Seth Sanders has posted an interesting piece that appears to be a teaser for his upcoming SBL presentation on what he calls the scribal “shadow culture”—that is, the literary evidence not from the “big, famous corpora of Mesopotamian and Egyptian scholastic life.” He raises some really interesting points about how these “shadow traditions” may have [...] Read more »
Experimental Approaches to Achieve Common Core State Standards
The NYTimes has published a piece focusing on 100 New York schools experimenting with different approaches towards achieving the “Common Core” standards that attempt to shore up problems with the “No Child Left Behind” standards. In general, I agree with clearer standardization of minimum standards (though it must be clear that these are minimums and [...] Read more »
Seminaries Headed to the Cemetery?
Frederick Schmidt’s article, “Is it Time to Write the Eulogy? The Future of Seminary Education,” observes a number of problems with the present state of seminary education and suggested some sweeping changes to how M.Div. degrees are handled both by the church and by divinity schools. In the quest for academic respectability, seminaries have not [...] Read more »
Typing two spaces after a period is WRONG (and reflections on correction)
Slate has a nice piece up on why it’s totally, completely wrong to double-space after a period. I get this all the time in documents I edit—I usually just do a quick find/replace to eliminate all double-spaces from the document at the very start. I remain continually surprised at how many (even those who learned [...] Read more »
Prosperity and Lack of Motivation
Thomas Friedman has managed to publish a good op-ed in the NYTimes, one in which he looks at America’s shrinking status as a superpower and persistent educational failings (building off two other recent pieces, this one by Michael Hirsh and this one by Robert Samuelson) and ultimately concludes that the real problem has been a [...] Read more »
