available in an easier download format for people who want to listen to a book rather than get a regular chapter a day...
By Tim, at
August 8, 2008 6:23 AM
You can also try www.FaithComesByHearing.com
They have a great ministry and they give away their audio bibles.
By , at
August 8, 2008 7:42 AM
This time I thought I'll use the power of Google. I searched for various terms "website backup and restore", "reviews website backup and restore", "magazine reviews website backup and restore" and the like. I found and installed trial or free versions of dozens (well actually nearer to half a dozen) programs. None worked well. Some backed up fine, but could not restore. Some did both, but only to the same FTP site, so no use if I have to change hosts. Some seemed to have difficulties with my system and kept hanging up...
So, does anyone have a suggestion of a Windows program that makes backing up and restoring a website:
- simple: don't tell me about Chegwin and the rest of them, twenty years ago I wrote mean batch files, but I have no desire now at 60 to start that learning curve againworks to do incremental backups
- will restore to another FTP site
- costs less than US$60
One batch file was really mean, we snuck it into a colleague's autoexec.bat without him noticing, on bootup on April 1st it ran another file, his screen fell to bits, characters dropping and gradualy the screen went blank, for one minute nothing worked, then a new screen appeared, like the WordPerfect 5.1 startup, except it said: "a pirate copy of WordPerfect has been detected on this computer, contact the WordPerfect corporation, do not touch any key, do not switch the computer off" since the poor guy was in the middle of Africa this was difficult ;) when eventually heart in mouth he pulled the plug at the wall (nothing else not even CTRL-ALT-Delete did anything we'd piped the console to NUL) his DOS prompt now read "C: Never mind Richard WE love you!" [return]
[to Del.icio.us]
I use Offline Explorer for downloading web sites.
For restoring or copying web sites I have ftp access to, I just use SecureFX.
By Iyov, at
August 7, 2008 6:36 PM
There are several tools.
1) For downloading a complete website: www.httrack.com for if yuo don't have any ftp connection ;)
2) Freeware filezilla-project.org
3) Commercial www.cuteftp.com, www.ipswitchft.com (WS_FTP)
By J. P. van de Giessen, at
August 7, 2008 9:16 PM
To keep backups of my site I use Site-Vault. It downloads a copy and I can restore it easily when I need it. I didn't tried to restore it in another location but I think it works. When I bought it I paid $99 but now I see that they have lowered their price to $59 and also upgraded to 3rd version.
By , at
August 8, 2008 12:06 AM
Hi, Tim,
Check my suggestions here:
http://bibleandtech.blogspot.com/2008/01/backup-your-blog.html
By mgvh, at
August 8, 2008 6:28 AM
Thanks all of you for these suggestions, what I want is to be able to do incremental backups PodBible is over 4GB now, and getting bigger every day, so I do NOT want to have to download the whole thing every time I do a backup!
I want to restore to a different FTP site so that if our cheap host goes down we can shift the DNS and carry on.
So none of my FTP clients are suitable for either part of this task.
So these two abilities are crucial. I will look at SecureFX some more if the tool I am currently trialing Handy Backup does not do the job.
HTTrack does not seem to have a restore facility at all so would only be good for moving the site all in one go, which at 5GB (soon) and rising I do not want to have to do in an emergency ;)
Site Vault is a bit expensive, but well worth looking at also.
By Tim, at
August 8, 2008 6:34 AM
It is within the scope of SecureFX -- actually, it is just what I do as well.
Let me know if you need advice on configuration (if you decide to download the trial.)
By Iyov, at
August 8, 2008 4:57 PM
Thanks, again, I am currently trying Good Synch, which at present seems to be doing what I want without downloading to my laptop first. If that proves not satisfactory, I will look at SecureFX next... If it is difficult to work out I'll ask for help :) Thanks!
By Tim, at
August 8, 2008 5:09 PM
Does your web host offer some options? My web hosting control panel allows me to back up my email, databases and files to zip files on the server (which stay there for 3 days). I can also download them, of upload them for restoring.
By Stephen G, at
August 13, 2008 5:15 PM
Thanks, Stephen, that would be a good idea for a one off backup of a smaller site. What I need is daily incremental backups and the site is over 4GB and climbing, so I don't really trust one massive ZIP file download either.
