Abnormal Interests: January 2006 Archives

January 2006 Archives

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January 31, 2006

State of the Union - First Reaction

For whatever it is worth, this is my very preliminary reaction after listening to President Bush's State of the Union Speech. I will be reading and studying it over the next day or two and may have more to say....

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What's in a Name?

Several biblioblogs have been discussing how best to refer to two of the three major collections of writings of the western monotheistic tradition. I guess everyone calls the Koran the Qoran even if there is no agreement on how to...

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January 30, 2006

Critical Analysis as a Surrogate for Something Else

I started to write about this the other day when it was more timely, then I got side tracked so I thought I'd take another shot today. As background you might want to read the posts on afarensis and Dispatches...

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January 29, 2006

Something New (To Me) - Old Maps

Aydin Örstan's Snail's Tales has one of the most interesting blogs that I read nearly every day. It's not that I'm all that interested in snails, although I'm beginning to get the warm fuzzes, or should I say the cold...

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January 28, 2006

To Gather or to Cure? That is the Question

While continuing to work on the alphabetic cuneiform text from Tell Ta'anak (aka Tell Ta'anach) I thought I'd take a little side trip into a unusual usage of a very common Hebrew word. 2 Kings 5:1-19 tells the story of...

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January 27, 2006

Hamas - the Palestinian Likud?

Mike the Mad Biologist directs us to a very interesting take on the Hamas victory in Palestine. Bradley Burston in today's English version of Ha'aretz compares the Hamas victory with the 1977, Likud victory in Israel. As Bruston says, both...

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January 26, 2006

Another Middle East Policy Triumph

According to CNN, Hamas - 76 seats Fatah - 43 seats Fringe parties and independents 13 seats And this with a turnout of 77 percent of registered voters. "Democracy is on the march!" And in Palestine, democracy is on the...

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For a Minute, I Thought He Had Gotten the Message

I was skimming through the text of President Bush's press conference when this struck my eye. Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able...

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January 25, 2006

Opening a Can of Wedges

Does look like ? One of the major problems in interpreting the alphabetic cuneiform text on the tablet from Tell Taanak (KTU 4.767) involves knowing how to read some of the letters themselves. Of particular difficulty is the last sign...

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January 24, 2006

New Science on an Old Problem

Thucydides begins his account of the great plague of Athens in Book II, chapter 47 of his History of the Peloponnesian War with these words, Ηρξατο δε το μεν πρωτον, ως λεγεται, εξ Αιθιοπίας της υπερ Αιγυπτου, επειτα δε και...

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January 23, 2006

Does Anyone Remember The Ten Commandants Being In The Public School They Attended?

Last night on 60 Minutes Morley Safer did a piece on Kinky Friedman, pop singer cum independent candidate for governor of Texas. Friedman has a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad ideas and a lot of crazy...

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January 22, 2006

Can They Read?

I am increasing concerned that the folks in the Intelligent Design creationist movement can't read. Dave Scott on Uncommon Decent comments on the lack of reaction from the "Darwinian Evolution (sic)" community to an article in L'Osservatore Romano . I...

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Solving the World's Problems One at a Time - Freeway Traffic

I've decided that it is time to begin offering my practical and effective suggestions on how to solve the world's problems. I will periodically offer these suggests free of charge and only for the betterment of humankind. Therefore, I hereby...

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January 21, 2006

Modern Humans May Have Introduced a New Social Order

The following is from Science Daily , The disappearance of Neanderthals is frequently attributed to competition from modern humans, whose greater intelligence has been widely supposed to make them more efficient as hunters. However, a new study forthcoming in the...

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Oldest Temple Found on Göbekli Hill in Turkey?

Boy, here's one where you really want a lot more information. An English language Turkish newspaper, Turkish Daily News, reports on a story in a German paper, Die Welt, basis on an Anatolia News Agency press release that a 12,000...

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January 19, 2006

What Was It That Upset Kurt Gödel About the U. S. Constitution?

I've read this story more than once. The quotation below and much of the rendition I give in this post are from Gödel, A Life of Logic by John Casti and Werner DePauli. It seems that in 1948 Gödel decided...

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January 18, 2006

Catholic Biologist Again Says Intelligent Design is Not Science

I found this AP article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution while I was looking for something else. The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms...

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Wow, It Hasn't Gotten Any Easier

I'm beginning serious detailed work on a tablet discovered in 1963 during Paul Lapp's excavation at Tell Ta'annak (KTU 4.767). This tablet, while short (just 15 or so letters) is certainly the most difficult that I have so far worked...

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January 17, 2006

Happy Birthday Benjamin Franklin

If he had lived this long Franklin would have enjoyed his 300th birthday today. It is within reason to think that Franklin won the revolutionary war from his embassy outside of Paris and that his wise words greatly facilitated the...

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January 16, 2006

Knock it Off Already!

I first heard this on the radio but it wasn't until I read it in an Associated Press story that it really hit me. "Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's...

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January 15, 2006

The Cuneiform Short Alphabet: Part 7.

