The Old Testament Song

Taylor and her best friend Sydney sing the books of the Old Testament for our church's talent night.

Smugmug

I'm experimenting with a new photo sharing site called Smugmug. I've loaded most of my Peru pictures up there. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Is Google making us stupid?

My friend Scott brought this article to my attention.

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle....

The challenge is to read the entire article. It is quite fascinating and a little disturbing.

dog dreams

Here's a picture from Taylor (age 7).
Her cartoon has a surprisingly adult-ish wit to it I think. The New Yorker cartoons have nothing on this.

Can you tell she wants a puppy?

Gulf Shores

 

We were at Gulf Shores, AL last week with a group from church. It was a blessing to be there with good friends. We ate lots of good food, enjoyed the company and played games. Most importantly, the girls enjoyed the beach and Dad stayed out of the sun.

bloo bunny

blue bunny was in blue bunny town - Addy

wisdom and folly

Please check out the spankin' new blog from my friends Jim and Amy. Jim's a philosophy prof and rock n roll fanatic so you know it will be interesting.

Here's a little taste...

Long before I ever became an academician I loved rock n’ roll-from the crunch and sizzle of Jimmy Page guitar riff to the soul-soothing wail of Aretha Franklin. But most of all, I loved the songs themselves, from love ballads to R&B grooves to punk rock political anthems. And I’ve spent decades building my music catalogue, both to enjoy the music and to get a better grasp on the evolution of this art form.

It wasn’t long ago that to call rock music an “art form” was a howler. And it has only been very recently that study of the popular arts generally has become a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry. Happily, today there are several academic journals devoted entirely to the subject, and even the most prestigious aesthetics journals routinely feature treatments of rock music. Finally scholars have realized what should have been obvious all along. The study of popular culture is important because it provides us with insights in a wide range of subjects: art, anthropology, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, and philosophy, to name a few. And study of the history of popular culture is significant for the same reason that any historical inquiry is significant. It provides us with a better understanding of human nature and society.

Stanley Kubrick's Boxes

I'm not a big fan of Kubrick's films (to be fair I've only seen Full Metal Jacket), but I found this documentary about Kubrick's archives to be fascinating. This might give some of you a better insight into what an archives is and what an archivist does (in particular see part 4).



The video is just shy of 50 minutes and does contain strong language.

hattip: FilmChat

Bleed Into One

I for one want to see this documentary. Enjoy the trailer.

Peru Branch

My purpose in traveling to Peru, was to assist the Peru Branch of the Summer Institute of Linguistics in their archiving and learn about their history. Here are a few pictures of the current office in Lima.