Rotundus.com

I've got a presentation which I really should finish for tomorrow so naturally I've been procrastinating (technically I can also present on Thursday if I choose). Once thing that I've been wondering about lately is how to best integrate Xanga and Rotundus. I've recently enabled an RSS feed for the site, so if you're into that sort of thing, you can now read Rotundus that way.

If you're wondering what RSS is and what it's good for, I just enabled the news aggregator on the site. Now through that and the wonders of RSS, you can get a Xanga fix without ever leaving Rotundus!

Currently the news aggregator is merging together about 8 or 9 Xanga blogs that I've started to read, as well as Depravity - a favourite news source.

For those who aren't aware, I tend to buy books in spurts, and then sometimes will go a relatively lengthy stretch without buying anything while I attempt to catch up to what's on my bookshelf.

Today, arrived in the mail a used copy of Michael Horton's book A Better Way. Anyone heard of him before - just wondering if any of you will pick up on (either) connection.

I'm still awaiting one book in the mail, but it was a freebie so I'm not really counting it. More to come on that freebie whenever I finally get around to reading it.

I was talking with one of my roommates about the movie Luther the other day and he mentioned that his fiancee didn't like the guy. Based on the following list of quotes that was forwarded to me this morning, I can understand why. Keeping stuff like this in mind, Hitler's rise in Germany seems all too predictable:

Quotes from Luther on women:

"God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error." "The bondage of the Will," 1527

"The word and works of God is quite clear, that women were made either to be wives or prostitutes." Works 12.94

"Women...have but small and narrow chests, and broad hips, to the end that they should remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up children."

"Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, it does not matter; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for." Works 20.84

Luther on Jews:

"If I had to baptise a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone around his neck and push him over with the words 'I baptise thee in the name of Abraham'."

"Their synagogues ... should be set on fire."

"Either God must be unjust, or you, Jews, wicked and ungodly. You have been, about fifteen hundred years, a race rejected of God."

"What shall we Christians do now with this depraved and damned people of the Jews? ... I will give my faithful advice: First, that one should set fire to their synagogues. . . . Then that one should also break down and destroy their houses. . . . That one should drive them out the country."

"Their homes (Jews) should be broken down and destroyed. They ought to be put under one roof or in a stable, like Gypsies, in order that they may realize that they ... are ... but miserable captives."

"Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch-thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security."

I finally recieved in the mail a short while ago an Amazon shipment that I had been waiting for for quite some time.

I read Mark Noll's History of Christianity in the United States and Canada in Fall 2005, and found it quite interesting, so I was looking to read another of his books. In this shipment I received was a fairly famous book of his, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, from which I'd like to offer a short quote:

Evangelical seminaries have often enjoyed brilliant biblical scholars, but these scholars are isolated from comparably brilliant Christians in the evangelical colleges (whose mandate is broad and general) and in the research universities (whose mandate is narrow and deep). All teachers in the evangelical institutions suffer under a further problem created by the absence of non-Christian scholars, or Christian scholars who are not evangelical Protestants. Despite good intentions, it is almosts always easier to misconstrue the arguments of others if they are not present. p. 20

Also in my shipment was another book that I think will be rather intriguing. I picked up Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which is basically an argument that modern science is not only based on fact but also derives conclusions based on the social context in which scientists exist. Should be interesting to read, particularly in how this might be connected to the whole intelligent design argument.