By Tim, at
August 14, 2008 10:33 AM
Basically the idea is to enable/encourage people to:
- listen to the Bible
- share things that they have thought, prayed or done as a result of listening
- encourage each other to respond to the biblical chapters they hear
If you are a FaceBook guru I'd be very glad of suggestions on how to make this "work" better. If you are a keen Bible listener, then do add some stories to the page!
Labels: audio, bible, internet
¶ 4:22 PM
[to Del.icio.us]
The video dramatises new ways we could interact with the future Web these ideas are "based on projected technological trends and real-world scenarios."
It also illustrates how strong the "Apple is cool" meme is right now ;) But do I really want one of those annoying "wheel" things, or is this one time when reinventing the wheel is a bad idea? Reactions on the LifeHacker blog (HT) to the 3d cluster arrangement were very mixed, so I suspect that this is something us kinesthetic/visual learners may love, but some other people will hate. I wonder if in ten years time we'll be able to get more choice in how the interface works?
I will agree with one LH commenter, it would drive me NUTS if the computer kept rearranging the icons without asking me, as the speaker seemed to suggest - that would me MS desktop at its worst behaved ;)
Labels: internet
¶ 4:15 PM
[to Del.icio.us]
On Monday, 4th, at just after 9am NZ time I published my little post about flat-earthers Interesting questions Peter Kirk points out that at 11:03 GMT the BBC posted this: Do they really think the earth is flat?With a nice (faked?) picture.Though not the one I am displaying thanks to Thomas Hawk - the BBC one had "copyright" wirtten all over it (metaphorically speaking)!
Labels: internet
¶ 11:10 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
What I found abnormally interesting though were some details from Duane's listing of the biblical Gedaliahs, I'll cite the relevant section (bold highlighting added):
There is evidently an informal, and unacknowledged hierarchy of probability at work here. The Gedaliah from David's time is merely "said to be" - so biblical texts telling earlier events are less likely to be accurate. The semi-royal is also dubious - claims to distinction render a character less plausible. (Actually on this Gedaliah I am not sure whether Duane is dubious of his existence or merely that he was Zephaniah's grandad, but somehow his royal connection renders him a doubtful character ;)
- 2 Kings: 25:22-26: Gedalyahu son of Ahikam, exilic governor of Judah under Nebuchadnezzar. He didn't last long.
- I Chronicles 25:3: Gedalyahu, a prophetic musician said to be from the time of David
- Ezra 10:18: Gedalyahu, a postexilic priest married to a foreign
woman. He had to send her away and provide a guilt offering. Can't have
any of that marriage to a foreign woman stuff, at least not at that
time.- Jeremiah 38:1-6: Gedalyahu son of Pashhur, an official of King
Zedekiah, who along with other officials, thought someone should kill
Jeremiah because he was demoralizing the troops. Can't have any of that
demoralizing of troops stuff going on. Oh, no, I forgot Jeremiah was a
good guy, a prophet of God. A eunuch Cushite finally rescued Jeremiah
but not before Jeremiah did some quality time in a royal cistern.- Zephaniah 1:1: Gedalyahu son of Amariah, grandson of King Hezekiah
and grandfather of Zephaniah, or so it says Zephaniah. Being in a royal
line is always a good thing.
But the other Gedaliahs all squeak in, some of them I suspect simply because they had already provided a nice opportunity for humor.
Similar (usually partly unconscious) prejudice operates in most assessments of the likelihood of the existence of biblical characters in more serious writings. With maximalists more likely to doubt "minor characters" and minimalists more likely to doubt religiously significant ones perhaps ;-)
Labels: biblical.studies
¶ 6:47 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
Tim,
There have been all kinds of reactions about the contribution this discovery makes to biblical studies. I believe that the finding is significant because it is directly related to historical events in the book of Jeremiah. The discovery does not prove the Bible but it shows that Gedaliah was not an invented character in an invented history.
Claude Mariottini
By Dr. Claude Mariottini, at
August 5, 2008 7:53 AM
Claude, I largely agree with you. I did not intend to imply that this is not a really interesting find. It is also another that suggests that an extreme minimalist position is not well founded in archaeological evidence. Though I do not think it quite "shows that Gedaliah was not an invented character in an invented history" it does make this position less convincing!
