Rotundus.com

It had been a long week with far too little sleep, but last night I wasn't yet ready to head to bed. Either I could get more work done or do some of the errands that I needed to get done this weekend.

It was 11:30pm at the time, but nonetheless I decided to do a little shopping. In Canada the phenomenon of the 24-hour walmart is relatively new, although they've been around in the US for some time. There are roughly 20 24/7 Walmarts in Canada, including the one nearest me. I have a love/hate relationship with Walmart - it's a bit annoying as far as lineups are concerned, and some of its business practices I don't like. However, sometimes it's just a little too convenient.

Naturally, I decided to walk down there - after all how often do you get the chance to go for a walk without having to worry much about noise pollution. (People forget just how loud internal combustion engines are). Its about a 20 - 25 minute walk from my place.

Sure enough, as predicted, when I hit the checkout at Walmart at about 12:15 and, as always, had to wait 10 minutes or in line. Also had to sidestep a bunch of folks restocking shelves when walking around the store (after all they have to do that sometime). I'd have to say that it was busier there than I expected - 3 checkouts open and all with lines. However, it was only a short while after midnight on a Friday. Showing up at 3am on Tuesday might be a little bit different.

It may not be spring for a few weeks yet, but yet I'm in the mood for spring cleaning on this blog.

• Quality: Looking at recent posts I'm afraid that I've developed the habit of blabbing rather than blogging. Lots of links and excerpts, but little beyond that.
  I've been wondering if I should adopt something more regular posts like Tim Challies' sideblog, or if I should try the odd post here or there in the style of Daryll's Links of the Whenever. In any case, more real content is key. Any suggestions?
• Graphics: Fitting in with my goofy obsession with circles, and a certain mathematical constant, the original Rotundus had its own logo. It was my pitiful attempt at drawing a chariot.
  After it was hacked in July 2005, I moved the site to new software. The old posts got left behind (although I do have backups), but another thing lost in transition was the logo and theme. Since that time Rotundus has been running on one of the software package's stock themes - I think that it's time for a new theme and also a new logo. Any ideas?
• Software: Time to migrate to newer versions of a few things

I've heard people argue that universities are biased against conservatives, but I think that there's a more innocent explanation for the phenomenon.

Roughly 15000 students graduating college were surveyed about their future plans. The result was an article entitled Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates:

Liberalism is more closely associated with a desire for excitement, an interest in creative outlets,
and an aversion to a structured work environment.17 Conservatives express greater interest in
financial success and stronger desires to raise families.

This doesn't even take into account the "Christian university" phenomenon. If one were to assume that X% of both liberals and conservatives were university professors, and the Christian universities only (or largely) drew from the conservative group, then one should expect >50% of public university professors to be left-leaning.

(HT: Open Culture)

In terms of the current U.S. presidential elections, the only candidate in which I was even mildly interested was Romney, who dropped out of the race shortly after losses on Super Tuesday. One of the most common reasons that I've heard Christians give for not supporting him is that he happens to be a Mormon.

Yet in its analysis of biblical references in speeches by Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist and contender for the Republican presidential nomination, NPR notes that:

"Half of Americans can't name any of the four Gospels, and that includes the Christians," Prothero says. "And half don't know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. Those are much easier questions than things like, you know, 'What's the loaves and the fishes story?'"

Yet, these same people are inclined to reject a political candidate for not "sharing" their beliefs. ("Sharing" being in quotes as, given the vacuity of knowledge of many Christians today, what is there being shared? Mormons (and Muslims), after all, do still at least employ the name of Jesus, albeit not with the same underlying meaning.)

(HT: Evangelical Outpost)