Thanks to Sherrie Lowly for telling her story.

Larry Hurtado, one of our fine New Testament scholars, now has a website. Leading me to ask, If Larry, who’s next?

Jim’s reminder is always good to hear.

Tim Dalrymple, over at Patheos’ fine website, describes the CLS v. Martinez case with admirable clarity.

Tony Jones begins a new, important series Kenda Dean, Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church 

John Ortberg: well or fence?

Derek Leman on faith and reason and SBL, where he looks into Hendel’s anti-evangelism form of evangelism, where Hendel proposes that the only way to conduct one’s scholarship is his way, and where the only acceptable form of academic work is non-faith (which is itself a faith position).

Mark Roberts begins a series on the language of Jesus. Read this if you have some time.

You’ve just to go here to see what Rob’s up to these days.

I can’t go to iMonk’s site without sadness, but there’s a gladness there these days. Thanks Mike.

Good post Brett.

Meanderings in the News

1. SCOTUS decided against Chicago’s strict gun law; so Chicago made some new laws. Gotta stay one step ahead of the Feds here in Chicago!

2. Speaking of Chicago, how about Illinois? “Few budget analysts are surprised to see Illinois, with a limping economy and broken political culture, edge close to the abyss. Two of the last six governors have served jail terms, and a third is on trial. “We are a fiscal poster child for what not to do,” said Ralph Martire of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a liberal-leaning policy group in Illinois. “We make California look as if it’s run by penurious accountants who sit in rooms trying to put together an honest budget all day.”

3. Charles Blow on the rise of the Religious Left: “The unanswerable questions are whether these highly religious, socially conservative Democrats will remain loyal to a liberal agenda as they become the majority of the party and their financial and social standing improves. Or whether Republicans will finally make headway in recruiting them. The future only knows.”

4. Hacking into smart phones.

5. Is Obama a socialist? What do socialists say? For what it’s worth, socialists deny that Obama is one of them – and even seem a bit insulted by the suggestion“I have been making a living telling people Obama is not a socialist,” says Frank Llewellyn, national director of the Democratic Socialists of America. “It’s frustrating to see people using our brand to criticize programs that have nothing to do with our brand and are not even working. … Adds Billy Wharton,co-chair of the Socialist Party USA: “I am not even sure he’s a liberal. I call him a hedge fund Democrat.”

6. Thomas Jefferson said a constitution would be good for twenty years and then a new one had to be written. Never heard that before: ““The earth belongs always to the living generation,”Jefferson wrote to James Madison, pondering the forces behind the French Revolution. “Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”

7. iPad vs. Kindle: “It takes longer to read books on a Kindle 2 or an iPad versus a printed book, Jakob Nielsen of product development consultancy Nielsen Norman Group discovered in a recent usability survey. The study found that reading speeds declined by 6.2% on the iPad and 10.7% on the Kindle compared to print. However, Nielsen conceded that the differences in reading speed between the two devices were not “statistically significant because of the data’s fairly high variability” — in other words, the study did not prove that the iPad allowed for faster reading than the Kindle.”

8. College grads and unemployed: ““I don’t think I fully understood the severity of the situation I had graduated into,” he said, speaking in effect for an age group — the so-called millennials, 18 to 29 — whose unemployment rate of nearly 14 percent approaches the levels of that group in the Great Depression. And then he veered into the optimism that, polls show, is persistently, perhaps perversely, characteristic of millennials today. “I am absolutely certain that my job hunt will eventually pay off,” he said. For young adults, the prospects in the workplace, even for the college-educated, have rarely been so bleak. Apart from the 14 percent who are unemployed and seeking work, as Scott Nicholson is, 23 percent are not even seeking a job, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total, 37 percent, is the highest in more than three decades and a rate reminiscent of the 1930s.”

9. George Will, as always: “The many lessons of Okrent’s story include: In the fight between law and appetite, bet on appetite. And: Americans then were, and let us hope still are, magnificently ungovernable by elected nuisances.”

10. Cool find.

Meanderings in Sports

Very sad. Almost 80% of NFL players are bankrupt or in trouble soon after their playing days.

I don’t care if this comes from someone who is pro-Yankee, Larry gets it right: “According to most studies, baseball players who get a high percentage of clutch hits in one year do not duplicate the feat in subsequent years.  These studies conclude that baseball players hit in the clutch about as often as they hit in routine situations.  The conclusions reached about “clutch hitting” also apply in reverse: baseball players FAIL to hit in the clutch about as often as they fail to reach base in routine situations.  In other words,
on the major league level  there are no “clutch” hitters, and no “chokers” either.”