Howdy, folks!
I’m back from the Catholic Answers Cruise now. As expected, it was both a lot of fun and a lot of work.
Now that I’m back physically, I’ll also be back to regular blogging strength starting tomorrow morning.
In the interim, I just wanted to thank Steven Greydanus for gracing these “pages” with his insights and say that, as always, he’s more than welcome to contribute whenever he’d like.
Three cheers for Steve!
I’m not a big fan of “dynamic equivalence” translations of the Bible–at least not for Bible study. They’re okay for Bible reading, but the more liberty translators feel themselves at liberty to take with the text, the more liberty they will take. Thus translations like the New International Version or Today’s English Version display considerable translator bias, though that’s a problem to some degree even in more literal versions.
But even dynamic equivalence translations don’t go in for what versions like the Mormon “Inspired” revision of the King James Version do. The latter commits wholesale fraud by inserting material into the text that is not remotely there in the original.
Turns out there’s a Wahabbi translation of the Qur’an that does exactly the same thing. It commits translation fraud in order to make Christians and Jews look worse than what the base text says.
I’m going to have to be in blog-lite mode for a little bit, so I’ve asked Steven Greydanus if he’d care to help out by pitching in some extra posts, and he generously agreed. Don’t know how much his schedule will permit him to add, but I’m sure whatever he can do will be ex—-celent as Monty Burns would say.
I’ll still be around (at least one post a day), but it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back to full-strength blogging. In the meantime, enjoy what Steve has to add!
I’m going to have to be in blog-lite mode for a little bit, so I’ve asked Steven Greydanus if he’d care to help out by pitching in some extra posts, and he generously agreed. Don’t know how much his schedule will permit him to add, but I’m sure whatever he can do will be ex—-celent as Monty Burns would say.
I’ll still be around (at least one post a day), but it’ll be a couple of weeks before I’m back to full-strength blogging. In the meantime, enjoy what Steve has to add!
Blogging has been light the last few days while I’ve been dealing with the killer bee invasion (at least, they must be presumed to have been killer bees). They now appear to be vanquished, and I am on the verge of getting back into my house full time.
That means a return to regular blogging as well.
Prayers are also welcome, as I wouldn’t want a straggler bee to put me into anaphylaxis due to a previously-undiscovered bee allergy.
If y’all listened to the show last Thursday (RealPlayer Feed), you’ll know that I did it by phone from my family’s ranch in Deep East Texas and was heading to Houston (South East Texas) the next day. These were two of the stops on my nearly 4000-mile Long Hard Ride (WMP Hear It, Buy It) in the words of the Marshall Tucker Band. Took two weeks, and constituted my summer vacation. More on that later.
In the meantime, I wanted to thank my good friend Steven Greydanus for helping out with the blogging duties while I was gone. All of my posts for the last two weeks were written before I left, as I knew I would have spotty Net access while gone.
Steven’s posts seem to have been a resounding success, as I knew they would be, and I have extended an invitation to Steve to keep posting here whenever he’d like. He tells me that he probably won’t be posting every day, but will whenever he wants to sound off on something.
So now we have a kind of symmetry: I’m a regular bloggist and part time movie critic via Steve’s site, and now he’s a regular movie critic and part time bloggist via my site. I think the book of Proverbs listed that as one of the benefits of friendship in that “two is better than one” passage or something.
Anyway, glad to be back, and three cheers for Steve for filling in! If you’d like to tell Steve how much you enjoyed his posts and encourage him to write more, use the comments box. 🙂
If y’all listened to the show last Thursday (RealPlayer Feed), you’ll know that I did it by phone from my family’s ranch in Deep East Texas and was heading to Houston (South East Texas) the next day. These were two of the stops on my nearly 4000-mile Long Hard Ride (WMP Hear It, Buy It) in the words of the Marshall Tucker Band. Took two weeks, and constituted my summer vacation. More on that later.
In the meantime, I wanted to thank my good friend Steven Greydanus for helping out with the blogging duties while I was gone. All of my posts for the last two weeks were written before I left, as I knew I would have spotty Net access while gone.
Steven’s posts seem to have been a resounding success, as I knew they would be, and I have extended an invitation to Steve to keep posting here whenever he’d like. He tells me that he probably won’t be posting every day, but will whenever he wants to sound off on something.
So now we have a kind of symmetry: I’m a regular bloggist and part time movie critic via Steve’s site, and now he’s a regular movie critic and part time bloggist via my site. I think the book of Proverbs listed that as one of the benefits of friendship in that “two is better than one” passage or something.
Anyway, glad to be back, and three cheers for Steve for filling in! If you’d like to tell Steve how much you enjoyed his posts and encourage him to write more, use the comments box. 🙂
A while back I started getting a whole wash of spam with subject lines like “Lonely wifes looking for action” and “Cheating wifes” and things like that. (What is it with the misspelling of “wives”? Is that an attempt to get around spam filters? No matter, mine is catching them now anyway.)
When I started getting these, I figured that they were advertisements for ostensible online matchmaking clubs for people who were already married–in other words, adultery clubs. I say “figured” because I simply deleted the e-mails without opening them and I say “ostensible” because I didn’t really suppose that such clubs existed or, if they did, that they would be conducting massive spam campaigns.
I couldn’t imagine that people would really be interested in such clubs. Why would women want to sign up to be one of the “cheating wifes”? And what kind of total loser men would want to be patrons of such places? What would it say about such a person to be attracted to such a place? Notice that the appeal the advertisement is based on is not that you find the other person attractive. The idea is that cheating with somebody else’s wife is itself supposed to be an inducement. What kind of sick desires are wrapped up in that?
I couldn’t imagine that very many people would be interested in such clubs and that the e-mails were more likely a credit card scam designed to prey on the few lonely, gullible men who might actually respond.
Well it seems I am a little naive.
Turns out that there are such clubs. A reader sent me a link to this story about such clubs.
Now I’m thinking: How do we make these illegal or at least unprofitable? Alienation of affection class action lawsuits?
A thoughtful reader pointed out that Steven and my posts didn’t have sig lines, making it hard to tell them apart. I’d assumed the system automatically turned those on when I added Steven as an author and didn’t notice that this wasn’t the case. They’ve now been turned on. Thanks for pointing it out!
The right hand bar has been loading a little slower than I like, so I’ve turned off the links to the recommended books, though they’ll be back in the future.
I’m going to have to devote my attention to other things the next couple of weeks and, though I will still be posting, I won’t be able to post as often as usual, so I’ve invited Steven D. Greydanus of the massively bodacious Decent Films Guide to join me as a guest blogger ’till I’m able to get back in the swing of things.
Hope y’all will show Steven a good time, as this is his first foray into blogging, and I hope y’all’ll also check out his excent films reviews on his own site.
Maybe here on the blog he’ll share with us some insight into upcoming movies, like the rumored new Superman film or something?