Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day

As I get ready to start my dissertation, I am finding Joan Bolker’s Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day both very insightful and comforting. The humor keeps the life of a writer more bearable. I came across these strategies for completing the first draft:

• Sit down with all your writing, hold your nose, and read through everything you’ve written several times, looking for different things: 1) materials that stand out, and 2) dominant themes.
• Read for interesting or annoying questions that occur to you as you go through what you’ve written.
• Read for organizational markers.
• Read in order to organize, marking themes with codes, numbers, letters, or colors.
• Read to extract a provisional outline.
• Read through and put a check in the margin to anything that’s interesting, or seems like it might have potential, or even seems terribly wrong.
• If you find recognizable paragraph in the mess, try summarizing each of them in a single sentence.

 

Christians Executed in North Korea

From BBC:

Human rights groups in South Korea say North Korea has stepped up executions of Christians, some of them in public.

The communist country, the world’s most closed society, views religion as a major threat.

Only the founder of the country, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il, may be worshipped, in mass public displays of fervour.

Despite the persecutions, it is thought up to 30,000 North Koreans may practise Christianity secretly in their homes. [...]

HT: Z

 

Fighting for Your Marriage, A Review

Fighting for Your Marriage. By Howard J. Markman, Scott M. Stanley, and Susan L. Blumberg. Revised ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001. Paperback. 374 pages. $16.95.

I probably wouldn’t have read this book if it weren’t for the premarital counseling that I’m currently undergoing as the date of my wedding approaches. Not that I have any real objections to marriage and relationship books; I just haven’t made it a priority to read them. A bit disappointed with Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, my first and only–that is, until now, I was left with the impression that books on relationships cannot get away from presenting caricatures of men and women. I’m glad now that I didn’t stop there.

Fighting for Your Marriage has the feel of being more of a strategy guide for effective communication than a how-to formula for a cookie-cutter successful marriage. I didn’t get the sense that I have to follow everything in the book to make marriage work. Instead, it reminded me of the different perspectives in relationships without making heavy generalizations of male and female roles. Understanding how these different perspectives result becomes key in honing the right communication skills for a stronger marriage.

 

Christians at the Border, A Review

Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. By M. Daniel Carroll R. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008. Paperback. 174 pages. $16.99.

In Christians at the Border, Daniel Carroll addresses a growing concern amongst lawmakers and citizens in the U.S. America is undergoing massive demographical changes with the influx of immigrants from Mexico. The Hispanic population is ever increasing all across the country, while the Latin American culture is growing more ubiquitous with its food, music, and media. But America as a whole has not been warm towards the growing Spanish-speaking population. The purpose of Carroll’s book is to begin informing Christians with the issues surrounding immigration.

Carroll is an Old Testament professor at Denver Seminary, born in Guatemala and educated in the United States. His bird-eye view of the two cultures—American and Latin-American, is helpful in presenting a fair view of the cultural dispositions on both sides: in his introduction, he explains why he prefers undocumented immigrants over illegal aliens with the reason being that the former is “a more just label and better represents the present reality” (22). His awareness allows him to avoid bias where possible, and defend views where necessary.

 

Reality Check for Missional Living

I have to say that not being on facebook has helped me to become more productive. Dan Kimball from CT has posted an intriguing article on the importance of doing missions rather than just talking about it over the net:

I suddenly faced a decision. Do I go home and read blogs about being missional, or do I go to the club and actually be missional? It sounds like an easy decision, but it wasn’t. In all honesty, part of me truly wanted to go to the comfort of home and just sit in front of my laptop.

That moment forced me to begin reflecting on how much time I spend on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and other online social networking sites. I wondered, If I spent less time online, could I be spending more time building friendships? Have I become so consumed with reading about mission that I’ve forgotten to actually engage it? As these questions arose, I started to get uncomfortable.

Don’t misunderstand me. I find blogs quite encouraging. I’ve learned a lot about missional living by reading insightful bloggers. I have even gotten reacquainted with non-Christian friends from years ago on Facebook. But in truth, the bulk of my Facebook time is spent conversing with Christian friends and other church leaders. And most of the missional discussion I read online does not include stories of people coming to faith, but theoretical definitions and debates about what being missional actually means. [...]

