July 31, 2005

Five Years Later, Kenyan City Councilman Still Left in Suspense

From Philadelphia's own NBC 10, via WorldMag Blog: A Nairobi (yes, the one in Kenya) city councilman told a local newspaper today that five years ago he wrote to former president Bill Clinton, offering a dowry of 40 goats and 20 cows for the hand of Clinton's daughter, Chelsea. The letter also told of plans for a large and expensive wedding presided over by Nobel peace prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Mr. Chepkurgor, the councilman in question, says he will reman celibate until receiving a response, for which he is still waiting. An anonymous security official said that Clinton most...
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Topic(s): Politics
Posted by Kenny at 2:40 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

July 27, 2005

The Source New Testament on Gender Roles

Better Bibles Blog now has more excerpts from The Source New Testament, this time on the contentious subject of gender roles. Dr. Nyland's last book was subtitled "The Campaign to Control Gender Translation in Bibles," and in her BBB interview she asserted that "most people do not want to know what the Greek .... really says" in "the women passages." These comments, combined with her background as a lexicographer, and the new archaeological research she has access to, made me very interested in what she had to say here.
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Topic(s): Bible
Posted by Kenny at 6:21 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

July 26, 2005

More on The Source New Testament

A list of verses, with comparison to the TNIV (apparently chosen as a point of comparison because both eschew the use of gender-indefinite masculine pronouns and sometimes use singular "they"), is now available from Better Bibles Blog here. A few short reactions: The Source translates less literally than the English translations that I ordinarily use (NKJV and NASB), which attempt to go so far as even to reproduce the sentence structure of the original language (this attempt sometimes fails completely due to differences between Greek and English grammar and sometimes, especially in the NASB, leads to sentences that can be...
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Topic(s): Bible
Posted by Kenny at 8:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

Breaking Translation Traditions

I blogged earlier on how the tradition of English language Bible translation has sometimes led to inaccurate renderings of the Greek New Testament (I assume this affects the Hebrew Bible as well, but I don't read Hebrew). Wayne Leman of Better Bibles Blog has been talking recently about a new translation called The Source New Testament which was made by a sole translator, Greek lexicographer Dr. Ann Nyland of the University of New England, Australia. Today, Wayne has an interview with Dr. Nyland in which she makes an argument similar to mine, though much more compelling. Where I happened across...
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Topic(s): Bible
Posted by Kenny at 1:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 25, 2005

British Police Refuse to Apologize For Death, Defend "Shoot to Kill" Policy

"It wasn't just a random event, and the most important thing to recognize is that it is still happening out there ... Somebody else could be shot." - London Police Commisioner Sir Ian Blair, in an interview with Sky News.
The New York Times is reporting on a statement issued by London's Police Commissioner in which he defended the "shoot to kill" policy he instituted following the bombings on July 7. Speaking of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, a man who was shot to death on the Tube, London's subway system, last week by plain-clothes police men and later discovered not to have been related in any way to terrorism, Sir Ian insisted, "There is nothing gratuitous here in what is going on." Excuse me?!
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July 24, 2005

Man Shot to Death by London Police: Not a Terrorist After All

WorldMagBlog is linking to a New York Times article, published this morning, reporting that Scotland Yard admitted yesterday that the man gunned down by London police on the Tube last Friday was not connected to the terrorist bombings of July 7, or the attempted bombings of July 21st. The mayor of London, Ken Livingston, had issued "shoot to kill" orders for police, who previously did not carry firearms at all, in regard to terror suspects under certain circumstances. (For a good, short summary of events so far, see this post and this one by Josh at "Freedom Of..." He has...
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July 19, 2005

God, Science, and the Teleological (Design) Argument Revisited

I've just finished the deeply moving experience of reading one of the most brilliant, and beautiful, philosophy papers I have been exposed to to date. The paper, "Natural Theology, Methodological Naturalism, and 'Turtles all the Way Down'" by Dr. Del Ratzsch, a philosopher of science at Calvin College, appears in the latest issue of Faith and Philosophy, and academic journal published by the Society of Christian Philosophers. (The latest issue is dated October 2004 - they're a little behind.) The paper discusses a broad range of issues related to the interaction between theology and science. There are two points that I find particularly beautiful and compelling and would like to discuss. The first is his argument that the success of science (not any particular scientific endeavor, but the entire enterprise) actually amounts to experimental support (albeit inconclusive) for traditional monotheism. The second is his discussion of "infinite regression" of naturalistic explanations...
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July 12, 2005

New York Times Columnist John Tierney: No Undestanding of Computer Security

The Times is running a very tongue-in-cheek (I hope) editorial today about fitting punishment for "hackers." I won't bother spending time complaining about the media's terrible abuse of that term (which I believe the New York Times started about 25 years ago). For correct usage see the The Jargon File, s.v., and also the entry in the more "official" RFC 1983 (RFC stands for "Request For Comments;" RFCs are official documents describing Internet (and ARPANET before it) standards dating from as early as 1969. RFC 1983 is "The Internet User's Glossary" and was written in August 1996. Some RFCs are...
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Topic(s): Technology
Posted by Kenny at 6:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

July 8, 2005

I'm Back!

Regular visitors to this site (the existence of such individuals is disputed, but I believe you are out there somewhere!) may have noticed a substantial outage recently, lasting approximately from the afternoon of Sunday the 26th until yesterday afternoon. This was due to a major administrative debacle at Verizon. As you can see, I am back online now. I'm sure I've missed a lot the last few weeks (Sandra Day O'Connor, London, etc.), but I'm not going to try to catch up. Let's just pretend I already blogged all of that and I'll start up again in the middle. Look...
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