I've finally found the answer, the right name for a particular problem I face often due to my chosen line of work, Stalwart Opponent of Lexicographical Prescriptivism (SOLP). The problem is this: I happen to know that there's no "rule" against splitting infinitives,...
Mark Ward
The Flip Side
Duncan Johnson made a valid comment on a recent post. The Internet may be an opiate for the people, but that's not the whole story. So here's something on the flip side. I recently attended a large evangelical-ish church while on vacation (and limited by snow from...
Forks and Finnish
Don’t blame my parents, but I didn’t know until I was 27 that the two different-sized forks in the silverware drawer had different names and purposes. (Don’t blame me either. Blame the Democrats, I think.) One fork is for salad, while the other is a dinner fork. The...
Western Assumptions about Technology
Americans assume that the Internet is a tool for democracy. Not necessarily so, says a new book (or rather a review of it). Authoritarian regimes make an implicit deal with their populations: help yourselves to pirated films, silly video clips and online pornography,...
Dissertation Completed—Sort Of!
I have reached the end of the dissertation, but I'm 3,395 words over my absolute top word limit and I have some editing to do anyway. I hope to accomplish that today. I praise the Lord for in-laws who let me work in their basement for two weeks (they got time with...
Christmas Baby
A little cuteness for my snowed-in Greenville friends to enjoy. (If anyone happens to drive past my house in Taylors, can you let me know if any pipes appear to have burst or any tree limbs have destroyed the roof? I am a little concerned...)
Preserving the Truth Almost-Live Blog (Friday, Jan 7)
Instead of writing the last few pages of my dissertation, I’m at the Preserving the Truth Conference at First Baptist Church of Troy. Here are my notes from last night: Breakout Sessions Scott Aniol argued this, if I could boil it down: we can't have a-cultural church...
Which Commentary Set Should I Buy?
If you’ve never used BestCommentaries.com, you’re in for a treat. You can search for commentaries by book, by set, and by author. I find myself most often searching by book, because on the Romans page, for instance, all the commentaries will be ranked by an aggregate...
The Singular We
A minor exegetical note that I'm sure I'm not the first to notice but did just now: Do you sometimes get the sense that Paul is using something like the "royal we" ("Unhand our royal person!"), that when he says "we" he means "me"? Here's some evidence that you were...
MacLaren on Christ’s Teaching
Christ’s ‘originality’ as a moral teacher lies not so much in the absolute novelty of His commandments, as in the perspective in which He sets them, and in the motives on which He bases them, and most of all in His being more than a teacher, namely, the Giver of power...