Inscription on a Knife from Tabor Valley, Wadi Bire: KTU 6.1 (IAA 44.318, Yeivin [1945]) This is the seventh in my series of studies of the texts in the short cuneiform alphabet. You can find the first study, "Amurriyu's Sacrifice...

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January 14, 2006

Walk Like a Hominid

John Hawks has an interesting discussion of a paper by Craig B. Stanford published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. The paper is called, "Arboreal bipedalism in wild chimpanzees: Implications for the evolution of...

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January 13, 2006

To All the Girls I've Loved Before and to Those I Still Love

A friend of mine sent me the following list, which he described as depressing. Brigette Bardot 71 Stella Stevens 68 Sophia Loren 71 Gina Lollobrigida 78 Deborah Kerr 94 Lena Horne 88 Kay Starr 83 Patti Page 78 Annette Funicello...

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The Travels of Snails

What do you get when you mix snails, incest, crusaders, the Ottoman Empire, a wonder of the ancient world and archaeology? You get a great story and some interesting science and history. Aydin Örstan explains it all on Snails Tails....

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January 12, 2006

New Arboreal Species Shows Intelligent Design

While Shirley and I were taking our morning constitutional, we sighted what I believe to be an adult female specimen of a here-to-fore unknown species. I suggest that this new species be called Bicyclus arborealis. Domain, kingdom, phylum and class...

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January 11, 2006

Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar Online

Danny Zacharias tells us that Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar is online. And so it is. The title page of the second English edition (1910) is reproduced in HTML and the text, including indices, is in 174 PDF files. While this is...

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January 10, 2006

What Do Theologians Study?

And Why is Richard Dawkins Less Able to Study it Than a Theologian? I'm often confused about what theologians study. For sure, they study other theologians and sometimes they study the works of biblical scholars, specifically biblical theologians and they...

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January 9, 2006

Neanderthals: Thoughtful, Well Trained and Perhaps Unable to Speak

The University of Leiden has an interesting post on interdisciplinary research being done at their university on Neanderthal communication and thought process. The research title is Thoughtful Hunters? The Archaeology of Neanderthal Communication and Cognition. In the picture emerging from...

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Does the Bayesian Machine Model Help Explain Emotional Responses to Life's Uncertain Decisions?

Is there a tie-in between this article in the Telegraph and the one I mentioned yesterday concerning the possibility that our mind is a Bayesian machine? Check this out from the Telegraph article, Investing money, changing jobs, getting married: all...

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January 8, 2006

A Bayesian Mind?

I've goofed around with Bayesian analysis at the intersection of archaeological and biblical studies. The Economist has an interesting article on the question of the extent to which our mind is a Bayesian reasoning machine. Here are a few snippets...

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Quote Mining and Me

Friday I used a quotation from Mark Twain in a post on Pat Robertson's latest venture into nutdom. The quote, which appears from time to time at the top of the right hand column of Abnormal Interests, is from a...

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January 6, 2006

Friday Snow Blogging

The other day Aydin Örstan directed us to Blue Snow and Red Snow and showed us his own yellow snow. Well not exactly his own yellow snow but some yellow snow near his home. And while Aydin's snow is now...

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Is Pat Robertson God's Punishment of Excessive Tolerance?

Our government should and must extend the constitutional right of freedom of speech to the likes of Pat Robertson, but the rest of us don't need to, and furthermore, we shouldn't. According to all accounts, Pat Robertson, speaking on his...

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January 5, 2006

To Muzzle or Capture Yam? That is the Question

On the last day of 2005 I posted a translation of KTU 1:3 III:37 - 42 as the center piece of my new year's greeting. I half expected to be called out on at least one part of that translation....

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January 4, 2006

Orthodox Rabbi Supports Evolution as a Science and Intelligent Design Creationism as Religion

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is the executive Vice President of the Orthodox Union, an organization that works on behalf of some 1,000 Orthodox synagogues. He is also the spiritual leader of Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Baltimore. Here is part...

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The Problem With the Big Picture

Alun has posted a reading report and a few reflections on Merrilee Salmon's Philosophy and Archaeology . Among his observations is that archaeologists have shied away from anything big. He does this with reference to a paper by Richard Bradley...

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January 3, 2006

Nerdier Than Thou

Via Revolvo Inritus...

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What is Today's Date According to the Mayan Long Count Calendar?

Pip Wilson has found a great multicultural calendar. It is well worth book marking in case you ever want to know: The date according to the Islamic Observational calendar. Or perhaps the Hindu Solar calendar. Or any one of some...

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January 2, 2006

President Bush Will "Construe" the McCain Amendment However He Wants

On Friday, President Bush signed H.R. 2863, the "Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006." The President's formal statement upon signing the bill included these words, The executive...

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January 1, 2006

How Do You Tell a Social Activist from a Scientist or Mathematician?

Well, how do you tell some social activists from scientists and mathematicians? Jeffrey Shallit at Recursivity (cross posted on The Panda's Thumb), has an excellent post on what ex-blogger, mathematician, theologian and intelligent design creationist William Dembski and scientist, author,...

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Random comments on things that interest me