GroshLink

Eros in the Classroom gives snippets of a number of academic blogosphere reactions to Deresiewicz’s, an associate professor of English at Yale University, American Scholar essay Love on Campus. FYI: Commentary on the article/topic also found on Inside Higher Ed, see Casaubon on Viagra.

The Chronicle article begins, Whatever happened to the bumbling, socially awkward college professor? Our popular-culture landscape used to be littered with that character — think Professors Ned Brainard in The Absent-Minded Professor or John Nerdelbaum Frink Jr. from The Simpsons. But according to William Deresiewicz, a different pattern entirely emerges from recent movies about academics. In films like The Squid and the Whale, Wonder Boys, We Don’t Live Here Anymore, and Little Miss Sunshine, academics are stereotyped as lecherous cads, out to bed admiring grad students.

What a spectrum of identity issues to consider when I have conversation among those involved with ESN, graduate student/professional school ministry, and faculty ministry.

A friend passed along this piece for all you Starbucks lovers

Find more at Filmmaker Takes Manhattan, 171 Starbucks Stores

And I can't resist a little performance art, I find this interview fascinating. The article's posted at An Artist and His Sub Surrender in Brooklyn 

Here's a brief AP article Head Of Campus Ministry Sees U.S. Becoming Mission Field (i.e., Alec Hill from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the International Fellowship of Evangelical Student's World Assembly recently held near Toronto).

For more, read an interview of Alec Hill regarding InterVarsity at the IFES World Assembly.  As a student commented to me the other day, InterVarsity is a campus mission.

Comic-Con: Karen Allen To Appear In ‘Indiana Jones IV’

NarniaWeb visits the set of Prince Caspian -- I'm ok w/the spoilers, how about you?

While working on a review of Os Guinness' The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life, I heard Theresa declare from outside the house You did it Eden!  I saw it with my own eyes. Note:  Theresa's mom gave a report of Eden's first step on her own without holding onto anything just over a week ago, but we hadn't seen it with our own eyes and we haven't seen anything approaching steps since then.  Praise God for this exciting developmental moment for our Eden, who will be 2.5 years old on August 22.  Praying that she'll be running around with Hayley and Ellen by her birthday.

Almost forgot to share that Theresa brought Eden into the office declaring It must be the boots! (the new hot pink cowboy boots)  But Eden wouldn't stand on her own and then walk to me.  I'll have to wait for another time, hoping that there will be lots of opportunities in the near future.  Heading up for dinner.

Lots of interest in Cut God Some Slack. I came across the post through the Chronicle's Who Buys Anti-Religion Books?. Yes, it's a hot topic and a lot of people read these books for a complex set of reasons.  If I would say something like Steven D. Levitt, maybe I'd get more comments:

Let me put the argument another way: I understand why books attacking liberals sell. It is because many conservatives hate liberals. Books attacking conservatives sell for the same reason. But no one writes books saying that bird watching is a waste of time, because people who aren’t bird watchers probably agree, but don’t want to spend $20 in order to read about it. Since very few people (at least in my crowd) actively dislike God, I’m surprised that anti-God books are not received with the same yawn that anti-bird watcher books would be.

Well, maybe you have to be known first.  No thank-you to both of those, I'll just keep press on in the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service . . . those who know that their source of purpose must rise above the highest of self-help humanist hopes and who long for their faith to have integrity and effectiveness in the face of all the challenges of the modern world (Os Guinness. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life.  (Nashville, TN:  W Publishing Group, 1998, p.4-5).

For those with interest in reading further, I'd recommend The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism 'ad absurdum by Alvin Plantinga.  Also, Chuck Colson recently wrote Overheated Rhetoric: What should we make of bestselling books blasting Christians? (note: related pieces given at the bottom of the article). 

Brief, fascinating Chronicle of Higher Education piece/comments on Top 10 E-Learning Tools which concludes with the following statement, What they all seem to have in common is that they are tools for sharing information. So is information sharing really the same thing as e-learning? This is a question I've been considering as materials are being developed for the Emerging Scholars Network. If anyone has some insights to share, post them here or email me directly.  Thanks.

FYI:  One can link directly to the Top 10 Favourite Tools of 70 e-learning professionals (consultants, analysts, developers, practitioners, academics, etc).

True forgiveness deals with the past, all of the past, to make the future possible. We cannot go on nursing grudges even vicariously for those who cannot speak for themselves any longer. We have to accept that what we do we do for generations past, present, and yet to come. That is what makes a community a community or a people a people--for better or worse.

The above is today's daily asterisk, taken from Desmond Tutu's No Future Without Forgiveness. A powerful word, a significant book regarding a specific moment of reconciliation and grace in our time. If you haven't already, read and meditated upon it, I encourage you to do such. When I finish composing book reviews for the Emerging Scholars Network, I intend to return to another powerful piece on forgiveness: Miroslav Volf's (systematic theologian and Director of Yale Center for Faith and Culture) End of Memory.  Another piece on the vital topic of forgiveness which I would commend to you as you seek to follow Christ in this fallen world, shedding the light, life, and transforming reality of the age to come.

[update] In a few hours our whole family will jump into the car to travel to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's Mid-Atlantic Regional Staff Conference at Camp Hebron. Ellen and Hayley are looking forward to reconnecting with friends from last year and having an opportunity to ride horses. Theresa's looking forward to catching up on some reading (see picked up some magazines at our local congregation and we're wrapping up Yancey's book on Prayer in the next several weeks) and swimming, which will also be what Eden will enjoy the most. But Mommy will miss Eden's morning nap time :( (More)

Click here for Korean hostage updates with pics, video, articles, and comments. I was referred to the link via Jesus Creed. Spread the word; lift your prayers; voice your outrage; kneel, stand, and shout in solidarity.