Dave Gullett

I downloaded the free PDF last evening and am thoroughly enjoying it so far.

From John Frame’s endorsement:

“Poythress does not merely claim that the discipline of linguistics allows a place for God, or that a theistic worldview provides useful context, or that engagement in such studies is somehow useful to Christians. Rather, he comes right in your face with the claims of Christ: God is not merely a possibility, not merely a conclusion, but the starting point for any understanding at all.”

New Poythress Book on a God-Centered Approach to Language – Justin Taylor.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJRFDmWuqv4]

Muslims and non-Muslims who live in nations where Islam is not the law of the land talk a lot about how Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Christians who live in Islamic nations tell a different story. I picked this up from Ron Dreher’s blog, who writes: “If you want to know what it’s really like to live under persecution for your Christian faith and culture, listen to this presentation by Bishop Thomas, a Copt who serves in Assiut, an area of intense Islamic persecution of Christians. I met him once, and the man is so luminous, and peaceful. It’s almost humiliating to be an American Christian, with such an easy life despite it all, and to hear what life is like for Christians in Egypt and elsewhere.

[via Evangel]

“We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books—some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails—we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.”

How to Destroy the Book, by Cory Doctorow | theVARSITY.ca. (via Challies.com)

“”How many people have ever lived?” The numbers in this piece are highly speculative but are as accurate as modern science allows. It’s widely accepted that prior to 2002 there had been somewhere between 106 and 140 billion homo sapiens born to the world.”

That’s an astounding number of people.

Census of the dead, in infographic form Boing Boing.

“It happens only once in a blue moon — and scientists say a blue moon is exactly what we’ll see in the skies this New Year’s Eve.

Don’t expect an azure glow over our lunar satellite, however. The term “blue moon” simply refers to the second full moon in a calendar month, something that hasn’t happened on a New Year’s Eve for nearly 20 years, NASA says.”

Blue moon to shine on New Year’s Eve – CNN.com.