By Tim, at
August 5, 2008 9:19 AM
When I wrote that, I new I was in dangerous territory. Wait tell you see my post that I'm currently working on! You may be correct and if so, I exposed a significant underlying prejudice. At the conscious level, I thought I was just messing around. On the other hand, over a larger selection of subjects, I doubt that any minimalist worthy of his salt would think me a minimalist. I also doubt that any good maximalist would think me a maximalist. It's hard for me to believe that those two terms are much other than theological invectives with little real meaning beyond, "I don't agree with you about the usefulness of this or that text for the reconstruction of history."
As to my view of Zephaniah and his granddad, I not sure which of your to options, if either, applies. A genealogy to a royal line, even a short one, tends to raise a flag. Once raised, I need to take that flag into consideration in further study. I have not studied this enough to have even a low probability opinion. I only see a flag.
By Duane Smith, at
August 5, 2008 10:59 AM
While pure max or min -imalists are rare and most of us occupy the spacious and varied (if mythical) "middle ground" the caricatures are a helpful shorthand in describing tendencies. Though in this post I was certainly not intending to label either you or Claude. What interested my was simply a nice example of the way in which our assumptions impact the way we talk and therefore think about these issues. Tendencies that are obscured when we are being more serious than you were!
On (one of) the more serious notes in your comment, my take on royal connections is that (a) they are more likely to be invented or falsely remembered but that (b) there is also more likely to have been some documentary or "authoritative" oral genealogy available and so less likely to be invented out of nothing. Either way I'd think that the claim makes little diffference to the likelihood of this Gedaliah being a real person, so my own prejudice would be to accept his probable existence while being more cautious about his royal descent ;) At least that is my take IF we first accept that his grandson might be a real person - I have not studied Zephaniah, so I make no assessment of that prior question here!
By Tim, at
August 5, 2008 11:39 AM
I agree with your thought process with regard to Zephaniah's granddad. That is certainly very likely in the case of rather short genealogies, perhaps longer ones also. All most nothing was woven from whole cloth. And I don't actually disagree with your first comment if I'm allowed to put my own nuance on the issue.
The question ran something like this:
The emperor Domitian had a coin made to celebrate his son's divinisation showing the boy sitting on a globe - presumably representing the earth, with 7 stars around him.Of course, the image is typical of a tradition of picturing gods seated on globes, see for example the coin representing Victory seated on a globe (from the page on coins from the time of Nero from the Classics Dept. at Monmouth College).
The Romans like other ancients believed the Earth to be flat.
Why was a globe used?
The Romans regularly used "orbis", a circle, ring, or disk, in the phrase orbis terrae, terrarum "the circle of the world" to mean the whole earth.
For of course, as I had forgotten, and the student did not know, the story which claims that before Columbus people "all" believed that the Earth was flat is simply a myth.
A Greek, Eratosthenes (c 276 to 195 BCE) estimated the Earth's circumference by getting measurements taken of the Sun's position in the sky at two different places Syene (now Aswan, Egypt) and Alexandria which is directly north of Syene. From the difference (and assuming that the Sun is so far away that light is parallel in the two places) he got a value close to the current measurements. (There is a good well documented presentation of this and the whole history of the "flat earthers" on Donald Simanek's site.)
Most early Christians, in the Roman empire, largely following Aristotle, accepted that the earth was round. Though at least Tertullian and others argued that the Bible spoke of it having four "corners" etc. so it must be flat.
So it is no surprise that Roman coins pictured the globe as round, that was the majority view among educated people at the time! And indeed continued to be, though perhaps not for much longer if the "Creation Scientists" have their way and require us all to use Scripture in ways that were never intended to teach us "science".
[to Del.icio.us]
Was the BBC reading your blog? Within hours after your post they had posted this!
By Peter Kirk, at
August 5, 2008 9:44 AM
- Biblical Studies Carnival XXXII Part Three (Done)
- Biblical Studies Carnival XXXII Part Two
- Biblical Studies Carnival XXXII Part One
Labels: biblical.studies.online, blog
¶ 7:45 AM
[to Del.icio.us]
