Friday, August 15, 2008

From the "you just never know" department

Love2Learn Mom at Studeo warned in a recent post about some new sidebar widgets on Blogger thar are racy and therefore not appropriate for younger bloggers. From her post I had the notion that these widgets were "R" rated, which would have caused me to take some kind of action. As it is, many of the blogs on blogger contain lots of foul language and explicit sexual content, but that can be avoided by simply not browsing through the blogs. On the other hand, if you are a young blogger setting up a new blog and go to these widgets, you might be exposed to things you shouldn't be. The most racy widgets I noticed were of the swimsuit pin-up variety. I don't know if she saw any worse ones, but that is bad enough when it comes to the innocence of our youth, especially our boys, not to mention us.

There are some really cool new widgets, though, such as the phases of the moon one and the Astronomy Picture of the Day one.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Yay! Yay! Yay!

I have been hoping for this for a LONG, LONG time! Besides the hesitancy being tradition, it is really helpful for relations with the Jews to be sensitive on this issue.

Yay! Yay! Yay!

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Pelikan on the Bible and the Constitution

Oh, and I also picked up a quirky book by Jaroslav Pelikan called Interpreting the Bible & the Constitution. I've always liked Pelikan, although I was disappointed he went over to Orthodoxy rather than Catholicism. This book compares the way our official interpreters (the Supreme Court) interprets the Constitution and the way the Church interprets the Bible. There are a lot of similarities and, of course, some important differences. It includes a sustained articulation of his understanding of how the development of doctrine occurs.

Did I mention I picked up a two year CD-ROM Learnng Company course on Spanish? This must have been expensive.

Books found

One of the most wonderful parts about working at this seminary is the astounding number of truly great books I have collected from the free book shelf near the library. It contains not only the books that the library is getting rid of because of duplication or old paper, but also any books other professors, students or members of the community are getting rid of. For instance, I have almost all the works of Chesterton because of these free books. Not that I have read them!
This morning I picked up a number of books, among which were two by Guardini and two by Evelyn Underhill. Plus, I got a replacement copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which was one of the most influential books I read as an undergraduate, along with Bonaventure's Itinerarum and Newman's A Grammar of Assent. I also got a number of popular and technical books on physics and astronomy. Physics is my favorite science.
Now, if I could only retire by the fire and begin to read all these books!