Stan Taylor

I read yesterday that Bart D. Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why is selling briskly. In the book, Dr. Ehrman presents some reasons why we can’t just take the Bible at face value: a plethora of conflicting source documents, errors in translation, the politics of canonization, etc. Or, as the Washington Post article says, his book “casts doubt on any number of New Testament episodes that most Christians take as, well, gospel.”
I haven’t read the book yet, but it sounds like New Testament 101 type stuff to me. I’m really happy that Ehrman’s book is presenting these ideas to people who are not familiar with the complex processes which have resulted in the book we call the Bible. Maybe I should keep a copy or two on hand to give out.

I just finished listening to the public domain Librivox recording of Jules Verne’s A Journey to the Interior of the Earth. By modern sci-fi standards, this was a terrible novel, but considering that it was written in 1864, it was quite remarkable.

As usual, Gordon Atkinson expresses a matter of faith that I share much more eloquently than I ever could. Go read This is how it happened.

For the love of God (so to speak), please refrain from creating choral arrangements of simple, familiar hymns. In order to justify the effort, it seems that you cannot resist the urge to fill these arrangements with musical cliches: key changes, time signature changes, bizarre harmonies, cliched accompaniment, etc.
The people who know and love these hymns will scratch their heads at the arrangements, and such arrangements will not increase the appreciation of those who may be unfamiliar these hymns, or of those who do not like these hymns.
Upon reflection, I guess I could take a market approach: church choir directors, for the love of God (so to speak), please refrain from buying these arrangements for your choirs. We’ll all be happier in the long run.

I haven’t followed the news too closely about the uproar regarding the sale of B&O to a Dubai-based company, but I think this Salon commentary is right on: this is a non-issue and it’s embarrassing that the Democrats are trying to gain political mileage from it.

I just completed the Librivox audio edition of Jack London’s Call of the Wild. I loved it; it’s just over the top.
On a side note, this was the first Librivox audiobook that I’ve tried. I certainly like the principle of making free audiobooks of works that are in the public domain, but there were some problems with this recording. Each chapter was read by a different person. This wasn’t a problem, but the quality and volume of the recordings varied widely.

Garret Vreeland was contracted to photograph a speech and book signing by Paul Bremer. In his blog, Garret offers some thoughts about the experience: on politics, Mr. Bremer’s public demeanor, etc. Nothing earth-shattering. Just a nice smattering of musings.

This afternoon, I spent some time browsing through Crap Cars at Barnes & Noble. This little not-terribly-witty book profiles about 50 of the worst cars sold in the U.S. during the driving lifetime of your average B&N customer–the last 40 years or so. I was dismayed, though not surprised, to find in this book two cars that I’ve owned:
1980 Chevrolet Citation

1975 Ford Mustang II

A new study finds that people significantly overestimate the ability of themselves and others to accurately understand the intended tone of online text communications:

Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time.
“People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they ‘hear’ the tone they intend in their head as they write,” Epley explains.
At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. Despite this, the research subjects thought they accurately interpreted the messages nine out of 10 times.
The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren’t that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person’s perspective.

This is a good case for the value of adding emoticons to your online communications, though such usage is often frowned upon for more formal communication. Maybe our younger Internet-savvy cohorts figured this out already.

I really dislike Valentine’s Day. I don’t mind telling or showing my loved ones how much they mean to me, but Valentine’s Day just seems like a totally artificial holiday. I’m anti-consumerist (to some small degree) and just generally passive aggressive. I don’t like anyone telling me that I must show my love on this day, and that I really ought to do so by buying specific (overpriced) items.
This morning, a well-meaning elderly lady was coming out of the coffee shop as I was going in. She asked me, out of the blue, “Have you gotten a Valentine’s Day gift yet for your wife? You’d better get on it. You should have seen all the men at the grocery store across the street.” It took a lot of restraint not to tell her to go to hell. I know she was just trying to be nice, but she really rubbed me the wrong way.