Out of Office Auto-Reply
Kate and I are skipping town for a long weekend, to get a much-needed break from being on campus. This will hopefully allow me to relax and recharge just enough that I won't end up snapping at my summer students in August...
Not that anybody reads blogs on the weekend, anyway, but if you're just dying for something bloggy to read while I'm absent, there are many interesting things posted at the fine sites listed off to the left. A few particular highlights:
William Tozier at Notional Slurry has been on fire recently, with a bunch of really interesting posts. Three in particular stand out to me:
- Valuable Old Books, which raises some interesting issues about the perverse effects of bibliophilia without respect to content.
- Who Wants to Save the Great Black Swamp?, discussing some problems with the idea of restoring things to their "natural" state. This ties in with a post about the portrayal of nature in Tolkien that I keep meaning to write, but haven't. One of these days.
- What mysterious events led the Maya to leave Lorain, Ohio?, on the futility of seeking simple single explanations for great historical migrations.
All good stuff. This is why I like to read blogs written by smart people.
Elsewhere, Fred Clark of Slacktivist has a couple of posts demonstrating again why the world needs more thoughtful Christians like him. In the first, he takes up the question of what, exactly, Jesus would do (favorite anecdotal response to that question: "I know one thing he wouldn't do. He wouldn't pay ten bucks for a stupid bracelet."). In the second, he explains the deliberate badness of Christian Entertainment.
And finally, Steve Cook at Snarkout has a typically encyclopedic discussion of witch hunts through the ages. Not to mention all sorts of wonderfully odd stuff in Sideout.
There. That ought to hold the little bastards.
Posted at 6:50 AM | link | follow-ups |