 

Trebilco’s The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius, a Review

The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius. By Paul Trebilco. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2007. 826 pages. Paperback, $85.00.

Paul Trebilco’s work represents a substantial endeavor in describing the ancient urban life of Ephesus in light of its early Christian believers. The purpose is two-fold: to first look at the life and activity of the early Christians, and second, argue that there was not a single body of believers in Ephesus, but a number of believing groups or communities. Trebilco’s erudition of ancient Ephesus is undeniable from the introduction, which explains how recent interests in Ephesus have sparked in the form of historical undertakings in cultural studies, sociological dimensions, cultic presence, and new archaeological findings. The scope of Treibilco’s research is not in any way a wholesale assimilation into any one of these historical approaches. The difference in Trebilco’s voluminous work is his careful examination of the biblical texts connected to Ephesus. Trebilco takes these canonical sources seriously enough to allow them to tell the history of ancient Ephesus.

 

America is 51% Pro-Life

From the AP:

NEW YORK – A Gallup Poll released Friday found that 51 percent of Americans now call themselves pro-life rather than pro-choice on the issue of abortion, the first time a majority gave that answer in the 15 years that Gallup has asked the question.

The findings, obtained in an annual survey on values and beliefs conducted May 7-10, marked a significant shift from a year ago. A year ago, 50 percent said they were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life — in the new poll, 42 percent said they were pro-choice.

The new survey showed that Americans remained deeply divided on the legality of abortion — with 23 percent saying it should be illegal in all circumstances, 22 percent saying it should be legal under any circumstances, and 53 percent saying it should be legal only under certain circumstances. [...]

 

McGrath: ‘Augustine’s Origin of Species’

Alistair McGrath has written an article on Augustine’s views on creation, well worth the read (CT):

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th of the publication of his On the Origin of Species. For some, such as Richard Dawkins, Darwinism has been elevated from a provisional scientific theory to a worldview—an outlook on reality that excludes God, firmly and permanently. Others have reacted strongly against the high priests of secularism. Atheism, they argue, simply uses such scientific theories as weapons in its protracted war against religion.

They also fear that biblical interpretation is simply being accommodated to fit contemporary scientific theories. Surely, they argue, the Creation narratives in Genesis are meant to be taken literally, as historical accounts of what actually happened. Isn’t that what Christians have always done? Many evangelicals fear that innovators and modernizers are abandoning the long Christian tradition of faithful biblical exegesis. They say the church has always treated the Creation accounts as straightforward histories of how everything came into being. The authority and clarity of Scripture—themes that are rightly cherished by evangelicals—seem to be at stake.

These are important concerns, and the Darwin anniversaries invite us to look to church history to understand how our spiritual forebears dealt with similar issues. [...]

 

Pace of Job Loss Rate Easing

A sign that the relentless pace of job losses is starting to level off… From the NYT:

The American job market remains dreadful and is still worsening, but at a slower pace than before — good news given the stomach-churning events of recent months. The government’s monthly employment report buoyed hopes that the longest, most punishing recession since the Great Depression may be relenting.

Another 539,000 jobs disappeared from the economy in April, and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.9 percent, its highest level in a quarter century, the Labor Department reported Friday. Yet the deterioration was milder than expected, prompting encouraging talk. [...]

 

Tongue Exercises Eases Sleep Apnea

From a study reported on WebMD:

May 7, 2009 — Doing certain tongue and facial exercises for 30 minutes daily may ease the severity of obstructive sleep apnea, a Brazilian study shows.

The study included 31 adults with moderate obstructive sleep apnea.

Speech pathologists taught 16 of the patients to do tongue and facial exercises for half an hour daily. Those exercises included brushing the tongue with a toothbrush, putting the tip of the tongue on the soft palate and sliding the tongue backward, pronouncing vowels quickly or continuously, and keeping the tongue in a certain position when eating.

For comparison, the other 15 patients didn’t learn any tongue or facial exercises. They were simply supervised as they sat for half an hour per day, practicing deep breathing through the nose. [...]